Edward Heath: Trending quotes (page 2)

“We are now faced with massive unemployment, on a scale certainly at the level of the 1930s and to become greater. The improvement in housing, education and the standard of living has stopped. To all of us, that is a matter of the greatest possible regret…One of our intentions after the 1930s was to ensure that the Conservative Party was never again considered to be the party of unemployment. I ask my hon. Friends to think seriously about that in our present circumstances.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1980) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1980/nov/27/industry-and-the-economy
Post-Prime Ministerial

Education , Thinking , Housing

“I think Churchill would be appalled at the Thatcher government.”

Edward Heath

1989.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

Thinking

“It is the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism, but one should not suggest that the whole of British industry consists of practices of this kind.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (15 May 1973) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/may/15/cbi-and-tuc-talks
Prime Minister

“I am sure that entering the exchange rate mechanism was absolutely right and is still right. I regret that we did not do so five years earlier, but that is history. Economic monetary union must come as soon as possible, and with it the single currency. Industry wants the single currency, and we must pay attention to the requests and demands of industry.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (26 June 1991) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1991/jun/26/European-Community
Post-Prime Ministerial

History

“The time has come to speak out. Britain is now locked in a vicious spiralling interest rates…The net result of completing the vicious circle is that prices have increased, the rate of inflation has gone up, the money supply has increased, unemployment has gone up, the rate of bankruptcies has increased, the industrial base has been further eroded, the Government's borrowing requirement has increased and as a result there is more pressure to raise interest rates yet again, to be followed inevitably by the same vicious circle. It is this that must be broken.”

Edward Heath

Speech to the Federation of Conservative Students in Manchester (6 October 1981), quoted in The Times (7 October 1981), p. 6.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Money , Time

“It is bad because it is a negation of democracy … Worst of all is the imposition by parliamentary diktat of a change of responsible party in London government. There cannot be any justification for that. It immediately lays the Conservative Party open to the charge of the greatest gerrymandering in the last 150 years of British history.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (11 April 1984) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/apr/11/local-government-interim-provisions-bill opposing the 'paving Bill' preparing for abolition of the Greater London Council, 1984.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Democracy , History , Change

“He is not mad in the least. He's a very astute person, a clever person.”

Edward Heath

On Saddam Hussein, undated.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

Personality , Madness

“In excluding me from the shadow cabinet, Margaret Thatcher has chosen what I believe to be the only wholly honest solution and one which I accept and welcome.”

Edward Heath

February 1975.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

“Whatever the lady does is wrong. I do not know of a single right decision taken by her.”

Edward Heath

1989.[citation needed]
Post-Prime Ministerial

Decision

“You'll lose.”

Edward Heath

His full response supposedly made to Margaret Thatcher when she informed him she would be standing against him for the Conservative leadership in 1975. Attributed to him in his Daily Telegraph obituary http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1494246/Sir-Edward-Heath.html (18 July 2005), although disputed by Heath's autobiography.
Disputed

“One lonely voice still shouting labour!”

Edward Heath

During the 1970 election campaign.
Leader of the Opposition

“This would, at a stroke, reduce the rise in prices, increase production and reduce unemployment.”

Edward Heath

Statement (16 June 1970), quoted in The Times (17 June 1970), p. 4. This would be quoted back at Heath repeatedly during his premiership.
Leader of the Opposition

“We will have to embark on a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total, that it will go far beyond the programme for a parliament.”

Edward Heath

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1970), quoted in John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p. 311.
Prime Minister

Change

“No one can deny that today the major cause of the inflation from which we are suffering is the excessive wage demands…It is the responsibility of an employer, direct or indirect…if they go their own way and accede to irresponsible wage demands which damage their own firms and create a loss of jobs for those who work in them, then the Government are certainly not going to step in and rescue them from the consequences of their own actions.”

Edward Heath

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1970), quoted in John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p. 311.
Prime Minister

Way , Suffering , Loss

“This is the new imperialism, and I am against the new imperialism. It is not our job to go throwing our forces around the world and saying 'This is an evil man and so on.”

Edward Heath

Remarks on the Gulf War on ITV, On the Record (3 February 1991), quoted in The Times (4 February 1991), p. 5.
Post-Prime Ministerial

World , Evil

“Rejoice! Rejoice!”

Edward Heath

On hearing the news of Margaret Thatcher's resignation (22 November 1990), quoted in John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p. 787. When asked later if it was true that he had issued such a joyful declaration on his rival's political demise, he said no. He hadn't said rejoice twice, he had said it three times.
Post-Prime Ministerial

“I am sometimes accused of being oversensitive about unemployment. I do not believe that that is possible, certainly not for anyone who lived through the 1930s and saw the political consequences of high unemployment throughout Western Europe and what happened in 1939.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (30 January 1978) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1978/jan/30/employment
Post-Prime Ministerial

“He [Mick McGahey] has made it quite plain over the weekend—as has another miners' leader—that the object of what they are doing is not a wage negotiation…Its purpose is…to get rid of the elected government of the day. Now that is entirely a political approach and, he has said quite openly, he wishes to do it in order to get a left-wing government and obviously he expects a left-wing government to toe the line as far as he is concerned.”

Edward Heath

Interview with Robin Day on BBC Panorama (28 January 1974), quoted in The Times (29 January 1974), p. 1.
Prime Minister

“Monetarism is dead and the alien doctrines of Friedman and Hayek remain only to be buried.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (15 March 1982) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/mar/15/budget-resolutions-and-economic-situation
Post-Prime Ministerial

Dead

“To return to the question of strategy…The Falkland Islands are unlikely to cause a major explosion.”

Edward Heath

Speech in the House of Commons (7 July 1981) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1981/jul/07/defence-programme
Post-Prime Ministerial

Question