Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone Quotes (1907-2001)

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

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

“To our refusal to accept the French view of German duplicity and to our failure to regard the peace treaties as binding, many of our present troubles are due.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If you can tell me there are no adulterers on the front bench of the Labour Party you can talk to me about Profumo.”

“Nothing has shown so clearly the evils of elective dictatorship as the past few weeks, which had culminated in the Lib–Lab pact.”

“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.”

“It is an excellent thing that Mr Powell has joined the Ulster Unionists. They have found a new leader to desert, and he a fresh cause to betray.”

“I believe that the proper way to approach this problem is not to wait until Herr Hitler makes more demands, but tell him we are going to make some demands. I should tell him that if he wanted anything he must first come into the society of nations and play his part.”

“[W]e have always been determined to prevent a combination of forces hostile to ourselves and to separate such a combination when it has arisen; we have always resisted the domination of Europe by a single power, since such domination would cause us to live in a state of armed peace in order to prevent a sudden descent on our shores.”

“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!”

“[T]he Disarmament Conference met early in 1932. Under the Presidency of good Arthur Henderson, whose Naval Disarmament Conference in London had been such a success for the Japanese, the only fear in the heart of every good Leftist was, of course, that the wicked Tories with their insane love of armaments might sabotage the whole affair.”

“The whole position is a crystal clear example of the proposition that commitments and power must be balanced. Failure to balance them leads to bankruptcy, moral, political, and diplomatic. Neither Britain nor America was capable of paying the debt of honour.
Why?
Not because we did not support the League. Not because we did not believe in collective security. Not because we loved the Japanese. The reason is much simpler. Years of pacifism, disarmament, and false economy had deprived us of the power to do so.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The fundamental principle of all foreign policy is that enunciated by Mr. Walter Lippmann, when he writes that you must balance commitments with power. To fail to do this is not brave, moral, "realistic", "idealistic", "progressive", or "reactionary". It is merely silly. To incur commitments without building up power to discharge them and to call this practice collective security is at the worst political chicanery and at the best self-deception, and leads inevitably to bankruptcy, military, political, and moral. This was consistently the policy of the Left in the years 1919–39.”

“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.”