New York, October 18th, 2007: What did Al Smith stand for? He stood for social justice, for hammering the causes of poverty and helping the causes of progress. He brought order and discipline and efficacy to the Government of this great state. All of this defined his politics.

But as a person he stood for something more. He was the son of an immigrant. He knew what it was to be an outsider trying to get on the inside. He knew bigotry first-hand, experienced its savagery, felt its effects on himself and his family; yet never once gave into it and never ceased to rail against it.

After his unsuccessful campaign to be the Democrats Presidential Candidate for 1932, he was angry at the rejection of him in favour of FDR ; and his life could have ended in bitterness. But in a magnificent finale to that life he rediscovered the voice that had made him so loved and revered. The man who had fought the prejudice of the Ku Klux Klan, immediately and presciently identified the poison of Nazism, for what it was. From 1933 onwards, he was a staunch and unremitting opponent of Hitler. The Klan and the Nazis were the same evil to him whether, as he put it “dressed in a brown shirt or a night shirt”.

His reason made him argue against prohibition. His character made profoundly meritocratic, willing to look beyond the colour, class or creed of a person, and value them as they truly were. He saw this as the essence of what it meant to be American and in doing so came to exemplify the spirit and soul of this great country.

It is not a bad story to guide us through the times in which we live today. Thank you for your kind words about Northern Ireland. I am indeed proud of what has been done. But the real achievement is that of the people there who - given the chance – whether Catholic or Protestant, Republican or Unionist decided that they had had enough hatred, enough bloodshed, enough tragedy, that now was the season for peace ; and decided to put the past where it belongs – in the past. I would like to pay tribute to them tonight and to so many of you here who supported the cause of peace and worked so hard to make it happen. Thank you all.

Now in the Middle East I have taken on a different challenge, one whose effects stretch far beyond the small section of land that is Israel and Palestine. Recently I stood on the Mount of Temptation, near Jordan where Our Lord is said to have spent 40 days and 40 nights. One of the guides , whose family has witnessed the consequences of the conflict over the decades, remarked a little ruefully; “Couldn’t Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed have found a different part of the world to be born in ?”

My fascination with this challenge has many roots. But one I know, has implications for the security of our world of an immediate and profound nature.

Out of this region has been exported a deadly ideology, based on a perversion of the proper faith of Islam, but nonetheless articulated with demonic skill, playing on the fears and grievances of Muslims everywhere. It didn’t originate in the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians of course. Far from it. But the dispute is used to great effect as a means of dividing people, sowing seeds of hatred and sectarianism.

The impact of this global ideology is now no longer felt simply in the terrorism that afflicts Palestine, Lebanon or Iraq. It is there also in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and of course in Europe, in Madrid or London and the series of failed attempts across our continent. Here in New York, you felt it in the thousands who died or who mourn still their lost ones. I said straight after September 11th 2001 that this was not an attack on America but on all of us; that Britain’s duty was to be shoulder to shoulder with you in confronting it. I meant it then and I believe it now.

Unfortunately, I tell you, in all frankness, that this struggle is far from over. Out there in the Middle East which seems so far from us here tonight, but from where came carnage to these streets, the ideology driving this extremism and terror is not exhausted. On the contrary, it believes it can and will exhaust us first. Analogies with the past are never properly accurate and analogies especially with the rise of fascism can be easily misleading. But in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder whether we are in the 1920’s rather than the 1930’s. This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of de-stabilizing countries whose people wish to have peace. The ideology itself has its adherents even in the communities of Western democracies and its apologists in those who whilst they deplore the terrorists methods, still accept their analysis of grievance.

There is a tendency, even now and even in our own circles, to believe that they are as they are, because we have provoked them; that if we left them alone, they would leave us alone. Unfortunately they have no intention of leaving us alone. They have made their choice and leave us with only one: to be forced into retreat or to exhibit even greater vigour, determination and belief in standing up for our values than they do in standing up for theirs.

And in this endeavour, the past does indeed have certain lessons to teach us.

First, America and Europe should not be divided. We should stand up together. For all the passing disputes about trade, business or even golf, and making allowance for the fact that you think football is a game played with a small oval ball that you are allowed to throw forward and we know football is really what you call “soccer”, the values we share are as vital, true and above all needed, today as they have been at any time in the past 100 years. Liberty, democracy, freedom of speech and thought – these are the values abhorrent to our enemy; but they define our shared heritage and they are our only hope for the future.

And they have never been values in the sole ownership of us who , in this moment of time, live in America or Europe today any more than the America of a century ago was owned by the WASPs who looked with disdain on Al Smith, the poor Catholic boy. These values are not our property. They are our gift to the world.

Second, when terror opposes that which is right we must commit to defeating it, not with half our heart but wholeheartedly. There will be many that opposed the military action our countries have undertaken together in recent times. I respect those who disagree with me over the decisions that were made. But when car bombs kill innocent children, rockets are fired indiscriminately into civilian areas and the guiltless pay the price for the loathing in the mind of the guilty, we cannot fall back or falter. There can be no excuse for such violence. Nothing justifies it and nothing should make us retreat in the face of it. Whatever the merits of the leaders like me who took these decisions, what our armed forces are doing together in those countries is an heroic act of unselfish sacrifice. And should they fail, our enemy will get stronger and their reach greater. Which is why we cannot and must not fail.

Third, ultimately you only defeat an ideology with another, greater, better, more powerful idea. Our idea is our way of life and the shared values that underpin it. We believe in that way of life. But Al Smith taught us something important about it. That it wasn’t only about liberty. It was also about justice. He saw in the New York slums of the early 20th century lives blighted not by the absence of liberty but by the presence of squalor, poverty and disease; lives without hope, without ambition and therefore without a stake in the liberty he loved.

Today’s world is no different except that our commitment to justice cannot end at the tip of Cornwall or at Staten Island. If we want to beat this global terrorism and the ideology that nurtures it, then the causes that move our world not just our nation must be part of our mission. That is why Africa is part of our mission – the millions in our world today without access to drinking water, primary education or who die in their millions every year from preventable disease.

Protecting our environment is part of our mission because it is our duty to safeguard what we have been lucky enough to hold for a time for the generation that must hold it after us. Peace in the troubled corners of the world, however far flung is also our mission because where there is conflict, there is injustice, misery and suffering. That is why it matters to bring peace to the Middle East: for the sake of those who suffer this conflict but also to show that our eye for justice is never blind, and that no interests and no convenience will ever obscure it. The challenge is global, our response should be global.

In the end one of two things will happen in that region in which I now spend so much of my time. Either the argument will be, as our enemies want, framed as Islam versus the West; or it will be, as we want it, framed as moderates of whatever faith, colour or race against extremism however it manifests itself; fellowship, tolerance, respect towards others against difference used as a reason for hate.

We know where Al Smith would have stood. The same place where today the charities to which tonight’s dinner will contribute, stand playing their part in helping the disadvantaged, the despairing, the sick in body or in mind: the place where we strive to make the world better and more just.

And I feel sure that Governor Al Smith would be incredibly proud of what his great grandson Al Smith is doing here and now, for the people of this city.

So thank you for the honour you have given me this evening. Thank you for your kindness and your generosity. Good fortune follow you in all you do.