Roy Jenkins: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high…That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit…However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction…I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988)
1980s

Personality , Strong , People , Thinking

“A rolling back of the frontiers of State surveillance is necessary. … I have come to the conclusion that this side of MI5 has become more trouble than it is worth. It falls over its own feet too often. It arouses more suspicion and complaint than is justified by the results its achieves. … On grounds of utility I would now close down the political side of its activities.”

Roy Jenkins

Letter to The Times (12 March 1985), p. 15
1980s

“The two main parties feared the SDP more than they feared each other. Their narrow dogmas had alienated more and more people and would never achieve a widening appeal across classes, regions and occupations. They had replied by trying to pretend that the SDP was all things to all men and women. It was not true. … It had no place for class warriors or for those who wanted to fight outdated ideological battles; no place for little Englanders; for those selfishly concerned with their own problems and not with those of their neighbours and the nation as a whole. The Labour Party went increasingly into its chauvinist bunker and the Conservative Party showed little or no concern for the problems of the developing and poor nations.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech in Kensington (14 February 1982), quoted in The Times (15 February 1982), p. 4
1980s

People , Problem , Fight , Fear

“I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken? … There was once a book, more famous for its title than for its contents, called the Strange Death of Liberal England.”

Roy Jenkins

That death caught people rather unawares. Do not discount the possibility that in a few years time someone may be able to write at least equally convincingly of the strange and rapid revival of liberal social democratic Britain.
Speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery (9 June 1980), quoted in The Times (10 June 1980), p. 2
1980s

Country , Bad luck , Health , Books

“Do we really believe that we have been more effectively and coherently governed over the past two decades than have the Germans, with their very sensible system of proportional representation? The avoidance of incompatible coalitions? Do we really believe that the last Labour Government was not a coalition, in fact if not in name, and a pretty incompatible one at that? I served in it for half its life, and you could not convince me of anything else.”

Roy Jenkins

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture ('Home Thoughts from Abroad') (22 November 1979), quoted in The Times (23 November 1979), p. 5
1970s

Past , Life

“I respect your right to put them to me. You will no doubt respect my right to tell you that I do not think all the points in sum amount to a basis for a rational penal policy.”

Roy Jenkins

Source: Speech to the Police Federation conference in Eastbourne (18 May 1976) regarding the Federation's campaign on law and order, quoted in The Times (19 May 1976), p. 5

Thinking

“If Reg Prentice is cut down it is not just the local party that is undermining its own foundations by ignoring the beliefs and feelings of ordinary people, the whole legitimate Labour Party, left as well as right, is crippled if extremists have their way. … If tolerance is shattered formidable consequences will follow. Labour MPs will either have to become creatures of cowardice, concealing their views, trimming their sails, accepting orders, stilling their consciences, or they will all have to be men far far to the left of those whose votes they seek. Either would make a mockery of parliamentary democracy. The first would reduce still further, and rightly reduce, respect for the House of Commons. It would become an assembly of men with craven spirits and crooked tongues. The second would, quite simply, divorce the Labour Party from the people.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech in Newham, London (11 September 1975), quoted in The Times (12 September 1975), p. 1
1970s

Democracy , Housing , People , Way

“Those who had most insistently demanded the innovation of the referendum, because they thought it would produce exactly the opposite result, were temporarily stunned by the sudden revelation that they were populists without the support of the people. Now they have recovered from their concussion and seek to reopen the issue. … Even if they had a coherent alternative policy, which they do not, it would wreck itself upon the rock of inconstancy. … No one any longer expects us to be a rich country. But with an almost touching faith they still hope that we will be consistent and reliable. It is exactly this store of remaining national credit which the false democrats who first demanded and now deny the referendum seek to undermine.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech in Glasgow (1 July 1977), quoted in The Times (2 July 1977), p. 1
1970s

Faith , Country , Support , People

“I find it increasingly difficult to take Mr Benn seriously as an economics minister.”

Roy Jenkins

Britain in Europe press conference (27 May 1975), quoted in The Times (28 May 1975), p. 3
1970s

“Not to have gone into Europe would, in my view, have been a misfortune. But to come out would be on an altogether greater scale of self-inflicted injury. It would be a catastrophe. … I care very much about the influence of Britain in the world, and also about our capacity to control our own destiny. To me, that is much more important than the legalistic definition of sovereignty.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech at the St Ermin's Hotel, Westminster (26 March 1975), quoted in The Times (27 March 1975), p. 8
1970s

World , Self-confidence

“Let there be no doubt that our present rate of inflation is the main cause of our economic difficulties. There never has been a more mistaken piece of economic analysis than the view that we should accept inflation to avoid unemployment. Inflation today, so far from being an alternative to unemployment, is its main cause. If our rate of cost increase is allowed to continue close to twice that of the average for the developed world it will increasingly price us out of world markets. Employers…will have to restrict their activities and still more their labour force in response to mounting and uncontainable wage and salary bills.”

