“Opinion has been right to fasten upon sovereignty as the central issue. Either British entry is a declaration of intent to surrender this country's sovereignty, stage by stage, in all that matters as a nation, and makes a nation, or else it is an empty gesture, disgraceful in its hollowness alike to those who proffer and to whose who accept it. The superior people laugh at those who talk about losing our Queen and our Monarchy. ... The Queen is the Queen in Parliament, as truly today as when her predecessor, Tudor Henry, observed that ‘we are nowhere so high in our estate royal as in this Our High Court of Parliament’. The question which the people of this country will have proposed to them is: will you, or will you not, continue to be governed by the Queen in Parliament? It is no less than that, and they have understood it.”

Source: Speech in Doncaster (19 June 1971), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (1973), p. 119

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Opinion has been right to fasten upon sovereignty as the central issue. Either British entry is a declaration of intent…" by Enoch Powell?

Enoch Powell155

British politician 1912–1998

Related quotes

“Fundamental to our constitution is the supremacy of the Queen in Parliament and that our laws should be enacted by Parliament, by its authority in regulations, or indeed by judges in declaring the common law. That is what I understand is meant by the supremacy and sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament. I hope to show you in the course of my observations that that sovereignty is being eroded and that we are coming under another sovereignty—that of Europe and of the Council of Ministers. That is the challenge we face today.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1986/jul/31/european-communities-amendment-bill-1#S5LV0479P0_19860731_HOL_228 in the House of Lords against the Single European Act (31 July 1986)

“If ever there was a hard-headed and not a soft-hearted Sovereign it was she; if ever there was a place where there was little of that romantic sentiment of going abroad to do right and justice to other people, I think it was in that Tudor breast of our 'Good Queen Bess,' as well call her. … When I see the accounts of what passed when the [Dutch] envoys came to Queen Elizabeth and asked for aid, how she is huckstering for money while they are begging for help to their religion,—I declare that, with all my principles of non-intervention, I am almost ashamed of old Queen Bess. And then there were Burleigh, Walsingham, and the rest, who were, if possible, harder and more difficult to deal with than their mistress. Why, they carried out in its unvarnished selfishness a national British policy; they had no other idea of a policy but a national British policy, and they carried it out with a degree of selfishness amounting to downright avarice.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Rochdale (23 November 1864), quoted in John Bright and J. E. Thorold Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Volume II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), pp. 484-5.
1860s

“I have a desire to be part of the defence of our sovereignty against the aggression we face every day from our 'friendly neighbour' and those here on the Rock who do not understand the simple words "No Surrender". No surrender of our right to open government, no surrendering of our duties to care for our people, no surrender to the concept that Gibraltarians should find dignified jobs, no surrender of our hopes and dreams for Gibraltar and certainly no surrender of our sovereignty on land or sea.”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

Address after being elected leader of the GSLP in April 2011
2011

“I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Letter to Doña Juana de Torres (October 2015)

“He…made observations with regard to the Queen, which, in my opinion, no meeting of people in this country, and certainly no meeting of Reformers, ought to have listened to with approbation. (Cheers.) Let it be remembered that there has been no occasion on which any Ministry has proposed an improved representation of the people when the Queen has not given her cordial, unhesitating, and, I believe, hearty assent. (Cheers.) … But Mr. Ayrton referred further to a supposed absorption of the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband to the exclusion of sympathy for and with the people. (Hear, hear.) I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns. (Hear, hear.) But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. (Loud cheers.) I think there has been by many persons a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. (Cheers.) And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she the Queen of a great realm or be she the wife of one of your labouring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Loud and prolonged cheers.
Speech in St James's Hall, Piccadilly, London (4 December 1866), quoted in The Times (5 December 1866), p. 7
1860s

“I have just accepted the invitation of Her Majesty The Queen to form a Government. This will be a new Government with new priorities and I have been privileged to have been granted the great opportunity to serve my country and at all times I will be strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action in the service of what matters to the British people, meeting the concerns and aspirations of our whole country.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Statement at Downing Street http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page12155.asp, 27 June 2007. <br class="br">Statement outside 10 Downing Street immediately after becoming Prime Minister. <br class="br">Prime Minister

“…to-morrow the proclamation of her sovereignty will command the loyalty of her native land and of all other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire. I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian Era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the Anthem, GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (7 February 1952) upon the accession of Elizabeth II, quoted in Winston Churchill, Stemming the Tide: Speeches 1951 and 1952 (London: Cassell & Co, 1953), p. 240
Post-war years (1945–1955)

“We, her people of Gibraltar, are perhaps the only ones in her reign who have chosen to remain British on two occasions… We’ve chosen her twice… So we can proudly say that she is our Queen by invitation and not imposition.”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

About Queen Elizabeth II in a speech to crowds in Casemates Square on Gibraltar National Day 2013.
[12 September 2015, Gibraltar: Elizabeth “our Queen by invitation and not by imposition; twice voted”, http://en.mercopress.com/2015/09/12/gibraltar-elizabeth-our-queen-by-invitation-and-not-by-imposition-twice-voted, MercoPress, 20 October 2015]
2015

“To make the whole Korean peninsula nuclear-free was the behest of the great President Kim Il-sung, and it is the consistent stand of the government of our Republic. The nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula arose as a result of the United States constantly threatening the sovereignty and security of our people. Sovereignty is the lifeline of a country and nation. We have possessed nuclear deterrent to protect our sovereignty from the blatant nuclear threat of the United States and its increasingly hostile policy.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

Response to questions from Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency (13 October 2011) http://naenara.com.kp/en/news/news_view.php?22+1477

“Oh -- who's the Queen?"

"Her, of course. The White Queen. You're just like Alice, you know. Down the rabbit hole with the Mad Hatter.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Midnight Alley

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Enoch Powell155

Related quotes

Related topics