Frasi di Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
Data di nascita: 11. Marzo 1916
Data di morte: 24. Maggio 1995
Altri nomi:James Harold Wilson
Lord James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson de Rievaulx è stato un politico britannico, esponente del Labour Party, che ricoprì due volte discontinue la carica di Primo Ministro del Regno Unito, dal 1964 al 1970 e dal 1974 al 1976.
Dopo essere stato docente di economia a Oxford, dal 1945 fu deputato del Partito Laburista; dal 1947 al 1951 fu ministro del commercio con C.R. Atlee e nel 1963 sostituì Hugh Gaitskell alla guida dei laburisti.
Vinte le elezioni dell'anno seguente divenne Primo ministro del Regno Unito mantenendosi in carica fino al 1970 e poi ancora dal 1974 al 1976, quando decise di ritirarsi a favore di James Callaghan.
In politica estera Wilson fu sostanzialmente contrario alle istituzioni europee; di fronte alla crisi dell'economia britannica cercò di preservare il benessere e la stabilità sociale del Welfare State applicando una politica deflazionistica e il "controllo sociale" dei redditi concertato con le Trade Unions. I costi elevati del Welfare State e l'eccessivo peso politico concesso ai sindacati forumularono tuttavia le premesse alla crisi del Partito laburista e, quindi, dei successivi trionfi di Margaret Thatcher.
Wilson fu il Primo Ministro inglese che fece nominare dalla Regina Elisabetta II i Beatles come "baronetti".
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politico, filosofo e scrittore britannicoFrasi Harold Wilson
„We have not been pushed around either abroad or at home and we are not going to be. This is government of the people; it is government for all the people, and the accent is on government.“
— Harold Wilson
Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.
„The government have only a small majority in the House of Commons. I want to make it quite clear that this will not affect our ability to govern. Having been charged with the duties of Government we intend to carry out those duties.“
— Harold Wilson
Television broadcast (October 1964), after winning the general election, quoted in David Butler, Coalitions in British Politics (Macmillan, London, 1978), p. 99.
„I get a little nauseated, perhaps, when I hear the phrase "freedom of the Press" used as freely as it is, knowing that a large part of our proprietorial Press is not free at all“
— Harold Wilson
Speech in the House of Commons (5 December 1974) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/dec/05/prime-minister-visits
„We are more interested in the monthly trade returns than in Debrett, more preoccupied with what is said by the industrial correspondents and economic editors than what is said by William Hickey; more concerned with modernizing the machinery of government and the action that will need to follow the report of the Estimates Committee on the Civil Service than in altering the layout of Burke's Landed Gentry.“
— Harold Wilson
Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted in The Times (29 September 1965), p. 5.
„I have always said about Tony [Benn] that he immatures with age.“
— Harold Wilson
Interview with The Times (7 April 1981), p. 12.
„The Smethwick Conservatives can have the satisfaction of having topped the poll, and of having sent here as their Member one who, until a further General Election restores him to oblivion, will serve his term here as a Parliamentary leper“
— Harold Wilson
Speech in the House of Commons (3 November 1964) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/nov/03/debate-on-the-address-first-day. The 1964 general election had seen the defeat of Wilson's Shadow Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker by Conservative Peter Griffiths after an allegedly racist campaign. Griffiths was indeed defeated at the next election but returned to Parliament in 1979 and served until 1997.
„Hughie, get your tanks off my lawn.“
— Harold Wilson
Statement to trade union leader Hugh Scanlon (c. 1969), as quoted in "Lord Scanlon" in The Telegraph (28 January 2004) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1452770/Lord-Scanlon.html
„It is difficult for us to appreciate the pressures which are being put on men I know to be realistic and reasonable, not only in their executive capacity but in the highly organised strike committees in the individual ports, by this tightly knit group of politically motivated men who, as the last General Election showed, utterly failed to secure acceptance of their views by the British electorate, but who are now determined to exercise backstage pressures, forcing great hardship on the members of the union and their families, and endangering the security of the industry and the economic welfare of the nation.“
— Harold Wilson
Speech in the House of Commons (20 June 1966) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1966/jun/20/seamens-strike, referring to the organisers of a Seamen's strike. Wilson meant to imply they were Communists. Among the union officials offended by this quote was John Prescott.
„Yet people who benefit from all this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government; people who spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?“
— Harold Wilson
Broadcast (25 May 1974), referring to the Ulster Workers Council strike.
