Roy Hattersley Quotes (1932-)

“Michael Foot has been a great parliamentarian – perhaps the best I witnessed during my 33 years in the House of Commons. He had a particular talent for the spontaneous epigram. Jim Callaghan, he said, “does everything on purpose”. He loved the business of Parliament and believed in the Commons as a bastion of democracy. He would have been most at home in the Victorian Westminster when literature and learning were an essential requirement of success.”

“Shirley is surrounded by a beatific light that shields her from the harm and criticism which would be heaped on ordinary people.”

“When, 50 years ago, on 14 February 1963, Harold Wilson was elected leader of the Labour party, even many of his supporters – wrongly I now believe – thought him a politician without principle... He was what used to be called "a good Labour man" – instinctively the enemy of privilege and certain that improvement in the lives of the disadvantaged and the dispossessed depended on the success of the Labour party. That is why he worked so hard, and sometimes deviously, to keep it united. I should have understood that 50 years ago.”

“He presided over a Government which welcomed and organized the abolition of the empire, promoted the transition from capitalism to mixed economy and established the principle of the state's responsibility for individual welfare. ... [H]e always managed to appear a reasonable revolutionary, a man who advocated policies which were relevant as well as radical. He was not a man to fear. He was a conscientious regimental officer who maintained morale and preserved good order and discipline; a politician to trust and a leader to respect. ... Attlee was a great Prime Minister, one of the few twentieth century politicians whose reputation has increased with the years.”

“Roy Hattersley...returned to the smoke of battle in Westminster where he at once began to work actively for Callaghan. He called in Roy Jenkins's room to tell him ... Roy Hattersley told him why. His growing lack of sympathy with Jenkins's political position was reinforced by Jenkins's recent television broadcast saying that more than 60 per cent of national income devoted to public expenditure would lead to tyranny – quite the opposite of what Tawney and Crosland had written and Hattersley himself believed. Hattersley was supporting Callaghan for fear of ‘splitting the vote’ and letting Foot in.”

“Until Roy Hattersley said he would shoot himself if I became prime minister, I had not been able to see any possible advantage in standing.”