The Margaret Thatcher Book of Quotations E-Book

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 272

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Margaret Thatcher enthrals whenever she speaks. Her political career has spanned five decades and her influence on world politics is undeniable. From followers she inspires devotion; from detractors she induces unprecedented venom - but they listen all the same. Margaret Thatcher is the most quoted British political leader since Winston Churchill and in this unique collection Iain Dale and Grant Tucker have picked out her most memorable remarks. Never far from emitting a scathing rebuke she possesses a facility for the spoken word rivalled by few others. Some quotes are funny, many are inspirational, most are thoughtful - but they are all unforgettable. Alongside Margaret Thatcher's own words, the book contains many quotes from her political allies and opponents, as well as from foreign leaders who were often on the end of a good handbagging. On her resignation some said we would never see her like again. So far they have been proved right. With a talent for the perfect response, Maggie's whiplash tongue has ensured that her magnetism endures.

Leseprobe

THE MARGARET THATCHER BOOK OF QUOTATIONS

EDITED BY IAIN DALE AND GRANT TUCKER

CONTENTS

Title Page

Foreword

Early Years

On Thatcherism

On Personality and Politics

On Appearance and Lifestyle

On the Sexes

On Denis and the Family

On Socialism

On the World Stage

On the Falklands

On Ireland

On Her Style of Government

On the Economy

On Europe

On Conservatives

On Her Political Opponents

On Foreign Leaders

Wit, Wisdom and Regrets

The Denouement: Treachery With a Smile On Its Face

The Denouement: Resignation

The Denouement: I’m Enjoying This!

Tributes

Life After Downing Street

According to Conservatives

According to Her Opponents

According to Foreign Leaders

According to the Rest

Yes, Prime Minister

Sticks and Stones

Appendix:

Maggie’s Ministers

Career Chronology

Afterword

Select Reading

Copyright

FOREWORD

It was a cold evening in February. The boy was only twelve years old, yet he knew that something historic had just happened. He tiptoed up the stairs to the bedroom, where his eighty-year-old grandmother lay in bed, suffering from flu. Having gauged that she was indeed awake, he approached the bed.

The woman who lay there was a formidable personality in her own right. She dominated her family in a matriarchal style, reminiscent of the woman who that day had won the leadership of the Conservative Party.

‘She’s won,’ he said. Silence. ‘No, really, she’s won,’ he protested. Slowly, a tear ran down her face. ‘It’s not possible,’ she murmured. ‘It’s just not possible.’

That boy was me. Even at such a young age I was interested in politics. I wasn’t a Conservative. Only six months earlier, I remember walking into my parents’ bedroom with my own thoughts on who should win the general election. I read it to my parents, who quite obviously had a good night’s sleep higher on their priority list. ‘All the Conservatives ever did was take us into Europe,’ I exclaimed. ‘The Liberals have no chance of winning,’ I said, with a remarkable degree of accuracy. ‘So, give Labour a chance,’ I advised. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ said my father. ‘Go back to bed.’

My early teenage years were spent supporting David Steel’s Liberals. My parents had both voted Liberal in 1974, more as a protest against Edward Heath than anything, but my mother said she would not be able to vote for them again after Jeremy Thorpe had disgraced himself.

Like most of my school friends and teachers I found it easy to poke fun at Mrs Thatcher. It was certainly not fashionable to be a Conservative in the mid-1970s. But one day, in October 1978, I heard her speech to the Tory Party Conference. I remember thinking at the end of it that I agreed with virtually everything she said. I got hold of a few policy documents and at the age of sixteen I joined the local Conservative Party.

My first tentative footstep into the political arena was to set up a Conservative organisation in 1982 at the very left-wing University of East Anglia. Only a few months later followed my first encounter with Margaret Thatcher when she invited the chairmen of the various university Conservative Associations to a reception at No. 10.

