Roy Jenkins

"...be prepared first to look at the evidence and to recognize how little the widespread use of prison reduces our crime or deals effectively with many of the individuals concerned. [The rule of law does not mean] our own pet prejudices. It means, in a democratic society, the law as passed by an elected Parliament and applied by impartial courts. You cannot have a rule of law while dismissing with disparagement Parliament, the courts and those who practise in them. That is not the rule of law. It is exactly what the pressure groups you complain about seek to achieve by demonstration."

"I respect your right to put them to me. You will no doubt respect my right to tell you that I do not think all the points in sum amount to a basis for a rational penal policy."

"Our determination to ensure good community relations is unswerving. There is no room for racial hatred in our crowded island. We cannot afford not to make a success of a multi-racial society. A moving speech was made the other day in the other place by Lord Pitt, himself a distinguished citizen of London of West Indian origin. In that speech, he looked forward hopefully to a harmonious multiracial Britain setting an example to the world. He spoke on a high level of moral seriousness, but reminded us too that our self-interest is also served by racial harmony and tolerance. I agree with that view, and would share Lord Pitt's hope, but I do not see it as an easy or even a certain outcome, at any rate in this generation. Its accomplishment will depend on the minority community accepting that this country will not take, in Lord Pitt's own words, a "large and unending stream" of dependants, and on the majority community accepting that tolerance is one of the greatest and most traditional of British virtues and that if that tradition is broken we shall all of us suffer deeply, both minority and majority, and suffer for many years to come."

"My wish is to build an effective united Europe. Now I've never sought absolutely to define exactly what I mean by this, but I've got an absolute clear sense of direction. I've never been frightened about the pace being too fast, I have been frightened about the pace being too slow. I do not think it's terribly useful to lay down blueprints as to whether one will be federal or confederal in the year 2000 and beyond. I want to move towards a more effectively organized Europe politically and economically and as far as I am concerned I want to go faster, not slower."

"I think that British politics, as at present constituted do make it difficult for people who are essentially men of the centre—I am a man of the left centre, but I've never pretended to be terribly far away from the centre of British politics. ... The gladiatorial nature of the House of Commons, with two sides lined up against each other, puts a premium on disagreement rather than upon agreement. This is inclined on both sides to give a greater strength to the wings rather than to the centre. ... there are appalling economic problems facing this country at the present time...I don't think it's terribly useful, terribly relevant or terribly convincing just to engage in an endless game of tu quoque. You've got to think of something better than 'It's your fault',—'No, it's not, it's your fault'. There's a sterility in this which is a danger to the country."

"There has always been a left, an extreme left, in the Labour Party. ... there is now more of an attempt, patchy, but an attempt by extremist organizations to infiltrate and work through the Labour Party at the present time—the phrase is 'entryism'. It is something which is certainly there and which one certainly has to beware of."

"If one looks at the evolution of Europe, you can say we've got a customs union, we've got the common agricultural policy, we've got certain other forms of integration and cohesion, but many of the hopes of the founding fathers are still very far from being realized."

"Those who had most insistently demanded the innovation of the referendum, because they thought it would produce exactly the opposite result, were temporarily stunned by the sudden revelation that they were populists without the support of the people. Now they have recovered from their concussion and seek to reopen the issue. ... Even if they had a coherent alternative policy, which they do not, it would wreck itself upon the rock of inconstancy. ... No one any longer expects us to be a rich country. But with an almost touching faith they still hope that we will be consistent and reliable. It is exactly this store of remaining national credit which the false democrats who first demanded and now deny the referendum seek to undermine."

"We must relaunch with a newly defined relevance to the circumstances of the late 1970s the drive towards economic and monetary union. We must find ways of avoiding recourse to the danger of psuedo-solutions of national protectionism to threats to sensitive sectors of the economy."

"[The effect of the Suez Crisis on the French was quite different.] We turned across the Atlantic. They turned across the Rhine, and Europe was built without us. There is room for argument about the causes of what followed. There is no doubt about what happened. Over the first 13 years of the [European] Community's life national income per head increased by 72 per cent in the Six and by 35 per cent in Britain. The result was that from being almost the richest country in Western Europe we became one of the poorest. France for the first time since the industrial revolution surpassed us in economic strength. The German economy achieved nearly twice our weight."

