British Peers

"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."

"I shall remember him above all for his courtesy and his kindness. He hated being disagreeable. He liked to be nice to people, which is not always the case with those who had his thrust to power. He also had very good nerve in a crisis. And as he experienced quite a number of crises, that was a big asset. In some ways he was easier to work with when things were going wrong. He was cool and unrecriminatory... He served his country well."

"This odious doctrine of apartheid at 11-plus. ... We reject it because as a nation we cannot afford artificially to segregate three-quarters of our children, and virtually cut them off from the normal chance of higher education."

"I do not believe that it is too generous to describe Harold Wilson as one of the most brilliant men of his generation... For my generation at least, as observers through television and from a distance, his ever-present pipe became a symbol of tranquillity in times of some turmoil... He was a man of many achievements and, perhaps above all, a very human man who served his country well and honourably and who has earned, by that, a secure place in its history."

"In all our plans for the future, we are re-defining and we are re-stating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution. But that revolution cannot become a reality unless we are prepared to make far-reaching changes in economic and social attitudes which permeate our whole system of society. The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry."

"Harold's record as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party has been underestimated. As Prime Minister, during a period of unremitting economic difficulty, he maintained full employment but was unable to restrain inflation. Unwilling to break trades union power by allowing mass unemployment, as Mrs Thatcher was later to do, he tried the alternative policy of income and prices restraint... It failed, but it was a failure rooted in a commitment to social justice... In another way, Harold's achievement as Prime Minister has been underestimated. He was without prejudice. He did not judge people on their colour, race, gender or class. Members of his government were drawn from many backgrounds."

"They [the Conservatives] cannot think beyond outmoded techniques of monetary regulation, followed by panic stop-go-stop measures, when bold planning for industrial expansion is called for. They cannot raise their eyes beyond a system of society where making money by whatever means is lauded as the highest service, while earning money by contributing to production and exports, or teaching or nursing is a mug's game. An Opportunity State for all our people? The Conservatives glory in one where the rewards go to land racketeers and property spivs, while the man who ventures his skill in scientific or technological advance, or in the chancy risks of export markets, is left out in the cold."

"The Smethwick Conservatives can have the satisfaction of having topped the poll, and of having sent here as their Member one who, until a further General Election restores him to oblivion, will serve his term here as a Parliamentary leper"

"We are more interested in the monthly trade returns than in Debrett, more preoccupied with what is said by the industrial correspondents and economic editors than what is said by William Hickey; more concerned with modernizing the machinery of government and the action that will need to follow the report of the Estimates Committee on the Civil Service than in altering the layout of Burke's Landed Gentry."

"[Tory domestic policies were directed to four aims:] To force up food prices; to force up prices of other essentials; to cut down the welfare services to means-tested levels; to force up rents in a free-for-all in housing. ... In borough after borough, city after city, we have learnt what Tory housing policy means. In many areas—not in all—cuts in the housing programme for basic needs; in all areas, higher rents."

"A second devaluation would be regarded all over the world as an acknowledgement of defeat, a recognition that we were not on a springboard, but a slide. I myself have always deprecated—perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly—in crisis after crisis, appeals to the Dunkirk spirit as an answer to our problem, because what is required in our economic situation is not a brief period of inspired improvisation, work and sacrifice, such as we had under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), but a very long, hard, prolonged period of reorganisation and rededication. It is the long haul, not the inspired spurt, that we need."

"We cannot accept that this is a little local matter within the control of South Africa's internal affairs. Oppression, apartheid, and racialism—those are crimes against humanity as a whole."

"I have stated these Commonwealth problems in terms of hard economic facts, but I should be the last to disagree with those hon. Members on both sides of the House who put the problem in yesterday's debate in terms more of sentiment, kinship and bonds of a less materialistic character than those that I have been describing. … I submit to the House that we cannot consistently with the honour of this country take any action now that would betray friends such as those. … if there has to be a choice [between the Commonwealth and Europe] we are not entitled to sell our friends and kinsmen down the river for a problematical and marginal advantage in selling washing machines in Dusseldorf."

