Harold Macmillan Quotes

Although I am still in favour of a National Government in these difficult times, and shall probably be found in the great majority of cases in the Government Lobby, there are some issues that have arisen, or are likely to arise, upon which I am unable to give the Government the support which it has, perhaps, the right to expect from those receiving the Government Whip. It occurs to me, therefore, that it would perhaps be more satisfactory if I was no longer regarded as being among the supporters of the present Administration.

Events, dear boy, events.

It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today – this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on.

Of one thing I was glad. It was not an election fought on "Tranquillity"; it was an election fought upon a positive plan—protection against cheap industrial imports threatening British wage standards and jobs. Baldwin's message was easy to explain to those already unemployed or in fear of unemployment. Cheap imports were beginning to flood into the country, even of billets and bars, still more of manufactured iron and steel products. Surely we needed a tariff, if only for bargaining with other countries. Thus it was not difficult to preach protection with sincerity. I felt all the time that our policy attracted many trade unionists who would only not vote for us because of pressure or a false sense of solidarity. After all, before the rise of the Labour Party, the working class had traditionally been Tory; the tradesmen, the shopkeepers, and the middle classes had generally been Liberal... Meanwhile, the memory of massive unemployment began to haunt me then and for many years to come.

Forever poised between a cliché and an indiscretion.

I rather enjoy patronage. I take a lot of trouble over it. At least it makes all those years of reading Trollope seem worthwhile.

So I approach the date on which my story of the Fifty Years Revolution begins. The old world ended, with its strange mixture of beauty and ugliness, happiness and sorrow, good and evil—so much to be proud of; so much, looking back, of which perhaps to be ashamed. Yet the most rabid radical or the most caustic critic of the Britain that had fought and won a twenty-year battle for freedom a century before, that for a hundred years had helped to keep the peace of the world, and spread civilisation to its distant corners, cannot but feel that if, in this sequence of rapid change, much has been gained, something, too, has been lost.