"Do we really believe that we have been more effectively and coherently governed over the past two decades than have the Germans, with their very sensible system of proportional representation? The avoidance of incompatible coalitions? Do we really believe that the last Labour Government was not a coalition, in fact if not in name, and a pretty incompatible one at that? I served in it for half its life, and you could not convince me of anything else."

"You also make sure that the state knows its place, not only in relation to the economy, but in relation to the citizen. You are in favour of the right of dissent and the liberty of private conduct. You are against unnecessary centralization and bureaucracy. You want to devolve decision-making wherever you sensibly can. You want parents in the school system, patients in the health service, residents in the neighbourhood, customers in both nationalized and private industry, to have as much say as possible. You want the nation to be self-confident and outward-looking, rather than insular, xenophobic and suspicious. You want the class system to fade without being replaced either by an aggressive and intolerant proletarianism or by the dominance of the brash and selfish values of a 'get rich quick' society. ... These are some of the objectives which I believe could be assisted by a strengthening of the radical centre."

"During this conversation she vouchsafed her only awareness of Dimbleby. The Belgian Prime Minister was justifying his hesitancy about cruise missiles by citing his coalition difficulties. Mrs Thatcher turned to me with a mixture of belligerence, good humour and total self-satisfaction and announced to a slightly bewildered table – none of them elected by the British system – "And that is all your great schemes would amount to.""

"[A]lmost without a struggle, we have just witnessed a major lurch to the left in policy-making. The supreme authority of the Labour Party committed itself nine days ago to...a near neutralist and unilateralist position, which would make meaningless our continued membership of NATO...a commitment to practical non-cooperation with the European Community, leading in all likelihood to a firm proposal for complete withdrawal...a massive further extension of the public sector, despite the manifold unsolved problems which beset our nationalised industries, and mounting evidence from all over the world that full-scale state ownership is more successful in producing tyranny than in producing goods. Capitalism has its crisis today, but so too does estate socialism. There is now no economic philosopher's stone. But more successful nations are those which embrace a mixed economy and follow it with some consistency of purpose, not forever changing the frontiers. What remains of the private sector is to have enterprise squeezed out of it by being subjected to a straightjacket far tighter than in any other democratic country in the world. This is not by any stretch of the imagination a social democratic programme. Nor do I believe that it is the way to protect Britain's security, help the peace of the world, revitalise our economy, or represent the views of the great majority of moderate left voters."

"I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken? ... There was once a book, more famous for its title than for its contents, called the Strange Death of Liberal England. That death caught people rather unawares. Do not discount the possibility that in a few years time someone may be able to write at least equally convincingly of the strange and rapid revival of liberal social democratic Britain."

"The two main parties feared the SDP more than they feared each other. Their narrow dogmas had alienated more and more people and would never achieve a widening appeal across classes, regions and occupations. They had replied by trying to pretend that the SDP was all things to all men and women. It was not true. ... It had no place for class warriors or for those who wanted to fight outdated ideological battles; no place for little Englanders; for those selfishly concerned with their own problems and not with those of their neighbours and the nation as a whole. The Labour Party went increasingly into its chauvinist bunker and the Conservative Party showed little or no concern for the problems of the developing and poor nations."

"Many of the early nationalisation measures were right. They have remained part of the social fabric. I favour measures of that type."

"Oh, Socialism! I haven't used that word for years. If you mean nationalizing the means of production, distribution and exchange... That leads to disaster. I mean, just look at Poland!"

"We had our liberal hour, when we passed the Sexual Offences Act which stopped all homosexuals being criminals. I'm not ashamed of that. We mustn't slip back into illiberal attitudes. You see, there are two strands in the Labour Party. The libertarian strand and the authoritarian puritan strand. By and large, the libertarians have come with us and the others have stayed behind."

"The whole spirit and outlook of the [SDP] party, its leaders and its members must be profoundly opposed to Thatcherism. It could not go along with the fatalism of the Government's acceptance of massive unemployment."

"A rolling back of the frontiers of State surveillance is necessary. ... I have come to the conclusion that this side of MI5 has become more trouble than it is worth. It falls over its own feet too often. It arouses more suspicion and complaint than is justified by the results its achieves. ... On grounds of utility I would now close down the political side of its activities."

