Denis Healey: Governance

“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

People , Past , Dependency

“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

“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

Thinking