Maurice Cowling: Conservation

Maurice Cowling was historian. Explore interesting quotes on conservation.

Maurice Cowling: 16 quotes0 likes

“To history, until yesterday, Halifax was the arch-appeaser. This, it is now recognised, was a mistake. His rôle, however, was complicated. In these pages he is not the man who stopped the rot, but the embodiment of Conservative wisdom who decided that Hitler must be obstructed because Labour could not otherwise be resisted.”

Maurice Cowling

The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy, 1933-1940 (University of Chicago, 1977), p. 9.

“If there is a class war—and there is—it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. … it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.”

Maurice Cowling

"The Present Position," Conservative Essays (Cassell, 1978), p. 1, p. 9.

“Between 1920 and 1924 the Conservative party made three longterm decisions. The first was to remove Lloyd George from office. The second was to take up the rôle of 'defender of the social order'. The third was to make Labour the chief party of opposition.”

Maurice Cowling

The Impact of Labour 1920-1924. The Beginning of Modern British Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 1.

“I'm an intellectual Thatcherite, just as I was an intellectual Powellite, and I think it important that the Conservative party should be in good hands and that it should win elections.”

Maurice Cowling

Interviewed in Naim Attallah, Singular Encounters (Quartet Books, 1990), p. 134.