"First, there is really no sign at all of any significant reduction in unemployment without a major change in policy...Unemployment has probably levelled out but at a totally unacceptable figure. Secondly, contrary to what the Secretary of State said, the post-oil surplus prospect—not merely the post-oil prospect, because the oil will take a long time to go, but the surplus, the big balance of payments surplus, which is beginning to decline quite quickly—still looks devastating...our balance of payments is now overwhelmingly dependent on this highly temporary and massive oil surplus. Our manufacturing industry is shrunken and what remains is uncompetitive...We have a manufacturing trade deficit of approximately £11 billion, all of which has built up in the past three to four years. This is containable by oil and by nothing else. Invisibles can take care of about £4 billion or £5 billion but they cannot do the whole job. As soon as oil goes into a neutral position we are in deep trouble. Should it go into a negative position, the situation would be catastrophic...To sell off a chunk of capital assets and to use the proceeds for capital investment in the rest of the public sector might just be acceptable. However, that is not what is proposed, and what is proposed cannot be justified on any reputable theory of public finance; and when it is accompanied by a Minister using the oil—which might itself be regarded as a capital asset; certainly it is not renewable—almost entirely for current purposes, it amounts to improvident finance on a scale that makes the Prime Minister's old friend General Galtieri almost Gladstonian."

"Several fallacies have been accepted too freely recently about the position of our manufacturing industry in the balance of our economy. The biggest fallacy is the view that salvation lies in services, and only in services. The corollary to that is that it is inevitable and desirable that over the past two decades there has been a reduction of nearly 3 million in employment in manufacturing industry. That is a massive reduction and represents nearly 40 per cent. of the total in manufacturing industry over that time. I do not believe that that should have been the case. That has been precipitate and dangerous and it has not been associated with an increase in productivity which has led to our maintaining our relative manufacturing position...I have come increasingly to the view that the Government stand back too much from industry. In my experience, they do so more than any other Government in the European Community. They do so more than the United States Government. We have to remember the vast US defence involvement in industry. They certainly stand back more than do the Japanese Government. To some extent, the motive is the feeling that we have had an uncompetitive and rather complacent industry which must be exposed to the full blasts of competition, and if that means contracts, even Government contracts, going overseas, we should shrug our shoulders and say that the wind should be stimulating. That process has been carried much further in Britain than in any other comparable rival country. I am resolutely opposed to protectionism. I am sure that it diminishes the employment and wealth-creating capacity of the world as a whole. That would be the result of plunging back into that policy. I also believe, however, that this totally arm's-length approach in the relationship between Government and industry is something that no other comparable Government contemplate to the extent that we do. It is not producing good results for British industry and it is a recipe for a further decline in Britain's position in the Western world. The Government should examine it carefully and reverse it in several important respects."

"The combined efforts of Government policy since 1979 have been not to improve but substantially to worsen our competitive position. We have gone from a huge manufacturing surplus of £5.5 billion in 1980 to a 1986 third quarter deficit of £8 billion a year...Even with oil production continuing for some time, the current account has gone from a £3 billion surplus to a deficit predicted by the Chancellor of £1.5 billion...Sadly, the Government's great contribution, having refused to stimulate the economy by more respectable means, is a roaring consumer boom, which there is not the slightest chance of their moderating before an election. A roaring consumer boom does not, to any significant extent, mean more employment. In our competitive position, worsening under the Government, it means overwhelmingly higher imports, a still worse balance of payments position and a classic path to perdition. To have produced, after seven and a half years, the combination of total monetary muddle, a worsened competitive position, a widespread doubt in other countries as to how we are to pay our way in the future, a desperately vulnerable currency and the prospect of an unending plateau of the highest unemployment in a major country in the industrialised world is a unique achievement over which the Chancellor is an appropriate deputy acting presiding officer."