„The last two years show that what Enoch [Powell] says today Edward [Heath] will be proclaiming as Tory policy anything from three to six months later... Selsdon Man is not just a lurch to the right, it is an atavistic desire to reverse the course of twenty-five years of social revolution. What they are planning is a wanton, calculated and deliberate return to greater inequality... The message to the British people would be simple and brutal. It would say, "You're out on your own".“
— Harold Wilson
Speech in Nottingham (6 February 1970), quoted in The Times (7 February 1970), p. 1 and Philip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), p. 40.
„David Dimbleby: You couldn't - you couldn't set our minds at rest on the vexed question of what the Sunday Times did actually pay you for the book?
Harold Wilson: No, I don't think it's a matter of interest to the BBC or to anybody else.
Dimbleby: But why..
Wilson: If you're interested in these things, you'd better find out how people buy yachts. Do you ask that question? Did you ask him how he was able to pay for a yacht?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed...
Wilson: Have you asked him that question?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed him.
Wilson: Well, has the BBC ever asked that question?
Dimbleby: I don't know...
Wilson: Well, what's it got to do with you, then?
Dimbleby: I imagine they have..
Wilson: Why you ask these question, I mean why, if people can afford to buy £25,000 yachts, do the BBC not regard that as a matter for public interest? Why do you insult me with these questions here?
Dimbleby: It's only that it's been a matter of..
Wilson: All I'm saying, all I'm saying..
Dimbleby: … public speculation, and I was giving you an opportunity if you wanted to, to say something about it.
Wilson: It was not a matter of speculation, it was just repeating press gossip. You will not put this question to Mr. Heath. When you have got an answer to him, come and put the question to me. And this last question and answer are not to be recorded. Is this question being recorded?
Dimbleby: Well it is, because we're running film.
Wilson: Well, will you cut it out or not? All right, we stop now. No, I'm sorry, I'm really not having this. I'm really not having this. The press may take this view, that they wouldn't put this question to Heath but they put it to me; if the BBC put this question to me, without putting it to Heath, the interview is off, and the whole programme is off. I think it's a ridiculous question to put. Yes, and I mean it cut off, I don't want to read in the Times Diary or miscellany that I asked for it to be cut out. [pause]
Dimbleby: All right, are we still running? Can I ask you this, then, which I mean, I.. let me put this question, I mean if you find this question offensive then..
Wilson: Coming to ask if your curiosity can be satisfied, I think it's disgraceful. Never had such a question in an interview in my life before.
Dimbleby: I.. [gasps]
Joe Haines (Wilson's Press Secretary): Well, let's stop now, and we can talk about it, shall we?
Dimbleby: No, let's.. well, I mean, we'll keep going, I think, don't you?
Wilson: No, I think we'll have a new piece of film in and start all over again. But if this film is used, or this is leaked, then there's going to be a hell of a row. And this must be..
Dimbleby: Well, I certainly wouldn't leak it..
Wilson: You may not leak it but these things do leak. I've never been to Lime Grove without it leaking.“
— Harold Wilson
Exchange with BBC interviewer David Dimbleby recorded for a documentary called "Yesterday's Men" broadcast on 16 June 1971. The BBC did agree not to show this portion of the interview, but Wilson's fears of a leak were justified as a transcript was published on page 1 of The Times on June 18, 1971. A fuller transcript appeared in Private Eye during 1972.
„Traders and financiers all over the world had been listening to the Chancellor. For months he had said that if he could not stop the wage claims, the country was "facing disaster". Those were his own words. Rightly or wrongly these people believed him. For them, 5th September—the day that the Trades Union Congress unanimously rejected the policy of wage restraint—marked the end of an era. And all these financiers, all the little gnomes in Zurich and the other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing, started to make their dispositions in regard to sterling.“
— Harold Wilson
Speech in the House of Commons (12 November 1956) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1956/nov/12/debate-on-the-address; often quoted as "gnomes of Zürich".
„I believe that the situation has now gone so far that it is impossible to conceive of an effective long-term solution in which the agenda at least does not include consideration of, and which is not in some way directed to finding a means of achieving, the aspirations envisaged half a century ago, of progress towards a united Ireland... A substantial term of years will be required before any concept of unification could become a reality, but the dream must be there. If men of moderation have nothing to hope for, men of violence will have something to shoot for.“
— Harold Wilson
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1971/nov/25/northern-ireland-1 in the House of Commons (25 November 1971)