For a country boy like me, it was unbelievable to have been invited and it was something I had been looking forward to for months. Just to climb those stairs with the portraits of all past Prime Ministers on the wall was worth the trip on its own. And there at the top of the stairs was the Prime Minister. She had obviously perfected the art of welcoming people to receptions and as she shook you by the hand and wished you a good evening, she moved you on into the room without you even knowing she was doing it. Most of the Cabinet were there – I remember discussing with Cecil Parkinson the number of free running shoes he had been sent after a recent profile had announced to the world that he was a keen runner. He offered me a pair but it turned out his feet were much smaller than mine! We were constantly plied with wine and I made a mental note to stop at two glasses. But after the second glass was emptied I felt rather self-conscious without a glass in my hand so grabbed another. Just as the Prime Minister walked by I took a sip. All I remember is my stomach heaving and me thinking that I was about to throw up at the Prime Minister’s feet, thus ending a glorious political career which had hardly got off the ground. Luckily I managed to control my stomach and all was well. It turned out that it was whisky in my glass, rather than white wine.

Later in the evening, as I was talking to my local MP, Alan Haselhurst, the division bell sounded. Although there were at least forty MPs there, none made a move to leave to go and vote over the road in the House of Commons. Mrs Thatcher started to look rather irritated and was obviously none too impressed. In the end she walked to the middle of the room, took off one of her shoes and banged it on the floor. There was instant silence. The Prime Minister then spoke. ‘Would all Conservative MPs kindly leave the building immediately,’ she instructed. ‘And the rest of us will stay and enjoy ourselves!’ Naturally we all laughed uproariously, enjoying the sight of the MPs trooping out of the room in a somewhat sheepish manner.

After I graduated I went to work at the House of Commons as a researcher for a Norfolk Member of Parliament. He was not a particularly well-known MP and never courted publicity. He had a marginal seat and devoted himself to his constituency rather than join the rent-a-quote mob. It served him well as he held his seat for the next two elections. If ever there was an MP less likely to be involved in sleaze it was him. But one day, a careless error by me left him open to charges of dirty dealing. We ran a businessman’s club in the constituency, called The Westminster Circle. It served two purposes – first, to keep the MP in touch with local businesses, and second, to raise a little more money for the very poor constituency association. For £100 a year business people joined and were given a dinner in the House of Commons, usually addressed by a Cabinet minister, and another dinner in the constituency, addressed by a more junior minister. These clubs were common in all parties up and down the country. But in a publicity leaflet designed to attract new members I used the phrase ‘with direct access to Government minister’. By this I had meant they would be able to meet and speak to a Government minister at the dinner. In those pre ‘cash for questions’ days we were all rather innocent. But it proved to be my undoing – and very nearly my employer’s.

Early one Tuesday afternoon he found out that at that day’s Prime Minister’s Question Time, the Liberal leader, David Steel, would raise this subject with the Prime Minister. He immediately went to see her in her office behind the Speaker’s Chair. He must have been quaking in his boots but he later told me she had been brilliant. She sat him down, offered him a coffee and heard him out. She did not disguise her dislike for Steel and thought it was typical of him to operate in this manner. She told him she would let Steel have both barrels, and of course she did! He returned to the office after PM’s Question Time and related the events of the day to me. I had been completely oblivious, which was just as well as I would no doubt have been having a premonition of what a P45 looked like.

A few months later I was having lunch with a couple of Tory MPs in the Members’ Cafeteria. We had just finished our lunch when in walked Mrs T. and her entourage. She grabbed a tray and chose a light lunch of Welsh rarebit. Unfortunately, as we had finished, I did not have cause to hang around too much longer so left the room, cursing that we had decided to have an early lunch. A few minutes later I realised I had left some papers and magazines on the table in the cafeteria and returned to retrieve them. As luck would have it, the Thatcher group had sat themselves at the table we had been sitting at and Mrs T. had her elbow plonked on my papers. I decided to summon up the courage and interrupt them to ask for my papers. Just as I had started I looked down at the pile of papers and to my horror saw that my copy of the new issue of Private Eye was on the top of them and with a front cover of a particularly nasty photo of Denis Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher cottoned on to what I wanted, removed her elbow, and gazed down at the offending magazine. My heart stopped. ‘Oh, Private Eye, Denis loves it,’ she gushed. To my eternal shame, I just picked it up, along with the rest of my papers, made my excuses and left. What a wimp.