"We have Mr. Wright's allegation that a surveillance operation was mounted against Lord Wilson of Rievaulx when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s...Many criticisms can be made of Lord Wilson's stewardship—I have made some in the past and I have no doubt that I may make some more in future—but the view that he, with his too persistent record of maintaining Britain's imperial commitments across the world, with his over-loyal lieutenancy to Lyndon Johnson, with his fervent royalism, and with his light ideological luggage, was a likely candidate to be a Russian or Communist agent is one that can be entertained only by someone with a mind diseased by partisanship or unhinged by living for too long in an Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world in which falsehood becomes truth, fact becomes fiction and fantasy becomes reality. The result of the allegation has been substantially to fortify the view that I expressed in a letter to The Times 18 months ago, which is that MI5 should now be pulled totally out of its political surveillance role."

"It is the duty of the state to lean firmly but unvindictively in favour of greater equality."

"They [the Government] argue that if the rich are made rich enough, some wealth will spill over to make the poor less poor. There is no sign of that happening. On the contrary, the gap has widened. The number of those below the poverty line and with little hope of rising above it has grown inexorably. Connected divides become deeper and wider—that between the employed and the unemployed, that between the north and south, and that between those who share prosperity and those to whom it looks like a closed fortress. The Budget...does nothing to counteract that. ... If I were the Chancellor, I would be deeply apprehensive for the future cohesion of our society under his policies."

"I therefore think that our negotiations have achieved a satisfactory prospectus for an electable left-of-centre alternative to Thatcherism. And that was what the SDP was always intended to be: a party which was free alike of proletarian sullenness or of bourgeois triumphalism and which challenged both the old arrogance that the establishment always knows best (particularly if it can use secrecy to prevent anyone judging whether it really does) and the new heresy that the mystical entity of "the market" can run everything. A controlled economy is not much good at producing consumer goods. But "the market", in terms of protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future, cannot run a whelk-stall. And if asked which is under greater threat in Britain today, the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilized public services, I unhesitatingly answer the latter."

"Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high...That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit...However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction...I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation."

"We have been building up, not dissipating, overseas assets. The question is whether, while so doing, we have been neglecting our investment at home and particularly that in the public services. There is no doubt, in my mind at any rate, about the ability of a low taxation market-oriented economy to produce consumer goods, even if an awful lot of them are imported, far better than any planned economy that ever was or probably ever can be invented. However, I am not convinced that such a society and economy, particularly if it is not infused with the civic optimism which was in many ways the true epitome of Victorian values, is equally good at protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future. And if we are asked which is under greater threat in Britain today—the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilised public services—it would be difficult not to answer that it was the latter."

"In retrospect we might have been more cautious about allowing the creation in the 1950s of substantial Muslim communities here, although when one observes the, in some ways, greater problems which France and Germany have in this respect, it is an illusion to believe that in the integrated world of today any major country can remain exclusively indigenous."

"My broad position remains firmly libertarian, sceptical of official cover-ups and uncompromisingly internationalist, believing sovereignty to be an almost total illusion in the modern world, although both expecting and welcoming the continuance of strong differences in national traditions and behaviour. I distrust the deification of the enterprise culture. I think there are more limitations to the wisdom of the market than were dreamt of in Mrs Thatcher's philosophy. I believe that levels of taxation on the prosperous, having been too high for many years (including my own period at the Treasury), are now too low for the provision of decent public services. And I think the privatisation of near monopolies is about as irrelevant as (and sometimes worse than) were the Labour Party's proposals for further nationalisation in the 1970s and early 1980s."

"...my natural prejudices, such as they are, are much more green than orange. I am a poor unionist, believing intuitively that even Paisley and Haughey are better at dealing with each other than the English are with either."

"...the basic fact of Tony Blair's election does make it, in my view, the most exciting Labour choice since the election of Hugh Gaitskell in December 1955. ... The most fundamental presentation issue for the Labour Party is one of openness or inwardness. Nothing does the party more harm than when it turns in on itself in a mood of proletarian sullenness. Tony Blair epitomises the reverse of this. ... I hope he will use this opportunity in favour of sticking to a constructive line on Europe, in favour of sensible constitutional innovation...and in favour of friendly relations with the Liberal Democrats. ... I hope Mr Blair will not lead the Labour Party further in a free-market direction. Good work has been done in freeing it from nationalisation and other policies. But the market cannot solve everything and it would be a pity to embrace the stale dogmas of Thatcherism just when their limitations are becoming obvious."

