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[T]o the extent that collective bargaining does succeed in distorting costs, it must rank among the obstacles to improvement in the standard of livin… - Enoch Powell
" "[T]o the extent that collective bargaining does succeed in distorting costs, it must rank among the obstacles to improvement in the standard of living of the British worker; and the more effective it is, the greater the obstacle. The British industrial worker today works longer hours for less real wages than his counterpart in West Germany, and that will soon be true, if it is not already, of his counterparts in a number of other European countries. This is not because the British trade unions are not strong enough, any more than it is because the monopolies and restrictive practices among buyers and sellers of goods and services are not tight enough. It is because industrial effort is being more efficiently used elsewhere than here. This is what gives the immediacy and urgency to this whole question of the trade unions. The people of this country cannot afford to allow themselves the luxury of practices and habits, however encrusted with sentiment and benevolent superstition, which place obstacles in the way of more efficient use of our resources.
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About Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974), then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–1987), and was Minister of Health (1960–1963).
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J. Enoch Powell
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John Enoch Powell
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Additional quotes by Enoch Powell
The Labour Party, we all know, have fallen head over heels in love with science. The very mention of automation or computers brings a gleam into their eyes and a glow to their cheeks. They promise to favour automative re-equipment and computerisation. The irony is that these same people are dedicated to destroying the largest and most wonderful computer the world has ever known. This is the computer into which are fed the whole time millions of facts not only from all over this country but from all round the globe. The answers tumble out of it in an unending stream: it tells us all the time what it is most advantageous to import or export; it tells us what the relative benefits are of the imported article and the "home-produced substitute"; it tell us what can be produced "economically and competitively" and in what quantity and where. This wonderful silent mechanism—dare I say, this "automative" mechanism?—of the market the Labour Party want to smash, in order to install in its place—what? The pathetic figure of a President of the Board of Trade going through the old Trade Returns with his officials and trying to reproduce—no, to improve upon—the result of millions of acts of judgment made continuously throughout the economy by those who, in total, have available far more data than the Board of Trade ever dreamt of.
Lord Scarman found that what he calls "the black community" was alienated. He found also that the black community suffered a number of disadvantages: in a period and in areas of special difficulties—economic, occupational, environmental—it had more than its fair share. The assumption—it is not argued; it is not even explicitly stated: it is an assumption—is that the black community is alienated because it is disadvantaged. That is a dangerous gap in the reasoning; for it is by no means self-evident, and by no means necessary, that the two facts should be connected as cause and effect. There is another possible explanation of the alienation. It is that the community, being of that size and composition and in those circumstances, is alien: alienation can be a manifestation of being alien. It can be the self-perception and the being perceived by others as different and distinct; and, in the case of a black community...it is a difference which is instantly and mutually visible and which produces mutual coherence or repulsion.
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Now there are a lot of people about whom it behoves to be very cautious in accusing their political opponents of past or prospective U-turns. In acrobatics Harold Wilson, for all his nimbleness and skill, is simply no match for the breathtaking, thoroughgoing efficiency of the present Prime Minister [Heckler: "Judas!"] Judas was paid! Judas was paid! I am making a sacrifice!
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