Memoirists From England

"Do you know what Margaret Thatcher did in her first Budget? Introduced VAT on yachts! It somewhat ruined my retirement."

"I am sure that entering the exchange rate mechanism was absolutely right and is still right. I regret that we did not do so five years earlier, but that is history. Economic monetary union must come as soon as possible, and with it the single currency. Industry wants the single currency, and we must pay attention to the requests and demands of industry."

"This is the new imperialism, and I am against the new imperialism. It is not our job to go throwing our forces around the world and saying 'This is an evil man and so on'."

"Rejoice! Rejoice!"

"Peter Sissons: The single currency, a United States of Europe, was all that in your mind when you took Britain in? Edward Heath: Of course, yes."

"For all Mr. Gorbachev's policies, is he prepared to see the break-up of the Soviet empire? I do not think so for one moment."

"There's a lot of people I've encouraged and helped to get into the House of Commons. Looking at them now, I'm not so sure it was a wise thing to do."

"Whatever the lady does is wrong. I do not know of a single right decision taken by her."

"I think Churchill would be appalled at the Thatcher government."

"I don't think that modesty is the outstanding characteristic of contemporary politics, do you?""

"It was the most enthralling episode in my life"

"It is bad because it is a negation of democracy … Worst of all is the imposition by parliamentary diktat of a change of responsible party in London government. There cannot be any justification for that. It immediately lays the Conservative Party open to the charge of the greatest gerrymandering in the last 150 years of British history."

"He is not mad in the least. He's a very astute person, a clever person."

"We have had eight years of consistent and persistent attacks on those four years in government - and on me, personally, but that does not matter - by people who were collectively responsible for those four years."

"Monetarism is dead and the alien doctrines of Friedman and Hayek remain only to be buried."

"Please don't applaud. It may irritate your neighbour."

"Progress in these policies can only be brought about if a considerable degree of consensus exists within our country. I have heard some doubt expressed as to what consensus means... Consensus means deliberately setting out to achieve the widest possible measure of agreement about our national policies, in this particular case about our economic activities, in the pursuit of a better standard of living for our people and a happier and more prosperous country. If there be any doubt about the desirability of working towards such a consensus let us recognize that every successful industrialized country in the modern world has been working on such a basis."

"The time has come to speak out. Britain is now locked in a vicious spiralling interest rates... The net result of completing the vicious circle is that prices have increased, the rate of inflation has gone up, the money supply has increased, unemployment has gone up, the rate of bankruptcies has increased, the industrial base has been further eroded, the Government's borrowing requirement has increased and as a result there is more pressure to raise interest rates yet again, to be followed inevitably by the same vicious circle. It is this that must be broken."

"To return to the question of strategy... The Falkland Islands are unlikely to cause a major explosion."

"We are now faced with massive unemployment, on a scale certainly at the level of the 1930s and to become greater. The improvement in housing, education and the standard of living has stopped. To all of us, that is a matter of the greatest possible regret... One of our intentions after the 1930s was to ensure that the Conservative Party was never again considered to be the party of unemployment. I ask my hon. Friends to think seriously about that in our present circumstances."

"What I have in common with the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) is that, undeniably, our generation came into Parliament because we were determined to prevent what happened in the 1930s from occurring again and to prevent a breakdown in the social structure and the political institutions that led to the rise of authoritarianism in Europe and finally to the Second World War. That was our determination, and for 25 years, from 1950 to 1975, the people we represented had a better standard of living, bigger and better homes, better education, a better Health Service, better roads and better transport and were able to enjoy holidays such as they had not envisaged before."

"The opponents of EEC membership inside the Labour Party know how much more difficult it would be to foist their brand of left-wing socialism on the British people if we remain part of a Community based on the principles of free enterprise and the mixed economy. We in the Conservative Party must vigorously oppose this ominous development."

"I am sometimes accused of being oversensitive about unemployment. I do not believe that that is possible, certainly not for anyone who lived through the 1930s and saw the political consequences of high unemployment throughout Western Europe and what happened in 1939."

"The Pax Americana has gone the way of the Pax Britannica ... The implication for us in Europe is twofold. First, we shall no longer be able to enjoy the luxury of urging the Americans to put right anything of which we disapprove anywhere in the world and then of criticizing them for the way they do it; and secondly, we shall have to undertake a proper share of the burden of Western defence if American support for the Western Alliance is to be sustained. That share can be underpinned only by a strong and expanding European economy."

"You mustn't expect prime ministers to enjoy themselves. If they do, they mustn't show it – the population would be horrified."

"I regard Mr Benn as a menace to the country. He was guilty of sabotage last year when he rejected an offer of Community help with the readjustment necessary due to steel plant closures in Wales."

"We would find ourselves pulling out of the European Community straight into the arms of the wild men of the left. The whole country would be plagued with Foot and Benn disease ... The left are not really all that interested in the Common Market. What they want is for Britain to break her treaty obligations and pull out of the Community so that they could impose their own extreme socialist state in Britain."

"[If Britain withdrew from the EEC] it would be a new and different D-Day for Britain—Disaster Day. Of course, this is what the wild men of the left, Mr Benn, Mr Shore and Mr Foot actually want. They thrive on a diet of disaster...they are aching for the go-ahead to build an economic Berlin wall around Britain. And within that British Berlin wall, there would be a socialist State running a siege economy."

"[If Britain withdrew from the EEC] the wild men of the left would certainly try to build a barrier against the outside world. But they would be confronted by such powerful economic gales that they would be forced to build the barriers higher and higher until they had finally built an economic Berlin wall around Britain. Within that wall would be a socialist state running a siege economy."

