Harold Wilson

« A week is a long time in politics. »

Attributed remark, lobby briefing, 1964

« The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing. »

Labour Conference speech, 1962

« We cannot accept that this is a little local matter within the control of South Africa's internal affairs. Oppression, apartheid, and racialism—those are crimes against humanity as a whole. »

Speech to a May Day rally in Hyde Park (1 May 1960), quoted inThe Times(2 May 1960), p. 6

« The period of 15 years from the last time we were in Scarborough, in 1960, to the middle of the 1970s, will embrace a period of technical change, particularly in industrial methods, greater than the whole of the industrial revolution of the last 250 years. »

Document du corpus

« This odious doctrine of apartheid at 11-plus. ... We reject it because as a nation we cannot afford artificially to segregate three-quarters of our children, and virtually cut them off from the normal chance of higher education. »

Speech to the Association of Principals of Technical Institutions in London (19 February 1964), quoted inThe Times(20 February 1964), p. 5

« 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 »

Speech in the House of Commons (3 November 1964). The1964 general electionhad seen the defeat of Wilson's Shadow Foreign SecretaryPatrick Gordon WalkerbyConservativePeter Griffithsafter aracist campaign. Griffiths was defeated at the next election but returned to Parliament in 1979 and served until 1997.

« Britain's frontiers are on the Himalayas »

Speech at the opening of the Nehru Memorial Exhibition, Royal Festival Hall, London (10 June 1965), quoted in "The Guardian" (11 June 1965), p. 1

« 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. »

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1965), quoted inThe Times(29 September 1965), p. 5.

« I know I speak for everyone in these islands, all parties, all our people, when I say to Mr. Smith tonight: "Prime Minister, think again". »

Broadcast (12 October 1965), quoted inThe Times(13 October 1965), p. 8, calling on the Government ofRhodesianot todeclare independence.

« We have taken steps which have not been taken by any other democratic government in the world. We are taking steps with regard to prices and wages which no other government, even in wartime, has taken. »

Speech in the White House (29 July 1966), quoted inThe Times(30 July 1966), p. 1

« The greatest enemy that lies in our path in creating the kind of Britain we want to create is conservatism in all its forms. We cannot afford Tory conservatism, with its smug preoccupation, complacently looking on while the rest of the world passes us by. »

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton (4 October 1966), quoted inThe Times(5 October 1966), p. 16

« He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. »

Speech to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France (23 January 1967), quoted inThe New York Times(24 January 1967), p. 12.