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No one contemplating the present position and looking back at the whole series of vicissitudes which has beset the British economy throughout the pas… - Roy Jenkins
" "No one contemplating the present position and looking back at the whole series of vicissitudes which has beset the British economy throughout the past 20 years can find the prospect other than very difficult at present. But I believe that there is also a great opportunity at present. There is certainly no quick, easy road to prosperity for this country, but the changes which must be made are fairly marginal. They must be made with absolute determination, but if they are so made, and accepted by the people, the whole outlook can change. The Government can only provide the right framework. Unless they do that, our national energies will be misdirected, but once they have done it the opportunities for export and growth and efficiency must be seized by everyone. There will still be two years of hard slog ahead. But at the end of it we could have a more securely-based prosperity than we have known for a generation.
English
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About Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as the sixth president of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981, having previously been one of the primary proponents of British entry into the European Economic Community. At various times a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour Party, Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Democrats, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary under the Wilson and Callaghan Governments. He initially identified as a democratic socialist, and later as a social democrat and centrist. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he pursued a tight fiscal policy to control the inflation of the pound sterling. As Home Secretary, he was responsible for abolishing capital punishment and decriminalizing abortion, homosexuality, and divorce. He ran in the 1976 Labour Party leadership election to become Prime Minister, but was defeated by James Callaghan and briefly retired from British politics to serve as President of the European Commission. He returned to Britain to help found the Social Democratic Party, which formed an alliance with the Liberal Party under David Steel and was intended as a centrist alternative to the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher and the Labour Party under Michael Foot. However, he resigned as Party Leader after the SDP-Liberal Alliance failed to outpoll the Labour Party in the 1983 general election.
Also Known As
Birth Name:
Roy Harris Jenkins
Alternative Names:
Baron Jenkins of Hillhead
•
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead
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Additional quotes by Roy Jenkins
My wish is to build an effective united Europe. Now I've never sought absolutely to define exactly what I mean by this, but I've got an absolute clear sense of direction. I've never been frightened about the pace being too fast, I have been frightened about the pace being too slow. I do not think it's terribly useful to lay down blueprints as to whether one will be federal or confederal in the year 2000 and beyond. I want to move towards a more effectively organized Europe politically and economically and as far as I am concerned I want to go faster, not slower.
There has been a lot of talk about the formation of a new centre party. Some have even been kind enough to suggest that I might lead it. I find this idea profoundly unattractive. I do so for at least four reasons. First, I do not believe that such a grouping would have any coherent philosophical base...A party based on such a rag-bag could stand for nothing positive. It would exploit grievances and fall apart when it sought to remedy them. I believe in exactly the reverse sort of politics...Second, I believe that the most likely effect of such an ill-considered grouping would be to destroy the prospect of an effective alternative government to the Conservatives...Some genuinely want a new, powerful anti-Conservative force. They would be wise to reflect that it is much easier to will this than to bring it about. The most likely result would be chaos on the left and several decades of Conservative hegemony almost as dismal and damaging as in the twenties and thirties. Third, I do not share the desire, at the root of much such thinking, to push what may roughly be called the leftward half of the Labour Party...out of the mainstream of British politics...Fourth, and more personally, I cannot be indifferent to the political traditions in which I was brought up and in which I have lived my political life. Politics are not to me a religion, but the Labour Party is and always had been an instinctive part of my life.
I am myself convinced that the existing law on abortion is uncertain and is also, and perhaps more importantly, harsh and archaic and that it is in urgent need of reform. I certainly shall have no hesitation in voting for the Second Reading of the Bill. I take this view because I believe that we have here a major social problem. How can anyone believe otherwise when perhaps as many as 100,000 illegal operations a year take place, that the present law has shown itself quite unable to deal with the problem? I believe this, too, because of the danger which exists at present to those who are forced to resort to back-street abortionists and to the misery which is caused to some of those who fail to get an abortion. I believe it also because we all know...that the law is consistently flouted by those who have the means to do so. It is, therefore, very much a question of one law for the rich and one law for the poor.
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