Inflation is caused by a continuing surfeit of money; inflation can therefore be controlled or prevented only by striking at the source of money surf… - Enoch Powell

Mother, with longing ever new
And joy too great for telling,
I turn again to rest in you
My earliest dwelling.

I make no apology for once again reminding the House, and particularly my right hon. and hon. Friends, of what was our view not so long ago on the policies which have led us to this stage. I do so in no spirit of criticism or of recrimination, but because I believe that there are practical and important deductions to be drawn from recalling the fact that when the Conservative Party was elected by a majority we told the country that we utterly rejected the philosophy of compulsory control of wages. We said that we had seen the Labour Government's statutory control of wages fail and that we did not intend to repeat it. We did not make those statements as a matter of mere theory. We did not make them, as it were, in the margin or idly. They arose not only from theory but from the observation, both in this country and elsewhere, that the attempt to combine Government policies which in themselves are inflationary with the endeavour to regulate and control prices and wages has invariably and inevitably led to an impasse and to irresolvable conflict between the demands of Government on the one hand and the realities, as the private citizen sees and knows them, on the other. We were speaking not merely from theory but from experience.

I did not speak, but when I saw you turn
And cross your right leg on your left, and fold
Your hands around your knee, I felt a flow
Of white-hot lava seething up the old
Volcano-shaft. That selfsame attitude,
Though not of yours, it was which long ago
Fired me, an innocent, unknowing boy,
And led me on to sin and on to learn
And onwards to the very fount of woe.