"I have three great interests left in politics, a single currency, electoral reform, and the union of the Liberals with Labour. And all three are languishing."

"My central belief is that there are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully in all the main activities of the Union and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from inside. The other is to recognise that Britain's history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member. If so, it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly and, if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal."

"My view is that the Prime Minister [Tony Blair], far from lacking conviction, has almost too much, particularly when dealing with the world beyond Britain. He is a little too Manichaean for my perhaps now jaded taste, seeing matters in stark terms of good and evil, black and white, contending with each other, and with a consequent belief that if evil is cast down good will inevitably follow. I am more inclined to see the world and the regimes within it in varying shades of grey. The experience of the past year, not least in Afghanistan, has given more support to that view than to the more Utopian one that a quick "change of regime" can make us all live happily ever after."

"I am in favour of courage—who is ever not in the abstract?—but not of treating it as a substitute for wisdom, as I fear we are currently in danger of doing."

"He is a superb debater, skilful in his deployment of argument, sensitive to the mood of the House, sometimes commanding in his use of language. However harshly his Budgets may hit the pocket, at least they should fall pleasantly on the ear... [H]e has today a more committed personal following than any other senior Labour politician... [T]he impression being built up of him as an intelligent, liberal, idealistic figure has won him some support even on the left, in addition to his firm adherents among the younger men of the centre and right."

"As a parliamentary performer...Mr Jenkins is a class apart from the rest of either front bench... He not only looks superior: he is superior."

"Roy Jenkins has risen fully and magnificently to the occasion. Yesterday's Budget was really everything that was economically needed. It should give devaluation a virtually certain guarantee of success."

"He may not be a Socialist but at least he is a radical. Jim is neither."

"Roy's drawl always lengthens when he is angry, which heightens the effect of contempt."

"The trouble with Roy is that he is so damned civilized. If only he could remain civilized and have an injection of red blood as well."

"Rousseau's educational theories had persuaded teachers] to dispense with the structured systems of learning which have been so successful in the past. [The result is] the belief, taught by Mr Roy Jenkins, that a permissive is a civilised society... A facile rhetoric of total liberty and of costless, superficial universal protest has really been a cover for irresponsibility. Our loud talk about the community overlies the fact that we have no community. We talk about neighbourhoods and all too often we have no neighbours. We go on about the home when we only have dwelling places containing television sets. It is the absence of a frame of rules and community, place and belonging, responsibility and neighbourliness that makes it possible for people to be more lonely than in any previous stage in our history. Vast factories, huge schools, sprawling estates, sky-scraping apartment blocks; all these work against our community and our common involvement one with another."

"The "Council of Social Democracy" seems an awfully dull name. I was going to suggest that the Jenkins–Williams group should be called the League of Agweeable Fellows Incommoded by Tiresome Extweemism – or Lafite for short... Mr Jenkins himself is possibly the most over-rated figure in British politics, a competent administrator but an uninspiring speaker and an irritating writer. He gave his political testament in the Dimbleby Lecture the November before last: "You want the class system to fade without being replaced either by an aggressive and intolerant proletarianism or by the dominance of the brash and selfish values of a 'get rich quick' society." In other words, as Ferdinand Mount glossed at the time, you want to keep the yobs away from the best claret."

"A socialite rather than a Socialist."

"I wholly agree that Mr. Jenkins' saying that a permissive society is a civilised society is something that most of us would totally reject. Society must have rules if it is to continue to be civilised. Those rules must be observed and upheld by Government and by all leaders throughout the community."

"[T]his much-loved, gracious figure who is to the liberal classes what the Queen Mother is to the rest of us."

"[B]efore the Argentine action he was the subject of all our attention. He had won Hillhead. He had taken his seat. He has put a notably incomprehensible, but no doubt distinguished, maiden question to the Prime Minister about micro-chips. All things seemed possible for him. But within days Dr David Owen had seized the SDP controls and was roaring away on the subject of submarines, frigates, and vertical take-off. Dr Owen is at home with such matters. Mr Jenkins is not. Like Switzerland, he is prosperous, comfortable, civilized and almost entirely landlocked. His only previous contact with the high seas has been in various good fish restaurants."