"Benn, Shore and Foot were like the three witches in Macbeth ... In some darkened room of Transport House, on the very left of the building, they are busy boiling their own witches' brew. A dash of distortion here, an element of exaggeration there, all of course to be taken with a pinch of salt. And as they brew their myths, they delight in creating hubble, bubble, toil and trouble... [Benn] is probably the biggest bureaucrat and the wildest spendthrift that this country has ever known. But let us recognize the facts. Benn, Shore and Foot are using the Europe issue to brew up toil and trouble inside the Labour Party for their own ends ... If there was a "No" vote in the referendum, we would find ourselves pulling out of Europe straight into the welcoming arms of the wild men of Labour's left."

"They have made a grave mistake choosing that woman."

"The historic role of the Conservative Party is to use the leverage of its political and diplomatic skills to create a fresh balance between the different elements within the state at those times when, for one reason or another, their imbalance threatens to disrupt the orderly development of society."

"I was interested in being present for its first, and I trust only, performance."

"In excluding me from the shadow cabinet, Margaret Thatcher has chosen what I believe to be the only wholly honest solution and one which I accept and welcome."

"In January 1972, although the jobless total adjusted for seasonal factors remained below one million, the unadjusted overall total exceeded that. The Commons had to be suspended during the Prime Minister's Questions following Labour's furious protests. This in itself did not shake Ted, but he utterly despised and detested the pre-war Conservative governments, who had tolerated between two and three million unemployed. It was therefore no surprise in which direction Ted decided our economic policy should go when he now had to choose between tolerating a continued high level of unemployment, in the hope that this would keep some control over wage claims and inflation – or trying to run the economy with a higher level of output and growth, and seeking some other means of control over wage and price increases. The high unemployment route was counter to everything Ted believed in and had hoped to achieve for Britain."

"[T]he Conservative Opposition under Ted Heath decided to support the Labour Government's legislation [the Race Relations Bill]. Later, when Enoch Powell spoke in Birmingham in April [1968], saying, “Like the Roman, I see the River Tiber flowing with much blood”, Heath removed him from the Shadow Cabinet. This was to Heath's immense credit because public opinion was wholly with Enoch Powell and many Conservative activists saw Powell as the saviour of the nation. Heath thought the whole tone of the speech was incompatible with the Conservative Party's attitude to race relations and demonstrated to me for the first time the decisiveness and principle which I later learnt to respect."

"Heath was known for his ability and energy, which marked him out for a leading role in the British Conservative Party. I liked him above all for his human qualities and his convictions. On the need for Britain to take part in the building of Europe he had not faltered since his maiden speech in 1950; nor did he in the future."

"Ted had the respect of trade-union people until just before the Chequers breakdown. Why? His infinite capacity for listening, and his manifest sincerity of purpose. Trade-union people know when they are dealing with an honest man and a straight man. They saw this in him. They thought the breakdown was due not to him but to the pressure from his Cabinet: that he was being imposed upon by the hard-faced men in the Cabinet. Therefore they came to think no progress could be made."

"It was wildly exciting. It certainly wasn't the highest feeling I've ever had, but it was one of them. In those days, security was not as good as today. Just afterwards, some chap was able to get at me and stab the back of my neck with a cigarette. It wasn't very pleasant."

"He Mick McGahey] has made it quite plain over the weekend—as has another miners' leader—that the object of what they are doing is not a wage negotiation... Its purpose is...to get rid of the elected government of the day. Now that is entirely a political approach and, he has said quite openly, he wishes to do it in order to get a left-wing government and obviously he expects a left-wing government to toe the line as far as he is concerned."

"We shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war."

"As Prime Minister, I want to speak to you, simply and plainly, about the grave emergency now facing our country. In the House of Commons this afternoon I announced more severe restriction on the use of electricity. You may already have heard the details of these. We are asking you to to cut down to the absolute minimum the use of electricity for heating, and for other purposes in your homes. We are limiting the use of electricity by almost all factories, shops, and offices, to three days a week."

"The miners' leaders have said more than once that they are confronting the Government, not the National Coal Board. I believe they may not yet have fully understood the implications of this approach. For it is just not the government—it is the expressed will of the elected representatives of the people in Parliament. That is the main difference between the dispute in 1972 and the dispute in 1973 and I believe that it will prove decisive. For the authority of the elected Parliament is the cornerstone of our democracy, and is recognized as such by the overwhelming majority of people in this country"

"Our problem at the moment is a problem of success."

"It is the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism, but one should not suggest that the whole of British industry consists of practices of this kind."

"Government, management and unions...have now...jointly embarked for the first time in Britain, on the path of working out together how to create and share the nation's wealth for the benefit of all the people. It is an offer to employers and unions to share fully with the Government the benefits and the obligations involved in running the national economy."

"There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty, even that we shall begin to lose our national identity. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified and exaggerated. We shall, of course, be accepting the common procedures of Community life, just as we accept those of other organizations which we have joined. But within the framework of a developing Community the identity of national states will be maintained."

"Do we have the courage to forget the dissensions and the suspicions that have divided us, and to learn to work together for lasting peace and prosperity, not just for our country but for a continent? Do we have the wisdom to achieve by construction and cooperation what Napoleon and Hitler failed to achieve by destruction and by conquest? ... Let us all recognise the opportunity that is now presented to us for what it is: the chance to unite Western Europe."

"[I]ncreasingly the use of violence has become not the last resort of the desperate, but the first resort of those whose simple unconstructive aim is anarchy. That we must all surely resist. Anarchy is not a prescription for peace, justice and progress. It achieves nothing but the suffering of innocent men and women."

"[W]e must recognise a new threat to the peace of the nations, indeed to the very fabric of society. We have seen in the last few years the growth of a cult of political violence, preached and practised not so much between states as within them. It is a sombre thought but it may be that in the 1970s civil war, not war between nations, will be the main danger we will face."