Alan Clark

Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (April 13, 1928 – September 5, 1999) was a British Conservative politician, historian and diarist. The son of art historian Kenneth Clark, he read modern history at Oxford and qualified as a Barrister, but never practiced. His book "The Donkeys" (1961) argued that British troops were poorly led in the First World War. Clark became Conservative Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton in 1974, and served in the government of Margaret Thatcher. After standing dow

12 quotes found

"You cannot come here because you are not white."

"John Pilger: I read that you were a vegetarian and you are seriously concerned about the way animals are killed. Alan Clark: Yeah. John Pilger: Doesn’t that concern extend to the way humans, albeit foreigners, are killed? Alan Clark: Curiously not."

"The only solution for dealing with the IRA is to kill 600 people in one night."

"I am not a fascist. Fascists are shopkeepers, I am a Nazi."

"So what does it matter where it was when it was hit? We could have sunk it if it'd been tied up on the quayside in a neutral port and everyone would still have been delighted."

"I only can properly enjoy carol services if I am having an illicit affair with someone in the congregation. Why is this? Perhaps because they are essentially pagan, not Christian, celebrations."

""The trouble with [[w:Michael Heseltine|[Michael] Heseltine]] is that he had to buy all his furniture." Snobby, but cutting."

"I fell into conversation with Douglas. His is a split personality. À deux he is delightful; clever, funny, observant, drily cynical. But get him anywhere near "display mode", particularly if there are officials around, and he might as well have a corncob up his arse. Pompous, trite, high-sounding, cautiously guarded."

"I want to fire the whole lot. Instantly. Out, out. No "District" commands, no golden bowlers, nothing. Out … If I could, I'd do what Stalin did to Tukhachevsky."

"Pinkish toffs like Ian Gilmour] and Charlie Morrison], having suffered, for ten years, submission to their social inferior see in Michael [Heseltine] an arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but one who at any rate seeks the cachet. While all the nouves in the party think he (Michael) is the real thing."

"I am confirmed in my opinion that it is hopeless here. All we can do is arm the Orangemen – to the teeth – and get out."

"A few attempts have been made to argue that a Nazi victory over the Soviet Union might not have been wholly disadvantageous to the Western powers, and that therefore a second phase of appeasement after 1941 might have been preferable to continued war. Some British Tories, notably the late Alan Clark, have suggested that the British Empire might have been spared ignominious bankruptcy, decline and fall, had a separate peace been made along the lines Rudolf Hess seems to have envisaged and Hitler repeatedly mused about in his evening monologues; in a similar vein, some American conservatives argue that the Cold War might have been avoided had Roosevelt kept the United States out of the shooting war in Europe. On the whole, however, most writers have tended to take the view that a Nazi victory would have been a worse outcome than that of 1945. Even if a victorious Third Reich had opted for peace with Britain and America - which cannot be regarded as very probable - the price would have been horrendously high for the millions of people left under Nazi rule. All nine million of the Jews of Europe might have been murdered, rather than the nearly six million who actually were, to say nothing of the vast human suffering that would have been inflicted on other ethnic groups by the implementation of the Generalplan Ost, which envisaged deporting around fifty million East Europeans to Siberia."