Hugh Gaitskell

"This does not mean that Hugh Gaitskell, who would have been nearly seventy-five when the SDP was formed, would have left the Labour Party. I do not personally believe he would have done so, if for no other reason than, had he lived, I suspect the need for a creation of the SDP would never have existed."

"I soon came to regard Hugh Gaitskell...as an outstanding man. His fight against the unilateralists made a deep impression on me. The whole stand against CND within the Labour Party with his famous 'Fight, and fight again' speech made me think: 'This man has principles'."

"When facing some of the more difficult choices of my career, I have asked myself how would Hugh Gaitskell have handled a similar situation."

"One of the greatest if more intangible achievements of the late Mr. Hugh Gaitskell was to raise the whole level of political discourse in Britain."

"Political integrity was the most precious quality which Hugh Gaitskell brought to the service of the Labour movement. ... In particular it endowed him with the courage to master the crisis which came to him in October, 1960, when the party conference rejected the official policy on defence and declared for the unilateral renunciation of nuclear weapons. His resolve "to fight and fight and fight again", to rescue the movement from what he deemed to be perilous courses awoke sharp conflict within it, offering a serious challenge to his leadership. He emerged from the struggle with his authority unassailably established within a party to which he had restored cohesion and confidence. The drift to disintegration was halted. His skill and patience were rewarded by the steady reversal of the unilateralist trend... The climax came at the 1961 party conference. The earlier decision was overturned by almost a ten-fold majority, a victorious testimony to the transformation which Gaitskell had wrought. In the process he had immensely enhanced his reputation and had made a powerful impact on the public consciousness as a man possessing the authentic attributes of leadership—resolute will, robust courage, resilient spirit and wise judgment."

"Hugh Gaitskell was that rare creature, a passionate intellectual. Rationality was his creed. His limited patience was strained almost beyond endurance by the the stolid prejudices of the trades union leaders he depended upon, and the colourful sophistries of his left-wing critics. Born in India of Civil Service parents, he was as much a liberal as a socialist. He cherished liberty, detested racism, and believed in the redistribution of income and wealth to achieve social justice. He was never attracted to the European Community, for as a political entity it threatened to eclipse the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth embodied Gaitskell's deepest convictions, including internationalism and interracialism, and it had developed out of Britain's imperial history with which his family had had close connections."

"Nye called Hugh “a desiccated calculating machine”, thinking him cold and unemotional. It was a serious misjudgement, which proved Nye's undoing. Hugh was passionate in the cause of reason. He loved the Labour Party and wanted to make it something like the German Social Democratic Party was then: free of ideological bitterness and hatred, strong for prosperity and justice and equality, the determined but moderate natural party of government which Harold Wilson foolishly thought he had achieved while actually destroying it."