British Peers

"Many senior policemen put greater emphasis on maintaining 'order' than on upholding the law. In practice that meant failing to uphold the rights of individuals against the rule of the mob."

"Those who use this country's great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others, especially to those who, like Mr Powell, spent their war years in distinguished service in the Forces."

"When you stop selecting by ability you have to select according to some other inevitably less satisfactory criterion."

"Communism was the regime for the privileged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man."

"Our policy is not built on envy or hatred, but on liberty for the individual man or woman."

"It is not our policy to suppress success."

"Our opponents like to try and make you believe that Conservatism is a privilege of the few. But Conservatism conserves all that is great and best in our national heritage."

"You cannot build a great nation or brotherhood of man by spreading envy or hatred."

"Everyone had something unique to offer in life and their responsibility was to develop those gifts - and heroes come from all backgrounds."

"Each demand for security, whether of employment, income or social position, implied the exclusion from such benefits of those outside the particular privileged group - and would generate demands for countervailing privileges from the excluded groups. Eventually, in such a situation every will lose."

"The main contribution one can make as a student to one's country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively."

"We all see these great calamities with different eyes, and so their impact upon us is different."

"Nazism (national Socialism) and communism (international socialism) were but two sides of the same coin."

"I was sick at heart. I could have resisted the opposition of opponents and potential rivals and even respected them for it; but what grieved me was the desertion of those I had always considered friends and allies and the weasel words whereby they had transmuted their betrayal into frank advice and concern for my fate."

"Geoffrey Howe from this point on would be remembered not for his staunchness as Chancellor, nor for his skilful diplomacy as Foreign Secretary, but for this final act of bile and treachery. The very brilliance with which he wielded the dagger ensured that the character he assassinated was in the end his own."

"I was determined to accept the invitation I had earlier received from General Jaruzelski to go to Poland. I always felt the greatest affection and admiration for this nation of indomitable patriots, whose traditions and distinctive identity the Prussians, Austrians and Russians (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and the Nazis and communists (in the twentieth century) had sought vainly to extinguish. I could not forget the Polish airmen who had fought with the RAF against Nazism, and how a war begun over the freedom of Poland had ended leaving them trapped under tyranny."

"Orthodox finance, low levels of regulation and taxation, a minimal bureaucracy, strong defence, a willingness to stand up for Britain's interests wherever and whenever threatened – I did not believe that I had to open windows into men's souls on these matters. The arguments for them seemed to me to have been won. I now know that such arguments are never finally won."

"For me as a British Conservative, with Edmund Burke the father of Conservatism and first great perceptive critic of the Revolution as my ideological mentor, the events of 1789 represent a perennial illusion in politics. The French Revolution was a Utopian attempt to overthrow a traditional order — one with many imperfections, certainly — in the name of abstract ideas, formulated by vain intellectuals, which lapsed, not by chance but through weakness and wickedness, into purges, mass murder and war. In so many ways it anticipated the still more terrible Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The English tradition of liberty, however, grew over the centuries: its most marked features are continuity, respect for law and a sense of balance, as demonstrated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688."

"Were British democracy, parliamentary sovereignty, the common law, our traditional sense of fairness, our ability to run our own affairs in our own way to be subordinated to the demands of a remote European bureaucracy, resting on very different traditions? I had by now heard about as much of the European 'ideal' as I could take; I suspected that many others had too. In the name of this ideal, waste, corruption and abuse of power were reaching levels which no one who supported, as I had done, entry to the European Economic Community could have foreseen."

"Not the least of those opponents was Jacques Delors. By the summer of 1988 he had altogether slipped his leash as a fonctionnaire and become a fully fledged political spokesman for federalism. The blurring of the roles of civil servants and elected representatives was more in the continental tradition than in ours. It proceeded from the widespread distrust which their voters had for politicians in countries like France and Italy. That same distrust also fuelled the federalist express. If you have no real confidence in the political system or political leaders of your own country you are bound to be more tolerant of foreigners of manifest intelligence, ability and integrity like M. Delors telling you how to run your affairs. Or to put it more bluntly, if I were an Italian I might prefer rule from Brussels too. But the mood in Britain was different. I sensed it. More than that, I shared it and I decided that the time had come to strike out against what I saw as the erosion of democracy by centralization and bureaucracy, and to set out an alternative view of Europe's future."

"I always regarded free trade as far more important than all the other ambitious and often counter-productive strategies of global economic policy – for example the policies of 'co-ordinated growth' which led principally to inflation. Free trade provided a means not only for poorer countries to earn foreign currency and increase their peoples' standards of living. It was also a force for peace, freedom and political decentralization: peace, because economic links between nations reinforce mutual understanding with mutual interest; freedom, because trade between individuals bypasses the apparatus of the state and disperses power to customers not planners; political decentralization, because the size of the political unit is not dictated by the size of the market and vice versa."

"[D]uring my second term of office as Prime Minister, certain harmful features and tendencies in the European Community started to become ­evident. Against the notable gains constituted by the securing of Britain's budget rebate and progress towards a real Common – or 'Single' – Market had to be set a more powerful Commission ambitious for power, an inclination towards bureaucratic rather than market solutions to economic problems and the re-emergence of a Franco-German axis with its own covert federalist and protectionist agenda. As yet, however, the full implications of all this were unclear – even to me, distrustful as I always was of that un-British combination of high-flown rhetoric and pork-barrel politics which passed for European statesmanship."

