Douglas Hurd Quotes

British Conservative politician and novelist (born 1930)

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Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, (born 8 March 1930), is a British Conservative politician and diplomat, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and 1995. He left the Commons at the 1997 general election and was elevated to the peerage on 13 June 1997. He retired from the House of Lords on 9 June 2016.

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Alternative Names: Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell

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Lord Rothschild roamed like a condottiere through Whitehall, laying an ambush here, there breaching some crumbling fortress which had outlived its usefulness... He respected persons occasionally but rarely policies.

After fierce political discussion over more than twenty years, the British commitment to Europe is now firmly established. As I have said we ask for no exemptions or privileges. We recognise the concepts which inspired the original founders, and salute their wisdom in setting up the Community institutions. We believe that as a member of the class of 1973 we have an equal right, and perhaps an equal wisdom, to discuss the future of the Community as members of the class of 1958. We intend to exercise that right as Europeans, convinced of the essential validity of the case for Europe put forward by the Founding Fathers of the Community, anxious that we should find together the right ways of applying those principles to the new circumstances of 1982. I do not pretend that we face an easy task. But we shall apply ourselves to it with a commitment which no-one should doubt.

[Politicians have a right to respond to the] presence or absence of the churches, and their sometimes bizarre choice of priorities for discussion.

The idea of Active Citizenship is a necessary complement to that of the enterprise culture. Public service may once have been the duty of an elite, but today it is the responsibility of all who have time or money to spare. Modern capitalism has democratised the ownership of property, and we are now witnessing the democratisation of responsible citizenship.

The fruits of economic success could turn sour unless we can bring back greater social cohesion to our country.

NATO is one of the principal props which have allowed Britain to punch above its weight in the world.

We have learnt that one cannot suppress nationalist feeling or force it into a framework against which it revolts.

We have to find, as the Victorians found, techniques and instruments which reach the parts of our society which will always be beyond the scope of statutory schemes. I believe that the inspiring and the enlisting of the active citizen in all walks of life is the key.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

I am slightly tired of the approach that it is all because of racism on the part of the police, just as I get slightly weary of police officers saying they are asked to police black communities more lightly.

Underpinning our social policy are those traditions—the diffusion of power, civil obligation, and voluntary service—which are central to Conservative philosophy... The diffusion of power...the key to active and responsible citizenship.

The case for European solidarity has never been stronger than it is today because the pressures piling up on Europe are themselves strong and varied. At the moment the headlines in our newspapers concentrate on certain trading arguments with the United States. Clearly we in Europe deal better with these problems when we work together, and where pressures become unacceptable we can best secure their relaxation by reacting together. Of course we should remind ourselves that our aim is not to confront the United States with our own economic strength, great though that is if we work together. Our aim must be to work out a common view with the United States, based in the case of the pipeline on a common analysis of the role of trade in East–West relations.

There will be shifts of sovereignty but only in specific areas which I consider debatable. The [European] Community should lead as external trade negotiator... But there must be basic areas of national sovereignty. Peace and war; law and order; foreign policy; fiscal policy. You can cooperate, but these are not matters for Community competence. Our resistance was entirely justified in the case of the Social Charter... I do not believe in the European glacier, that there is something irresistible about European integration.

European security without the United States simply doesn't make sense. We Europeans need to say loud and clear that we welcome US forces in Europe.

Thatcherism is not Tutankhamun's tomb, which you've got to seal up and guard. It has to fructify. It's an investment. Take what has been achieved and go on from there. Thatcherism breaks into different things: privatisation, the extension of individual responsibility, education. But the course is certainly set. I want to keep it, not change it.