"I don't believe the party gains when a member of the last two Labour governments stumps round the country blackguarding the record of the governments as a betrayal of the British working class, and describing the Prime Ministers through whom he accepted office as medieval monarchs who turned Labour MPs into their puppets. What nonsense! Tell that to Eric Heffer or Jeff Rooker or any of the many Labour MPs who've made my life as Chancellor so difficult from time to time, and I never objected to that. No! Those who betray the working class of Britain are those who forced us for two whole years to fight one another when we should have been fighting the Tories and through a sort of ideological narcissism are helping to keep in power the most brutal government in living memory, a government which has commit itself to destroy our trade union movement. We didn't lose the last election because we failed to follow the advice of these elitists. It was Maggie Thatcher who won the last election, not Mick McGahey. And we're losing votes today not to the Socialist Workers Party or the IMG but to David Steel and Roy Jenkins."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomLabour Party (UK) politiciansPeople from LondonAutobiographers from EnglandChancellors of the Exchequer
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Speech to a fringe meeting at the Trades Union Congress conference in Blackpool during the Labour Party deputy leadership election (10 September 1981)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Denis_Healey
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Denis Healey
Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey PC (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979. He was a Member of Parliament for 40 years (from 1952 until his retirement in 1992) and was the last surviving member of the cabinet formed by Harold Wilson after the Labour Party's victory in the 1964 general election.
68 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Denis Healey →
Related Quotes
"Britain's economic problem is fundamentally far greater than France's since France is much less dependent on foreign …"
"By his conduct of the campaign against the Labour Government Aneurin Bevan has destroyed a good chance of succeeding …"
"Nye [Bevan] thinks that the best way to win friends and influence people is to kick them in the teeth... But there is…"
"'The owl of Minerva only flies abroad when the shades of night are gathering.' Speaking for Conservatism, Hegel was r…"
"Hugh Gaitskell was absolutely right when he said yesterday that what gets cheers at this conference does not necessar…"
"I think the Services can be rightly very upset at the continuous series of defence reviews which the Government has b…"
"Keynesianism has failed."
"I warn my hon. Friends...that once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have…"
"We did not want middle class Robespierres."
"The upper classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent. The struggle for socialism in Europ…"