In 1994 I took an American friend, Daniel Forrester, to the T. E. Utley Young Journalist of the Year awards at the Reform Club. Lady Thatcher had been invited to present the awards. She treated us to a half-hour impromptu speech on political issues of the moment, which seemed to go by in about five minutes – quite an achievement as her entire audience had to remain standing throughout. After she had finished, Daniel whispered to me: ‘I have to meet her, what should I do?’ Knowing her penchant for strapping, six feet tall, dark-haired American men I encouraged him to go and introduce himself. He suddenly got cold feet so eventually I dragged him over to where she was talking to several of the award winners. In typically American style he launched into a sycophantic introduction which immediately attracted her attention. ‘Mrs Thatcher,’ he began. I kicked him. ‘Er, Lady Thatcher,’ he hurriedly corrected himself, ‘May I say how much our country misses your leadership…’ and he continued in that vein for a few seconds. While he was speaking, the diminutive figure of the Iron Lady (for she is much smaller in height than most people imagine) stared up at him, her eyes never leaving his. When he had finally finished having his say, Lady Thatcher hardly paused or breathed. ‘Your President, President Clinton.’ She paused, heightening the drama for my American friend. ‘He is a great communicator.’ Up came the forefinger, almost prodding Daniel’s chest. Then in a particularly contemptuous tone, came the pièce de résistance: ‘The trouble is, he has absolutely nothing to communicate.’ With that she was away. It was almost a flounce. Daniel eventually came down from whichever cloud he had been on – probably nine – and said, ‘I’ll remember that for the rest of my life’ – and, as a well-known critic of Bill Clinton, has been dining out on it ever since.

Another encounter came at a retirement party for ITN’s much-missed political editor Michael Brunson. My friend Alan Duncan, the Tory MP for Rutland, started a conversation with her and she suddenly asked where Denis had disappeared off to as they had to leave for dinner. Being of diminutive stature, and me being over six feet tall, she asked me to scan the room. Both of them looked at me expectantly. To my horror I spied Denis on the other side of the room talking to Michael Heseltine. I summoned up all the courage at my disposal and explained where he was. Lady Thatcher’s eyes became even bluer than normal and she exclaimed: ‘Denis and I are having dinner with Cap Weinberger tonight. I think he’s rather more important than THAT man, don’t you?! If Denis isn’t over here within one minute I shall go over and stare at them.’ Luckily for Michael Heseltine, she didn’t have to.

Early in 2005 I invited Lady Thatcher to come to a fundraising party to raise money for my campaign as Conservative candidate for North Norfolk. To my delight she accepted and on a cold March evening turned up on time to work a room of fifty friends and political acquaintances. And boy did she work! She was particularly pleased to meet the teenagers present, including one with a particularly eye-catching piece of metal face jewellery. My task for the evening was to guide Lady T. around the room so she could meet everyone. It was a thankless task. The Iron Lady decided where she was going and no amount of me tugging at her elbow was going to persuade her otherwise!

And then, in November 2005 I launched my book, Margaret Thatcher: A Tribute in Words & Pictures, at a function in the City of London, kindly hosted by the Corporation of London. Lady Thatcher agreed to attend and made a point of speaking to everyone in the room while she was there. Especially poignant for me was the sight of her having a protracted chat with my two nieces, Isabella and Ophelia Hunter, who were then aged ten and six. It was a very touching moment as they posed for pictures. It brought back a memory from 1988, when my cousin Nicola’s daughter Emma – then an infant – asked her mother: ‘Mummy, can a man be Prime Minister?’ She soon found out that the answer was no.

The last time I spoke to Lady Thatcher was in January 2009 when I went to the Carlton Club for a drinks party hosted by Liam Fox. I was delighted to see Lady Thatcher arrive and looking absolutely fantastic. For a woman of eighty-three and supposedly in frail health, she looked absolutely stunning.

I had a couple of minutes talking to her and told her it was twenty-six years to the day that I first met her at a reception for Conservative students at 10 Downing Street. ‘I think I remember that,’ she said. ‘It was so nice to see so many young people in the building. That didn’t happen very often.’ We talked a little about newspapers and she said: ‘I never read them. I had Bernard to do it for me.’ Everyone needs a Bernard…

As I left the Carlton Club, a thought struck me. If Lady T. were in her heyday and had to take over as Prime Minister now, what would she do? If I had asked her, I know exactly what her reply would have been. ‘Restore sound money, dear,’ she would have said. And you know what? She’d have been dead right.