"The nation yesterday was awaiting a clear, statesmanlike call from the Chancellor of the efforts and, if necessary, the sacrifices that are needed to lift the country out of the perpetual series of crises and near crises that have dogged us ever since the war. That was what we were led to believe would happen. What did we get? We had a shambling, fumbling, largely irrelevant and, at one point, degrading speech. The Chancellor told us that the Budget was prepared under the piercing eye of Mr. Gladstone. There was one passage that was quite obviously written under a portrait of Horatio Bottomley."

"Traders and financiers all over the world had been listening to the Chancellor. For months he had said that if he could not stop the wage claims, the country was "facing disaster". Those were his own words. Rightly or wrongly these people believed him. For them, 5th September—the day that the Trades Union Congress unanimously rejected the policy of wage restraint—marked the end of an era. And all these financiers, all the little gnomes in Zurich and the other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing, started to make their dispositions in regard to sterling."

"We all know perfectly well why the Government are standing by their policy of the independent deterrent. The reason is simply prestige, keeping up with our nuclear neighbours. Frankly, we cannot do it. The Americans spend on research alone £2,500 million a year, which is half as much again as our total defence budget, and it is rising rapidly. We can only be a nuclear Power if we can afford the means to produce twenty or more alternative weapons as an assurance against the many which are certain to fail. Out of our resources, we were able to afford only one intercontinental ballistic missile, and that was Blue Streak. The failure of Blue Streak was the moment of truth for this country so far as the independent deterrent was concerned. To cling to the policy after that was...like the action of a rather pathetic sort of man who cannot afford a television and who cannot bring himself to admit the fact, so he puts up the aerial instead."

"This party is a moral crusade or it is nothing."

"Chris Mullin: What do you regard as your biggest error? Harold Wilson: That I underestimated the power of speculation to knock government policy aside."

"The period of 15 years from the last time we were in Scarborough, in 1960, to the middle of the 1970s, will embrace a period of technical change, particularly in industrial methods, greater than the whole of the industrial revolution of the last 250 years."

"David Dimbleby: You couldn't - you couldn't set our minds at rest on the vexed question of what the Sunday Times did actually pay you for the book? Harold Wilson: No, I don't think it's a matter of interest to the BBC or to anybody else. Dimbleby: But why .. Wilson: If you're interested in these things, you'd better find out how people buy yachts. Do you ask that question? Did you ask him how he was able to pay for a yacht? Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed ... Wilson: Have you asked him that question? Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed him. Wilson: Well, has the BBC ever asked that question? Dimbleby: I don't know ... Wilson: Well, what's it got to do with you, then? Dimbleby: I imagine they have .. Wilson: Why you ask these question, I mean why, if people can afford to buy £25,000 yachts, do the BBC not regard that as a matter for public interest? Why do you insult me with these questions here? Dimbleby: It's only that it's been a matter of .. Wilson: All I'm saying, all I'm saying .. Dimbleby: … public speculation, and I was giving you an opportunity if you wanted to, to say something about it. Wilson: It was not a matter of speculation, it was just repeating press gossip. You will not put this question to Mr. Heath. When you have got an answer to him, come and put the question to me. And this last question and answer are not to be recorded. Is this question being recorded? Dimbleby: Well it is, because we're running film. Wilson: Well, will you cut it out or not? All right, we stop now. No, I'm sorry, I'm really not having this. I'm really not having this. The press may take this view, that they wouldn't put this question to Heath but they put it to me; if the BBC put this question to me, without putting it to Heath, the interview is off, and the whole programme is off. I think it's a ridiculous question to put. Yes, and I mean it cut off, I don't want to read in the Times Diary or miscellany that I asked for it to be cut out. [pause] Dimbleby: All right, are we still running? Can I ask you this, then, which I mean, I .. let me put this question, I mean if you find this question offensive then .. Wilson: Coming to ask if your curiosity can be satisfied, I think it's disgraceful. Never had such a question in an interview in my life before. Dimbleby: I .. [gasps] Joe Haines (Wilson's Press Secretary): Well, let's stop now, and we can talk about it, shall we? Dimbleby: No, let's .. well, I mean, we'll keep going, I think, don't you? Wilson: No, I think we'll have a new piece of film in and start all over again. But if this film is used, or this is leaked, then there's going to be a hell of a row. And this must be .. Dimbleby: Well, I certainly wouldn't leak it .. Wilson: You may not leak it but these things do leak. I've never been to Lime Grove without it leaking."

