Denis Healey Quotes (32 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Denis Healey Quotes

“Squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak”

Denis Healey

Speech in Lincoln (18 February 1974), quoted in The Times (19 February 1974), p. 4. Misreported as "tax the rich until the pips squeak". "The pips squeak" metaphor was originated by Sir Eric Campbell-Geddes and later used by David Lloyd-George.
1970s

“If we can keep our heads—and our nerve—the long-awaited economic miracle is in our grasp. Britain can achieve in the Seventies what Germany and France achieved in the Fifties and Sixties.”

Denis Healey

The Sunday Telegraph (4 July 1976).
1970s

“What almost halved the support for the Labour Party was the feeling that it has lost its traditional common sense and its humanity to a new breed of sectarian extremism.”

Denis Healey

On the 1983 general election (The News of the World, 19 June 1983).
1980s

“The alternative to getting help from the IMF would be economic policies so savage I think they would produce riots in the streets, an immediate fall in living standards and unemployment of three million.”

Denis Healey

On ITN's News at Ten (29 September 1976).
1970s

“I think the Services can be rightly very upset at the continuous series of defence reviews which the Government has been forced by economic circumstances—and maybe economic mistakes too—to carry out…”

Denis Healey

On BBC Television's Panorama programme (22 January, 1968).
1960s

“The US, whether we like it or not, has nuclear weapons. The US is a member of NATO. Possession by the US of nuclear weapons is obviously a deterrent.”

Denis Healey

The London Standard (30 September 1986).
1980s

Denis Healey Quotes about people

“No Government can produce an economic miracle. An economic miracle depends on people on the shop floor, in the board room, in the sales office, working a bit harder and more efficiently than they have worked in the past.”

Denis Healey

On BBC TV (15 December 1976).
1970s

“The reason we were defeated in so far as defence played a role is that people believe we were in favour of unilaterally disarming ourselves. It wasn't the confusion. It was the unilateralism that was the damaging thing.”

Denis Healey

Explaining Labour's defeat in the 1983 election in an interview in Marxism Today (April 1986) http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/86_04_24.pdf
1980s

“We are going through a period of uncertainty, but we are in a good position to strengthen ourselves and win back a majority. We have already got rid of much deadwood and Kinnock is winning back younger voters. He is politically intelligent, has character and courage; but he has never been a minister, lacks experience, and people know it. In troubled times, the electorate looks for a strong leader and Mrs Thatcher is seen as one.”

Denis Healey

Interview for La Stampa (5 April 1986), quoted in The Times (7 April 1986), p. 2
1980s

“The trouble about Europe is what I call the Olive Line, the line below which people grow olives. North of the Olive Line people pay their taxes and spend public money very cautiously. South of it they fail to pay their taxes at all, but spend a lot of public money.”

Denis Healey

Interview https://www.channel4.com/news/by/michael-crick/blogs/healey-case-for-leaving-europe-stronger-than-staying with Michael Crick (9 May 2013)
2010s

“It is far better that more people should be in work, even if that means accepting lower wages on average, than that those lucky enough to keep their jobs should scoop the pool while millions are living on the dole. That is what the social contract is all about.”

Denis Healey

1970s
Source: Speech to the East Leeds Labour Club (10 January 1975), quoted in The Times (11 January 1975), p. 1

Denis Healey Quotes

“I warn my hon. Friends…that once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.”

Denis Healey

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1969/mar/05/defence in the House of Commons (5 March 1969).
1960s

School , Housing

“So long as the Soviet Union has nuclear weapons there have to be nuclear weapons somewhere in NATO to deter them from using them.”

Denis Healey

The Tribune (28 March 1986).
1980s

“No country would suffer more than Britain from an international trade war, since we depend more on world trade than any of our competitors. That is why we cannot accept the proposal made in some quarters that we should seek to solve our problems through imposing import controls for a long period over a whole range of manufactured consumer goods.”

Denis Healey

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1975/dec/17/employment in the House of Commons (17 December 1975)
1970s

War , World , Problem , Suffering

“It has never been my nature, I regret to admit to the House, to turn the other cheek.”

Denis Healey

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/dec/18/the-economy in the House of Commons (18 December 1974)
1970s

Nature , Housing

“[Margaret Thatcher] wraps herself in the Union Jack and exploits the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors and airmen in the Falkland Islands for purely party advantage – and hopes to get away with it. It wasn't a very credible approach from the word 'go' because this Prime Minister, who glories in slaughter, who has taken advantage of the superb professionalism of our armed forces, is at this very moment lending the military dictatorship in Buenos Aires millions of pounds to buy weapons – including weapons made in Britain – to kill British servicemen. That is an act of stupefying hypocrisy.”

Denis Healey

Speech in Birmingham (1 June 1983), quoted in The Times (2 June 1983), p. 1. Healey withdrew the remark "glories in slaughter" the next day and claimed he should have said "conflict" rather than "slaughter" (The Times (3 June 1983), p. 1)
1980s

Hope

“By the end of next year, we really shall be on our way to that so-called economic miracle we need.”

Denis Healey

In an Ministerial broadcast on the Budget (6 April 1976).
1970s

Way

“Faced with the difficulties of unilateral reflation, some socialists are tempted to seek salvation through trade restrictions or competitive devaluation. But such beggar-my-neighbour policies, if pursued on the scale required…are more likely to lead to a trade and currency war than to insulate their sponsors from the recession in the outside world.”