The lady inspired and maintained my interest in politics. I think that can be said for many of my generation. She inspired admiration and hate in equal quantities. Rarely has a British politician ever been so loved and reviled at the same time. Few have been satirised to the degree she was.

But she had her failings too, something even her greatest admirers will readily admit. She was not a particularly good judge of character and made some appalling ministerial appointments, which in the end contributed greatly to her downfall. She was not a good listener, something many a world leader will testify to. But having said that, she loved a good argument. It is said that John Major first came to her notice when he stood up to her and argued his case.

Her achievements outweigh any of her failings. She restored this country’s faith in itself, rescued our industry from the shackles of trade union domination and cured the economy of inflation. She fought for freedom and challenged dictators. She played a pivotal role in bringing about the end of Communism, standing firm by the side of President Reagan. She was the first to see that Mikhail Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader. For all this she will be remembered as a dominant force in the final quarter of the twentieth century. Was she one of our great Prime Ministers, joining the ranks of Lloyd George, Churchill, Gladstone, Disraeli and Attlee? History will be the judge.

This book is meant to give the reader both an insight into the character of Margaret Thatcher and her political views, and an historical record of the Thatcher years in her own words and the words of those who were there with her. No collection of quotes can ever be all-encompassing, and this one certainly does not pretend to be. What it does, is show how her personality developed from childhood into the powerful, self-confident politician who achieved the highest office in the land. It includes quotes from her opponents as well as her allies. As the editor, I make no secret of my admiration for Margaret Thatcher and her achievements, but this book is not a hagiography of quotations. It is, instead, an accessible record of the Thatcher years of power.

I would like to thank friends and colleagues who have given frank and helpful advice during the preparation of this book and been of great support to me. In addition, I would like to thank the staff of Westminster Reference Library for their kindness and help.

I am grateful to Sir Bernard Ingham for allowing me to reproduce the Yes, Prime Minister sketch. Parliamentary copyright material from Hansard is reproduced with the permission of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office on behalf of Parliament.

I have listed many of the sources for this book in a bibliography at the end as they are too numerous to mention here. Where possible I have provided the original source for the individual quotes. I have also added a contextual explanation where I thought it necessary. Any errors are mine alone. And Grant Tucker’s, of course!

Finally, I would like to thank Lady Thatcher herself – it can never be more true to say that this book would not have been possible without her.

Iain Dale

Norfolk, July 2012

EARLY YEARS

I wasn’t lucky – I deserved it.

Receiving a prize for poetry, aged nine

♦

I owe a great deal to the church for everything in which I believe. I am very glad that I was brought up strictly… I was a very serious child… There was not a lot of fun and sparkle in my life.

Daily Telegraph, June 1980

♦

I was brought up by a Victorian grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self-reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don’t hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.

LBC Radio, April 1983

♦

She was a perfectly good second-class chemist. None of us ever thought that she would go very far. One could always rely on her to produce a sensible, well-read essay and yet there was something that some people had that she hadn’t quite got. I don’t believe she had a particularly profound interest in chemistry.

Dorothy Hodgkin, Margaret Thatcher’s tutor at Oxford

♦

I went to Oxford University, but I’ve never let that hold me back.

Conservative Party Conference, 13 October 1989

♦

This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated.

Report on Margaret Roberts by the ICI Personnel Department, rejecting her job application, 1948

♦

When hecklers stand up … I get a mental jump for joy. It gives me something to get my teeth into – and the audiences love it.

Daily Graphic, 1951

♦

For some time now I have been fleeing the temptation to return to active politics. I had intended, when I was called to the Bar, to concentrate entirely on legal work but a little experience at the Revenue Bar, and in company matters, far from turning my attention from politics, has served to draw my attention more closely to the body which is responsible for the legislation about which I have come to hold strong views.