"I believe that the situation has now gone so far that it is impossible to conceive of an effective long-term solution in which the agenda at least does not include consideration of, and which is not in some way directed to finding a means of achieving, the aspirations envisaged half a century ago, of progress towards a united Ireland...A substantial term of years will be required before any concept of unification could become a reality, but the dream must be there. If men of moderation have nothing to hope for, men of violence will have something to shoot for."

"Hailsham believed deeply in the need to restore the cohesion of society and in the importance of protecting individual freedom. He saw the Common Law, administered by an independent judiciary, as one of the two great bulwarks supporting such protection and strongly resented the attacks made both in and out of Parliament on judges. In 1984, when those attacks were at their most vehement, his ideas never had more direct relevance. His very presence and courage in public life gave some assurance that constitutional democracy would never be overthrown."

"I am beginning to feel that I haven't the strength and that perhaps another leader cd do what I did after Eden left. But it cannot be done by a pedestrian politician. It needs a man with vision and moral strength – Hailsham, not Maudling. Yet the "back-benchers" (poor fools) do not seem to have any idea, except "a young man". Admirable as Maudling is, I doubt if he cd revive our fortunes as well as Hailsham. (I sent H. to Moscow on purpose, to test his powers of negotiation etc. He did very well.)"

"A very able man, Lord Hailsham. I understand that he is going to be promoted as a result of what he is doing here."

"I feel Hogg (with all his absurdities and posturings and emotions) represents what Stanley, and John Loder, and Boothby, and Noel Skelton and I tried to represent from 1924 onwards. Those who clamour for Butler and Home are really not so much shocked by Hogg's oddities as by his honesty. He belongs both to this strange modern age of space and science and to the great past – of classical learning and Christian life. This is what they instinctively dislike."

"That he is one of the most brilliant people of his age in England there can be no possible doubt; in my judgment that he is more certainly ear-marked for success than any man I know."

"I am concerned least we should be accused of being ideologues. This country is practical-minded, and it is a charge we should not find difficult to rebut. We must explain our policies, not by reference to ideological concepts but by reference to practical necessities."

"I had watched Quintin under pressure during the Suez crisis where he had shown admirable calm at the Admiralty in testing circumstances; and while I had some misgivings about his famous "judgement" I felt that he could take on the leadership and the job of Prime Minister, and make a success of it."

"He always got the big questions right."

"I believe inflation in that sense and on that scale corrupts a country in its moral as well as in its economic life, undermines law and order and threatens our free institutions."

"There is the break-up gang, the "Break Up Britain" gang, of the "Scot-Nats." and the "Welsh-Nats.", apparently wishing to strip the assets of the United Kingdom as if it were a kind of shell company and deprive us all of our nation, which is Britain, and perhaps to go back to the days of Flodden or Owen Glendower. There is class divided notoriously against class... There is union against management and there is even union against union: interest against interest—town against country; and even individual against individual. Until we can recapture the spirit of service, perhaps the spirit of sacrifice, certainly the spirit of patriotism, this is to my mind the longer-term and perhaps the more dangerous crisis of the two."

"What is urgently needed is some limitation on this nominally elected dictatorship. It is here that I join hands with the conventional Bill of Rights enthusiasts, of whom...I am not one."

"[The Labour Party's leadership is] dominated by rather rootless intellectuals or obviously bourgeois eccentrics like Mr Michael Foot and Mr Wedgwood Benn."

"It is not a point of which I am much ashamed. Having grown up in the 1930s, I have a hatred of unemployment. The reason why we over-reacted, if over-reacted we did, was because we hoped that, if it could be shown that we were doing our best to deal with avoidable unemployment, the unions would voluntarily restrain their demands and prevent suffering in the community. The truth is that Mr Powell is so intent for personal reasons on ruining Mr Heath that no attack, however violent, however irrational, or however evilly intentioned, is beyond him in his present frame of mind."

