F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead Quotes

It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.

I have always placed my highest and most permanent hopes upon the eternity of the Communal situation. The greater the political progress made by the Hindus, the greater, in my judgment, will the Moslem distrust and discontent become. All the conferences in all the world cannot bridge over the unbridgeable, and between these two communities lies a chasm which cannot be crossed by the resources of modern political engineering.

To me it is frankly inconceivable that India will ever be fit for Dominion self-government.

Like you, I believe strongly that where there is a revolutionary element expressed in action, one must act resolutely. My reading of Indian history has led me to believe that a Government founded so completely as ours is upon prestige can stand almost anything except the suspicion of weakness.

We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit the earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this aphorism in the records of Somerset House.

I charge him [Ramsay MacDonald] deliberately with this, that from the first moment of the war to the Armistice there was nothing which he could say to embarrass the cause of the British arms that he did not say—there was nothing that he could do to assist the German cause that he did not do. That is the man I am asked to take as spokesman of the British Empire. ... He was the man who vied with Sir Roger Casement in disservice to Britain. In the greatest crisis in our history Mr. MacDonald tried to set up Soviets in the British Army. I am to treat him as spokesman of the British Empire? Never! Never!

Nobody disputed that in the year 1914 it was evident to everyone that the country would have to struggle for its life. Knowing that, Mr. MacDonald stated that the war had been deliberately engineered by the fighting forces of this country in order to obtain battle-practice for our fleet. ... The people of this country had now the chance of deciding whether they wished to see this ancient country presided over and governed by a man who, had he had his way, would have ruined and destroyed us in the war; and he knew what their answer was going to be. They were going to say to him, “Dress yourself in your red flag or your yellow flag; go and attend your board meetings in the McVitie Company. We do not believe you for this reason—that every speech you make contains some piece of shifty, tricky inventiveness which we have never been used to from the Prime Minister of England.”

The greatness of this country was attained not by teaching the message that one class of Englishmen must wed itself to a bitter antagonism against other classes of Englishmen, but was was rather founded on the doctrine that they were all English. All that was changed. They were to be class conscious. ... It means that we are to drive into that solidity of English life, which has secured our greatness, the poison of a belief that the interests of England require that there should be vital and eternal antagonism in her midst which prevents all Englishmen uniting for an all-English cause. In the old spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, when the Empire was still in the winning, as well as in the days of the Napoleonic Wars, we conquered by the force of a gallant and united nation. We did not march to battle under the Red Flag.

As the Tories happened to be right then, and their opponents happened to be wrong, as they had been wrong at every moment in the nation's history when similar issues had arisen, was he to remain silent when men were preaching the same crazy doctrine that there would be no more war and when he looked round and saw wars and threats of wars? Whenever he met such sentimental folly he would castigate it.

The Glasgow address ["Idealism in International Politics"] represented a true conception of Tory policy. ... During those black years from 1906 to 1914 he and other members of this party warned the country that the deadly and growing menace of German armaments might involve, unless steps were taken to correct it, the imminent destruction of this country and Empire. How were their warnings treated? Foolish idealists told them there was no menace. ... But while Liberals and Socialists passed resolutions calling for reduction of armaments, the Tories, not so deceived, insisted on the supreme importance of strengthening the Army and the Navy.

I have read the Liberal programme. They talk of cooperation between employer and employed. That is not the problem. There is no use in cooperating when there is no work to be done. There is no use in imposing capital levies upon a capital which every year dwindles and disappears. ... The problem that awaits the people of this country is to increase the markets within which their goods can find employment, and you will never increase those markets until you have enabled our working people on equal terms and our manufacturers on equal terms to deal with the working people and manufacturers of the world.

It appears that we are to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we are to have 1,300,000 unemployed in this country. There are no unemployed in the United States of America, no unemployed at all in France. There are hardly any unemployed in Italy. The United States of America, France, and Italy are protectionist countries. We are a free-trade import country.

An economic creed in an imperfect world must be at least equally adapted to the purposes of war as to the purposes of peace. ... when war came in 1914, what was the situation of this country? The free-trade system had wholly failed to equip the Government of this country with the many instruments which were absolutely vital for the purposes of conducting war.

Politically, economically and philosophically the motive of self-interest not only is but must...and ought to be the mainspring of human conduct...For as long a time as the records of history have been preserved human societies passed through a ceaseless process of evolution and adjustment. This process has sometimes been pacific, but more often it has resulted from warlike disturbance. The strength of different nations, measured in terms of arms, varies from century to century. The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords; it is therefore extremely improbable that the experience of future ages will differ in any material respect from that which has happened since the twilight of the human race … it is for us who, in our history have proved ourselves a martial … people … to maintain in our own hands the adequate means for our own protection and … to march with heads erect and bright eyes along the road of our imperial destiny.

May I be perfectly candid? I also am still a Unionist in this sense. If I were certified of twenty years of unbroken power in this country, I am still most clearly of opinion that the solution of the Irish question which would be best for England and best for Ireland would be the prosecution during that period of the policy which, in our opinion at least, had attained so large a measure of success in the year 1906. ... The late Lord Salisbury spoke of "twenty years of resolute government." The Unionist Party, in the period to the close of which I refer, had been given some ten years, and it was only given those ten years by what many members of this House would describe as the accident of the issue, with its repercussion on the Election, of the war in South Africa. That accident and that Election gave the Unionist Party some ten years of office. Is it not evident, in trying to descry what lies in front of us through the mists of the future, that no man living can claim that twenty years, or anything like twenty years, lie in front of any Party that believes in the maintenance of the relations between Ireland and this country on the lines that have existed since the passing of the Act of Union?