Letter to Donald Kaberry, Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party, written in February 1956. The Path to Power, 1995

♦

I suppose I was about twenty, and a crowd of us had been to a village hop and came back to make midnight cups of coffee. I was in the kitchen helping to dish up and having a fierce argument with one of the boys in the crowd when someone else interrupted to say: ‘Of course Margaret, you will go into politics won’t you?’ I stopped dead. Suddenly it was crystallised for me. I knew.

Daily Express, April 1961

♦

I had the most marvellous upbringing; it stayed with me the rest of my life. It was, I always thought, a very tough upbringing. I was taught from my early years at school, taught by my father, to make up my own mind about my views, to say, ‘This is what I believe in, this is what I am going to do.’ Then you perhaps find that maybe the crowd comes with you. But never go with the crowd for the sake of going with the crowd – never, never, never. My goodness, it was hard as a young person; it was hard, but it was right.

Sunday Telegraph, 14 February 1982

♦

When I was young I was taught at home this little doggerel:

It’s easy to be a starter,

But are you a sticker too?

It’s easy enough to begin a job,

It’s harder to see it through.

Reader’s Digest, January 1984

♦

I loved my mother dearly, but after I was fifteen we had nothing more to say to each other. It wasn’t her fault. She was weighed down by the home, always being in the home.

Daily Express, April 1961

♦

One of my favourite quotations is: ‘That which thy father bequeathed thee, earn it anew, if thou wouldst possess it.’

♦

It is expensive to be in politics. One has to be mobile, one has to be well groomed, and one has to entertain.

The Guardian, March 1962

♦

We must recognise certain groups of people who need help, but the rest of us must take responsibility for ourselves, and we must stop being such a subsidised-minded society.

Scottish Conservative Party Conference, May 1969

♦

This business of the working class is on its way out I think. After all, aren’t I working class? I work jolly hard, I can tell you.

London Evening News, October 1969

♦

I speak as a very young Tory, and we are entitled to speak for it is the people of my generation who will bear the brunt of the change from the trials of the past into calmer channels.

Speech in Sleaford, 29 June 1945

♦

Comprehensive schools will have gone out in ten or fifteen years’ time.

1970

♦

I’ve no idea why people keep attacking me. I don’t deserve it at all.

Sunday Express, 16 January 1972

♦

I’m not hard, I’m frightfully soft – but I will not be hounded. I will not be driven anywhere against my will.

Daily Mail, 1972

♦

Please don’t use the word tough. People might get the impression that I don’t care. And I do care very deeply. Resilient, I think.

August 1973

♦

I enjoyed my early Ministerial career: it was an absorbing education both in the ways of Whitehall and in the technicalities of pensions policy. But I could not help noticing a curious discrepancy in the behaviour of my colleagues. What they said and what they did seemed to exist in two separate compartments. It was not that they conspicuously deceived anyone; they were in fact conspicuously honourable. But the language of free enterprise, anti-Socialism and the national interest sprang readily to their lips, while they conducted Government business on very different assumptions about the role of the state at home and of the nation state abroad.

The Downing Street Years, 1993

♦

I don’t want to be leader of the party – I’m happy to be in the top dozen.

1974

♦

We failed the people.

On the Heath Government, Daily Telegraph, February 1974

♦

It was then that the iron entered my soul.

On the Heath Government

♦

We went back on a very similar manifesto to things I believe in. The difference is that after eighteen months to two years he did the biggest U-turn on policy of all time and started to go the wrong way. In the end, that cost us the next election.

On the Heath Government, 18 June 1990

♦

The charm of Britain has always been the ease with which one can move into the middle class.

London Evening Standard, October 1974

♦

Look Keith, if you’re not going to stand, I will.

To Sir Keith Joseph after he decided not to stand against Edward Heath for the party leadership

♦

Forget that I’m a woman. Forget the accusation that I am a right-winger demanding privilege – I had precious little privilege in my early years.

February 1975

♦

I’ve got my teeth into him, and I’m not going to let go.

On Edward Heath during the leadership contest, February 1975

♦

Now we have lots of work to do.

To Norman St John-Stevas, who broke the news to her that she had won the first round of the leadership contest, February 1975

♦

To me it is like a dream that the next name in the list after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath is Margaret Thatcher.