"Until 25 years ago this country, by which I mean the United Kingdom and in particular Great Britain, has I suppose by common consent been one of the most successful human communities ever seen upon the face of this planet. It is notorious but worth reminding ourselves in the present situation that we almost alone, I think absolutely alone, among the peoples of Europe have been immune from foreign invasion, have been practically secure from civil war, have defended the liberties of Europe against one tyranny after another; that we have excelled in peace no less than war; that we pioneered modern industry, and that we led the advance of modern science; that we largely founded modern commerce, and even, to compare what is perhaps ridiculous with the sublime, invented almost every known human recreation and sport, with the possible exceptions of polo and chess. I do not think that these things happened by chance. I believe that they happened because the peoples of these islands had learnt to live together in harmony and to treat the interest of each as the interest of the whole."

"We live under an elective dictatorship, absolute in theory if hitherto thought tolerable in practice. How far it is still tolerable is the question I want to raise."

"No democracy has been defeated by a dictatorship from inside or from out because it has been itself too disciplined. It has been destroyed in the end by force or fraud. It is not strength but weakness which kills democracy. It has been overthrown or it has been taken over. It has not been eroded, or undermined: it is not decisiveness but dither which undermines the prestige and its will to resist. It is not inaction but inability to act that destroys the authority of democratic institutions. It is no use masking anarchy or indecisiveness under the bland names of liberalism and permissiveness."

"There is a sense in which all law is nothing more nor less than a gigantic confidence trick."

"Experience shows that at this rate of inflation, democracy cannot survive... A middle-class backlash is inevitable. A populist movement. In the end people will not put up with the law being broken and factions of the workers getting away with it with impunity. People will take control into their own hands, or a strong government will use the public forces to seize control. People will get hurt. Quite likely there will be a lot of violence one way or another. But in the end there is a limit to what middle-class people will tolerate."

"If you can tell me there are no adulterers on the front bench of the Labour Party you can talk to me about Profumo."

"If the British public falls for this, I think it would be stark, staring bonkers."

"Moderation is the hallmark of our country and the burden of our Conservative faith. ... [I]n an age of violence the Conservative watchwords must be law, justice, moderation and humanity."

"It is an excellent thing that Mr Powell has joined the Ulster Unionists. They have found a new leader to desert, and he a fresh cause to betray."

"Nothing has shown so clearly the evils of elective dictatorship as the past few weeks, which had culminated in the Lib–Lab pact."

"The first stage in the progress of a society from barbarism to civilization has been the creation of a system, always more or less imperfect, in which anarchy and lawlessness have given place to law and order."

"We, who have seen the collapse of the authority of the French Republic precisely because it lacked the mystique and prestige of the British monarchy, can ill afford to deny the advantage which attends the possession of a traditional, as distinct from a revolutionary, constitution. The one may be more logical; the other appears to keep out the weather more successfully. Conservatives therefore believe, in the main, in the acceptance of established authority, wherever it is found, without enquiring too closely into its documents of title."

"Obviously, here there is nothing of logic; there can be no claim to legitimacy if one goes back far enough. But, historically speaking, the development of large areas of law and order depending upon the authority of some established organ of government has been the means whereby civilization has grown up. It was the same in the ancient as in the modern world, the same in legend as in history. We do not hear of Menes uniting the Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt by any superiority in title or wisdom, and we read how Deioces, the founder of ancient Media, resorted to guile. The title of Rome to the greatest system of ordered government the Western World has known was by arms alone. Legitimacy is only one of the matters which constitute authority, prescription another. Neither is indefeasible, but both in the absence of a stronger claim are to be respected. Constitutional authority remains the first article of a Conservative creed."

"The great glory of Britain has not consisted only in her internal policies and constitution. Again and again her blood and treasure has been shed against absolutism on the continent of Europe. Her hatred of absolutism has been impartial as between right and left. Neither Louis XIV, Napoleon, Robespierre, nor Hitler could count Britain amongst their friends. We were not put off by specious and bogus crusades against Bolsheviks or aristocrats. A human being is a human being, and minorities, classes, and small nations have their rights. These are the rights which Britain’s intervention has vindicated again and again. But for Britain, Europe would have reverted to spiritual and political dictatorship long ere this."

"The nation, not the so-called class struggle, is therefore the base of Conservative political thinking. Harmony, not struggle, is its ruling political objective. The health, security, and prosperity of Britain and of all its people is its first guiding political principle. Conservatives place patriotism at the top of the list of civic virtues."

"There are few more popular or successful institutions than the British monarchy. There are few more important practical guarantees of the happiness or security of this country or the unity of the Commonwealth than its continuance."