Roy Jenkins Quotes

#1. The fact is that Harold Wilson is a person no one can like, a person without friends.

Roy Jenkins

#2. I am sure Mr Heath thinks he is honest but I wish he didn't have to have his friends say it so often.

Roy Jenkins

#3. Each successive Labour Government has been the most rapacious, doctrinaire and unpatriotic conspiracy to be seen this side of the Iron Curtain.

Roy Jenkins

#4. The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered.

Roy Jenkins

#5. A substantial extension of public ownership is an essential pre-requisite of greater equality of earned income

Roy Jenkins

#6. The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life.

Roy Jenkins

#7. A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect.

Roy Jenkins

#8. There are always great dangers in letting the best be the enemy of the good.

Roy Jenkins

#9. We must not expect a full-scale peaceful revolution every time a Labour Government is elected.

Roy Jenkins

#10. I do not think you can push public expenditure significantly above 60 per cent and maintain the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice. We are here close to one of the frontiers of social democracy

Roy Jenkins

#11. Inheritance Tax; - it is, broadly speaking; a voluntary levy paid by those who distrust their heirs more than they dislike the Inland Revenue

Roy Jenkins

#12. The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society.

Roy Jenkins

#13. The most moving speech I have ever heard was Hugh Gaitskell saying he would 'fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love. That was the right message in 1960, and I believe it is still the right message today.

Roy Jenkins

#14. I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken?

Roy Jenkins

#15. There is a lot of talk about a centre party - and that I might lead it. I find this idea profoundly unattractive

Roy Jenkins

#16. Many of the early nationalisation measures were right. They have remained part of the social fabric. I favour measures of that type.

Roy Jenkins