"A whole class of people – an 'underclass' if you will – had been dragged back into the ranks of responsible society and asked to become not just dependants but citizens. The violent riots of 31 March in and around Trafalgar Square was their and the Left's response. And the eventual abandonment of the charge represented one of the greatest victories for these people ever conceded by a Conservative Government."

"The press was full of outraged criticism of the community charge from Conservative supporters. What hurt me was that the very people who had always looked to me for protection from exploitation by the socialist state were those who were suffering most. These were the people who were just above the level at which community charge benefit stopped but who were by no means well off and who had scrimped and saved to buy their homes."

"I had great regard for the Victorians for many reasons. ... I never felt uneasy about praising 'Victorian values' or – the phrase I originally used – ‘Victorian virtues’ ... [T]hey distinguished between the 'deserving' and the 'undeserving poor'. Both groups should be given help; but it must be help of very different kinds if public spending is not just going to reinforce the dependency culture. The problem with our welfare state was that...we had failed to remember that distinction and so we provided the same 'help' to those who had genuinely fallen into difficulties and needed some support till they could get out of them, as to those who had simply lost the will or habit of work and self-improvement. The purpose of help must not be to allow people to live a half-life, but to restore their self-discipline and through that their self-esteem."

"I never confused the leader page of the Guardian with vox populi."

"I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well."

"The colour of someone's skin should not determine his or her political rights."

"I often wished that...Christians themselves would take closer note of the Jewish emphasis on self-help and acceptance of personal responsibility. On top of all that, the political and economic construction of Israel against huge odds and bitter adversaries is one of the heroic sagas of our age. They really made 'the desert bloom'. I only wished that Israeli emphasis on the human rights of the Russian refuseniks was matched by proper appreciation of the plight of landless and stateless Palestinians."

"I have enormous admiration for the Jewish people, inside or outside Israel. There have always been Jewish members of my staff and indeed my Cabinet. In fact I just wanted a Cabinet of clever, energetic people – and frequently that turned out to be the same thing. My old constituency of Finchley has a large Jewish population. In the thirty-three years I represented it I never had a Jew come in poverty and desperation to one of my constituency surgeries. They had always been looked after by their own community."

"The star of that year's conference was undoubtedly the Swedish conservative leader—since Prime Minister—who delivered a speech of such startling Thatcherite soundness that in applauding I felt as if I was giving myself a standing ovation."

"When the Norman Fowlers of this world believe that they can afford to rebel, you know that things are bad."

"From 1972 until 1985 the conventional wisdom was that Britain could only be governed with the consent of the trade unions. No government could really resist, still less defeat, a major strike; in particular a strike by the miners' union. ... [M]any on the left and outside it continued to believe that the miners had the ultimate veto and would one day use it. That day had now come and gone. Our determination to resist a strike emboldened the ordinary trade unionist to defy the militants. What the strike's defeat established was that Britain could not be made ungovernable by the Fascist Left. Marxists wanted to defy the law of the land in order to defy the laws of economics. They failed, and in doing so demonstrated just how mutually dependent the free economy and a free society really are. It is a lesson no one should forget."

"I had by now come to share Nigel's high opinion of himself."

"Labour's own drift to the left and the extremism of the trade unions had disillusioned and fractured its traditional support. The SDP and the Liberals failed to grasp the significance of what was happening. They projected their appeal to the middle-class Left, especially those who worked in the public sector, probably, I suspect, because Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams instinctively sought out their own kind and allowed that instinct to overcome their judgement. In fact, the more numerous and dissatisfied Labour supporters were in the rising working and lower-middle class – the same group that in America Ronald Reagan was winning over and who were known as 'Reagan Democrats'. They were benefiting from the opportunities we had made available, especially the sale of council houses; more important, they shared our values, including a strong belief in family life and an intense patriotism. We now had an opportunity to bring them into the Conservative fold."

"Unlike some of my colleagues, I never ceased to believe that, other things being equal, the level of unemployment was related to the extent of trade union power. The unions had priced many of their members out of jobs by demanding excessive wages for insufficient output, so making British goods uncompetitive."

"But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was prime minister."

"The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain's self-confidence and for our standing in the world...We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact."

"It was at Strasbourg...that I overheard a foreign government official make a stray remark that pleased me as much as any I can remember: 'Britain is back,' he said."

"Chatham famously remarked: 'I know that I can save this country and that no one else can.' It would have been presumptuous of me to have compared myself to Chatham. But if I am honest, I must admit that my exhilaration came from a similar inner conviction."

"No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect. Far from reversing the slow relative decline of Britain vis-à-vis its main industrial competitors, it accelerated it. We fell further behind them, until by 1979 we were widely dismissed as 'the sick man of Europe'. ... To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches."

"I had applied for a job [at Imperial Chemical Industries] in 1948 and was called for a personal interview. However I failed to get selected. Many years later, I succeeded in finding out why I had been rejected. The remarks written by the selectors on my application were: "This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated!""

"I never hugged him, I bombed him."

"I might have preferred iron, but bronze will do. It won't rust. And, this time I hope, the head will stay on."

"Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds."

"On my way here I passed a local cinema and it turns out you were expecting me after all, for the billboards read: The Mummy Returns."

"In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world."

"We fly the British flag, not these awful things you are putting on tails."

"The fightback begins now!"

"I am not sure what is meant by those who say that the Party should return to something called "One Nation Conservatism". As far as I can tell by their views on European federalism, such people's creed would be better described as "No Nation Conservatism"."