Roy Jenkins

Hugh Anderson Memorial lecture at the Cambridge Union (28 February 1975), quoted in The Times (1 March 1975), p. 2
1970s

World

“Inflation in Britain is at an unacceptable level. It is now mostly home-induced and wage-induced. It is moving well out of line with that of the rest of the world. If it goes on doing so it will ruin us as a nation, both economically and politically. It is of a different order from any of our other difficulties. It is, quite simply, our biggest menace since Hitler.”

Roy Jenkins

Hugh Anderson Memorial lecture at the Cambridge Union (28 February 1975), quoted in The Times (1 March 1975), p. 2
1970s

World , Home

“We must restore some stability and be prepared, if necessary, to make some sacrifices, both of dogma and materialism, to achieve it. There is no point in pretending that we are not facing an economic crisis without precedent since the growth of post-war prosperity.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech to the Pembrokeshire Constituency Labour Party in Haverfordwest (26 July 1974), quoted in The Times (27 July 1974), p. 3
1970s

War , Making love

“I am in favour of sensible, well argued extensions of public ownership. … But I am also in favour of a healthy, vigorous and profitable private sector. We do and shall depend upon it to provide a great part of our jobs, our exports and our production. And if we allow a mood of sullen uncertainty to build up in that sector we shall lose more than we shall gain by the sensible and necessary extension of the public sector.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech to the Pembrokeshire Constituency Labour Party in Haverfordwest (26 July 1974), quoted in The Times (27 July 1974), p. 3
1970s

Parting , Mood , Dependency

“If we are to get through the immense problems of the next few years we need to heal and not to deepen the wounds of the nation. That can, I believe, be done upon the basis of party government. … But it cannot be done upon the basis of ignoring middle opinion and telling everyone who does not agree with you to go to hell.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech to the Pembrokeshire Constituency Labour Party in Haverfordwest (26 July 1974), quoted in The Times (27 July 1974), p. 3
1970s

Problem , Hell

“It is not much good talking about fundamental and irreversible changes in our society and being content with a 38 per cent Labour voting intention. … Democracy means that you need a substantially stronger moral position than this to govern effectively at all, let alone effecting a peaceful social revolution. The programme we put forward must be capable of being carried out in what may well be difficult economic circumstances.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech to the Labour Party Conference debate on nationalisation (2 October 1973), quoted in The Times (3 October 1973), p. 5
1970s

Democracy , Peace , Change

“We have to persuade men and women who are themselves reasonably well off that they have a duty to forgo some of the advantages they would otherwise enjoy for the sake of others who are much poorer. We have to persuade car workers in my constituency that they have an obligation to low-paid workers in the public sector. We have to persuade the British people as a whole that they have an obligation to Africans and Asians whom they have never seen. Our only hope is to appeal to the latent idealism of all men and women of good will, irrespective of their income brackets, irrespective of their class origins. In place of the politics of envy, we must put the politics of compassion; in place of the politics of cupidity, the politics of justice; in place of the politics of opportunism, the politics of principle. Only so can we hope to succeed. Only so will success be worth having.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech in Worsley, Lancashire (11 March 1972), quoted in The Times (13 March 1972), p. 4
1970s

Justice , Success , People , Hope

“The next Labour Government can be content with nothing less than the elimination of poverty as a social problem. … The Labour movement was created to fight against a wealthy minority on behalf of a poor majority. Now it has a more complex and demanding task. It has to enlist the majority in a struggle on behalf of a poor minority, who on grounds of age or health or family circumstances or disgracefully low pay are unable to help themselves. No one has a right to expect a fair deal for himself unless he is prepared to work for one for others too.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech in Worsley, Lancashire (11 March 1972), quoted in The Times (13 March 1972), p. 4
1970s

Family , Help , Health , Problem

“In these circumstances it is essential we should be able to speak with sanity and authority in world monetary affairs. You cannot do this from a position of perpetual deficit.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (30 September 1968), quoted in The Times (1 October 1968), p. 6
1960s

World

“It is not some malevolent quirk of international bankers which makes the balance of payments surplus necessary. It is the hard facts of life. Quite a few of the resolutions mention the need to get rid of the shackles of international finance. These shackles can be exaggerated. If you want less to do with bankers and fewer International Monetary Fund visits the answer is straightforward: Help us to get out of debt. It is no good urging independence and denying policies to that end.”

Roy Jenkins

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (30 September 1968), quoted in The Times (1 October 1968), p. 6
1960s

Life , Making love , Help