The Downing Street Years

Is abridged in

Canonical title*

10 Downing street. Mémoires I

Original title

The Downing street years I

Original publication date

1993-10-18; 1994

People/Characters

Margaret Thatcher; Geoffrey Howe; Jim Prior; Keith Joseph; Willie Whitelaw; Francis Pym (show all 17); Peter Carrington; Nigel Lawson; Ronald Reagan; Ken Clarke; Michael Heseltine; Malcolm Rifkind; John Major; Helmut Kohl; Mikhail Gorbachev; François Mitterrand; George H. W. Bush

Important places

Downing Street; 10 Downing Street, London, England, UK

First words

We knew we had won by the early hours of Friday May 4, but it was not until the afternoon that we gained the clear majority of seats we needed--44 as it eventually turned out.

Quotations

...in a market economy government does not--and cannot--know where jobs will come from: if it did know, all those interventionist policies for 'picking winners' and 'backing success' would not have picked losers and compounde... (show all)d failure.

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We were seeking to secure greater financial stability, within which business and individuals could operate with confidence. We knew that we could do this only by controlling those things which government could control--namely... (show all) the money supply and public borrowing. Most post-war economic planning, by contrast, sought to control such things as output and employment, which ultimately government could not control, through batteries of regulations on investment, pay and prices, that distorted the operation of the economy and threatened personal liberty.

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...what we were fighting for...was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world--abo... (show all)ve all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force.

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...the generalized approval of the silent majority is no match for the chorus of disapproval from the organized minority.

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...even governments acting on the best of motives are wise to respect legal forms. Above all, democracies have to show their superiority to totalitarian governments which know no law.

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...in foreign affairs, the underlying realities of power are not transformed by meetings and understandings between heads of government. A country with a weak economy, an unstable social base or an ineffective administration ... (show all)cannot compensate for these--at least for long--with an ambitious diplomatic programme. That said, my experience as Prime Minister did convince me that a skilfully conducted foreign policy based in strength can magnify a country's influence and allow progress to be made in dealing with thorny problems around the world.

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...the root cause of our contemporary social problems--to the extent that these did not reflect the timeless influence and bottomless resources of old-fashioned human wickedness--was that the state had been doing too much. A ... (show all)Conservative social policy had to recognize this. Society was made up of individuals and communities. If individuals were discouraged and communities disorientated by the state stepping in to take decisions which should properly be made by people, families and neighbourhoods then society's problems would grow not diminish.

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If irresponsible behaviour does not involve penalty of some kind, irresponsibility will for a large number of people become the norm. More important still, the attitudes may be passed on to their children, setting them off in... (show all) the wrong direction.

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In politics there are no final victories.

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Germany is...by its very nature a destabilizing rather than a stabilizing force in Europe. Only the military and political engagement of the United States in Europe and close relations between the other two strongest sovereig... (show all)n states in Europe--Britain and France--are sufficient to balance German power: and nothing of the sort would be possible within a European super-state.

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...although I am a strong believer in international law, I did not like unnecessary resort to the UN, because it suggested that sovereign states lacked the moral authority to act on their own behalf.

Original language*

Anglais (Royaume-Uni) (Royaume-Uni)