Denis Healey

Speech to the twelfth congress of the Confederation of Socialist Parties of the EEC in Paris (12 November 1982), quoted in The Times (13 November 1982), p. 3
1980s

War , World

“No. Absolutely not. I think that the Russians are praying for a Labour victory…praying is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words. I think that they would much prefer a Labour government and that the idea that they would prefer a Tory government, I think is utter bunkum, and they [the Soviets] authorized me to say so.”

Denis Healey

Answering a suggestion that the Soviets would prefer a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher than a Labour government headed by Neil Kinnock at a press conference in Moscow after a meeting with Anatoly Dobrynin (11 May 1987), quoted in E. B. Geelhoed, Margaret Thatcher: In Victory and Downfall, 1987 and 1990 (Greenwood, 1992), pp. 120-1.
1980s

Idea , Thinking , Victory

“I start with the measures which the Government announced last Thursday, and which are the immediate occasion of today's debate, and to which the right hon. Gentleman finally came round - a trifle nervously, I thought - after ploughing through that tedious and tendentious farrago of moth-eaten cuttings presented to him by the Conservative Research Department. I must say that part of his speech was rather like being savaged by a dead sheep.”

Denis Healey

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1978/jun/14/economic-situation in the House of Commons (14 June 1978) on Sir Geoffrey Howe

Parting , Dead

“I am going to negotiate with the IMF on the basis of our existing policies, not changes in policies, and I need your support to do it. (Applause) But when I say "existing policies", I mean things we do not like as well as things we do like. It means sticking to the very painful cuts in public expenditure (shouts from the floor) on which the Government has already decided. It means sticking to a pay policy which enables us, as the TUC resolved a week or two ago, to continue the attack on inflation. (Shout of, "Resign".)”

Denis Healey

Speech at the Labour Party Conference (30 September 1976), quoted in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, p. 319. Healey had been forced to abandon plans to attend an international finance ministers' conference in order to speak to the conference because of a run on the pound.
1970s

Pain , Support , Change

“I would fight to change the policy before the General Election. If I failed then I wouldn't accept office in a Labour Government.”

Denis Healey

On unilateral nuclear disarmament. (The Guardian, 15 September 1981).
1980s

Change , Fight

“We will put Polaris into the arms talks with the Soviet Union and hope to phase it out in multilateral negotiations… if the Russians … fail to cut their nuclear forces accordingly it would be a new situation that we could consider at that time.”

Denis Healey

1980s

Hope , Time

“We shall increase income tax on the better off so that we can help the hundreds of thousands of families now tangled helplessly in the poverty trap by raising the tax threshold and introducing reduced rates of tax for those at the bottom of the ladder. I warn you, there are going to be howls of anguish from the rich. But before you cheer too loudly let me warn you that a lot of you will pay extra taxes too.”

Denis Healey

Speech to the Labour Party Conference at Blackpool (1 October 1973).
1970s

Family , Help

“NATO's nuclear strategy is an essential part of that balance [between East and West]. To threaten to upset it by refusing to let America base any of her nuclear weapons in Britain would make war more likely, not less likely.”

Denis Healey

The Guardian (14 August 1981).
1980s

War , Parting

“We are all agreed on a massive extension of public ownership…We are all agreed on establishing comprehensive planning control over the 100 or so largest companies in Britain. We are all agreed on the need for a national enterprise board to organise and extend public ownership in the profitable manufacturing industries.”

Denis Healey

Speech in York (2 June 1973), quoted in The Times (4 June 1973), p. 2.
1970s

“He must be out of his tiny Chinese mind.”

Denis Healey

Attacking Ian Mikardo, a left-wing critic of spending cuts, using a phrase of the comedienne Hermione Gingold (The Daily Telegraph, 24 February, 1976), quoted in Denis Healey The Time of My Life (Penguin, 1990), p. 444
1970s

“Keynesianism has failed.”

Denis Healey

Remark at a meeting in No. 10 Downing Street (2 May 1977), quoted in Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, Volume Two: With James Callaghan in No. 10 (2008), p. 182
1970s

“The owl of Minerva only flies abroad when the shades of night are gathering.”

Denis Healey

Source: 'The Owl and the Bulldog: Reflections on Conservatism and Foreign Policy', Twentieth Century, Volume 155 (1954), p. 107
Context: Speaking for Conservatism, Hegel was right. And nothing proves it better than the post-war crop of Tory intellectuals, sprouting like mushrooms in the damp cellars of Abbey House. Not until the stimuli which originally conditioned Conservative reflexes have finally disappeared can the intellectual emerge to provide a rationale for Conservative behaviour. So Conservative theory must always base itself on some form of historical restorationism. The moderate seeks the world of Joseph Chamberlain—or if he is daring, of Disraeli. The really advanced radical looks still further back, to Prince Rupert, or the Middle Ages, particularly if he is a Catholic.

Night

“The borrowing requirement was 'terrifying.'”

Denis Healey

Source: Remarks to Barbara Castle (9 April 1975), quoted in Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1974–76 (1980), p. 359
Context: He just had to cut back public expenditure. The Social Contract wasn't working. Inflation was getting out of control.

“We are spending 6 per cent more than we are earning... You can also bankrupt a nation by excessive wage demands... That is why I said that it is better to have a lower standard of life for all workers than for some of them to be unemployed.”

Denis Healey

1970s
Source: Remarks to the Liaison Committee with the Trades Union Congress at Congress House (20 January 1975), quoted in Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1974–76 (1980), pp. 284-285

Life

“We did not want middle class.”

Denis Healey

Source: On Tony Benn; remark to the Shadow Cabinet (31 July 1972), quoted in Tony Benn, Office Without Power: Diaries 1968–72 (1988), p. 441