February 1975

♦

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack me personally it means they have not a single political argument left.

♦

The better I do, the more is expected of me. I am ready for that. I think I have the strength to do anything that I feel has to be done.

Daily Telegraph, September 1975

♦

I confess that I am quite pleased that I didn’t continue my work on glyceride monolayers in the early 1950s or I might never have got here at all!

On her previous career as a chemist, 27 September 1988

ON THATCHERISM

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot further the brotherhood by encouraging class hatred.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Abraham Lincoln, kept by Mrs Thatcher in her handbag

♦

We should back the workers, not the shirkers.

February 1974

♦

We must have an ideology. The other side have got an ideology they can test their policies against. We must have one as well.

1975

♦

The path that we now take is the path that the people have chosen.

1979

♦

Let our children grow tall, and some grow taller than others.

Speech in the United States, 1975

♦

We must build a society in which each citizen can develop his full potential, both for his benefit and for the community as a whole.

1975

♦

The next Conservative Government will look forward to discussion and consultation with the trade union movement about the policies that are now needed to save our country.

Conservative Party Conference, Brighton, October 1976

♦

If your only opportunity is to be equal then it is not opportunity.

28 November 1976

♦

Britain is no longer in the politics of the pendulum, but of the ratchet.

1977

♦

We want a society in which we are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. That is what we mean by a moral society – not a society in which the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.

At Zurich University, 14 March 1977

♦

Sometimes I’ve heard it said that Conservatives have been associated with unemployment. That’s absolutely wrong. We’d have been drummed out of office if we’d had this level of unemployment.

Party political broadcast, May 1977, when unemployment was 1.3 million

♦

If the unions hold the whip hand, upon whose back does the lash fall?

25 September 1977

♦

I, personally, have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that the death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.

♦

Defeat? I do not recognise the meaning of the word.

♦

Class is a Communist concept. It groups people as bundles and sets them against one another. I remember practically exploding when I heard some Americans talking about ‘the underclass,’ as if they weren’t individuals with feelings. Each one is entitled to his own dignity, to develop his talents and abilities. Underclass? Socialist claptrap! That’s why I began by talking about liberty. The more you talk about class – or even about ‘classlessness’ – the more you fix the idea in people’s minds.

Newsweek, 27 April 1992

♦

Let me tell you a little about my extremism. I am extremely careful never to be extreme. I am extremely aware of the dangerous duplicity of Socialism, and extremely determined to turn back the tide before it destroys everything we hold dear. I am extremely disinclined to be deceived by the mask of moderation that Labour adopts whenever an election is in the offing, a mask now being worn by all those who would ‘keep the red flag flying here’.

Conservative Party Conference, 14 October 1977

♦

We do not believe that if you cut back what Government does you diminish its authority. On the contrary, a Government that did less, and therefore did better, would strengthen its authority.

Conservative Party Conference, 14 October 1977

♦

The counterpart of the withdrawal of Government from interference in prices and profits in the private sector which both we and you want to see, is inevitably the withdrawal of Government from interference in wage bargaining. There can be no selective return to personal responsibility.

Speech to Scottish industrialists, January 1978

♦

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as quislings, as traitors… I mean it.

1978

♦

We must learn again to be one nation, or one day we shall be no nation.

1978

♦

The National Health Service will not be privatised. The National Health Service was never going to be privatised. No matter what the emergency, accident or disease; no matter how long or complicated the treatment, the Health Service is there, the Health Service will always be there, to provide the finest care. There to heal, there to cure and there to tend the needs of the patient.

On the NHS, 13 November 1989

♦

The decade and the century which open up before us must see the lasting triumph of liberty, our common cause. The world needs Britain – and Britain needs us – to make that happen.

Conservative Party Conference, 13 November 1989

♦

Sound policies are sound for all times.

16 November 1987

♦

Today it seems as if people are made to feel guilty about being well off. But Christ did not condemn riches as such, only the way in which they were used and those who put their trust in them.

March 1978

♦

A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country’s flag.

14 October 1988

♦

This country belongs to the courageous, not the timid.

The Times, September 1978

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