Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone Quotes

It is simply not true, as the authors of Guilty Men and Cassius assert, that the Labour Party, as a Party, was not pacifist, that its pacifism was limited to a few groups or individuals, that its pacifism ceased on the appearance of Hitler or did not continue long after his rise to power. From the first the Labour Party was riddled with pacifism. Its theory was pacifist. Its leaders were pacifist. Its members were pacifist, and its declared policy was pacifist. Disarmament it preached as party policy and because Conservatives were known to preach patriotism and strong armaments. As early as 1922 pacifism became the official doctrine of the Labour movement. At the Edinburgh Conference in that year a motion was carried that Socialist Parties everywhere should "oppose any war entered into by any government, whatever the ostensible object of the war". In 1923 the Party Conference at London pronounced in favour of "immediate Universal Disarmament by mutual agreement". There are even now Labour Members of Parliament who would fail to understand that such a policy must always put a premium on aggression, since it would give a would-be aggressor an automatic start. In 1926 the Margate Conference approved a policy of treason by general strike, calling on the workers to "meet any threat of war so called defensive or offensive, by organizing a general resistance, including the refusal to bear arms, to produce armaments, or to render any material assistance". At the Birmingham Conference, 1928, the Party's policy: "Labour and the Nation" was adopted. This included the renunciation of War, and Disarmament.

Being Conservative is only another way of being British.

Moderation is the hallmark of our country and the burden of our Conservative faith. ... [I]n an age of violence the Conservative watchwords must be law, justice, moderation and humanity.

A great party is not to be brought down because of a scandal by a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar.

The British people must be strong. If we talk we must be ready to act. We must speak with the authority of the strong because our voice is practically the only voice in the world which will speak out with authority for right.

We live under an elective dictatorship, absolute in theory if hitherto thought tolerable in practice. How far it is still tolerable is the question I want to raise.

Lord Hailsham: But to try to turn it into a party issue, is really beyond belief contemptible.
Robert McKenzie: Do you feel that the others that have spoken out, the Bishops, The Times and so on, have tried to turn it into a party issue?
Hailsham: I think you have!

[The Labour Party's leadership is] dominated by rather rootless intellectuals or obviously bourgeois eccentrics like Mr Michael Foot and Mr Wedgwood Benn.

Experience shows that at this rate of inflation, democracy cannot survive... A middle-class backlash is inevitable. A populist movement. In the end people will not put up with the law being broken and factions of the workers getting away with it with impunity. People will take control into their own hands, or a strong government will use the public forces to seize control. People will get hurt. Quite likely there will be a lot of violence one way or another. But in the end there is a limit to what middle-class people will tolerate.

What is urgently needed is some limitation on this nominally elected dictatorship. It is here that I join hands with the conventional Bill of Rights enthusiasts, of whom...I am not one.

The truth which the Left would not face—and will not face, even now—is that from 1932 and probably from 1929 collective security was moribund, owing to the re-emergence of a Germany determined to destroy it, and the existence of a Japan which had never really believed in it. It could only rise from the dead by the development of a system of armaments in the hands of the peace-loving nations capable of defeating and destroying the governments in the aggressor countries. The only future of the League lay through rearmament, and not through opposition to it.

Some armaments for Great Britain are necessary on any view of collective security... "collective security", so far from being an excuse exonerating our country from possessing armaments, is in fact a commitment demanding a higher degree of preparation for war than the mere defence of its shores would entail. The Left never understood that their foreign policy was inconsistent with their defence policy, and so must be held responsible for our weakness. But responsibility does not end there. To carry on war (and this is what we should have had to do to vindicate "collective security") it is not enough to have arms. It is necessary to possess a higher degree of national unity than a single democratic party can afford. How on earth could we expect to defy Japan, or even miserable Italy, when for years—and even at the very time when it called for the use of "sanctions"—the Labour movement had been declaring that should sanctions lead to war, even a "so-called defensive" war, they should oppose its prosecution and call a general strike?

I have never believed in peace at any price.

It is not a point of which I am much ashamed. Having grown up in the 1930s, I have a hatred of unemployment. The reason why we over-reacted, if over-reacted we did, was because we hoped that, if it could be shown that we were doing our best to deal with avoidable unemployment, the unions would voluntarily restrain their demands and prevent suffering in the community. The truth is that Mr Powell is so intent for personal reasons on ruining Mr Heath that no attack, however violent, however irrational, or however evilly intentioned, is beyond him in his present frame of mind.

Conservatives do not believe that political struggle is the most important thing in life... The simplest among them prefer fox-hunting—the wisest religion.