YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Heseltine

lines on the record: 50
first: 2023-01-16
most recent: 2023-01-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And no, and I know you because you like making fun of me. I weren't there, I'd be a void in your life. But the idea of retirement has never occurred to me, and I am extraordinarily lucky. First I have a wonderful family. Secondly, I am still involved in the company I created. Thirdly, I am a gardener and I have the ultimate privilege of being invited to podcasts of this sort.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're thinking about it, don't do it because it's a grinding, grueling profession with some upsides, but a lot of downsides. So you have to have the will and the energy and the commitment and the vision to really want to do it. But if you have that, it is the center of the stage. In the end, it's where you can make a difference. And what difference you can make must be up to you because it's your viewers and not mine that you're going to drive you on. But it is the most exhilarating, satisfying, bewildering commitment you can make if you said to me it's another version, the same question if you were 21, would you make the same decisions? Absolutely. And if I have one great resentment today, I haven't got any time.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd have to have notice of that question, whether I can think of people. There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't have great speeches. Indeed, they will. I mean, human history is about great speeches, and there will come a time. And indeed, if there was a need today, it is for someone who can take The traumatic position this country faces and analyze it and vision in its place.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I know, but I can't resist a joke because the joke is one of my post-dinner party best jokes. Say that I got slaughtered. Actually, it's not true. I did have a swing with the Conservatives.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, this was, I was fighting Gawa, and of course, a huge Labour majority, so I had very few helpers and no audience and nothing. So there was this advertisement in the South Wales Evening Post. Labour Party of South Wales will gather in the Elysium cinema on a Sunday evening at 8 o'clock. And the right honourable Nau and Bevan will dress. And they all came, and in the dark and thousands of us, and there was I at the third balcony. And they all came, and Nivan got up and said, first of all, I want to introduce Percy Mummy, Swansea West, Dy Mort, Swanseast. And then I've for Davis, the new candidate for God, you have both the candidates for Gar here tonight. Ah, said Neiban, I hear the voice of an Englishman.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that it was probably there. I don't think you can train people to make the sort of speeches. Looking back at those speeches, you communicate intellectually with an audience, but you have to communicate as well emotionally. And you felt it happen. It was extraordinary. And no one told me you've got it. It just came. But of course, once you knew you had it, then you realized you had to keep using it because those speeches, which some people think were quite good, some people think were perhaps appalling. They saved me, actually. They saved me because Margaret wanted to sack three people. Peter Walker, Paul Channon, and myself, and it was in the economist. These three are going. And I was saved because on the day of the execution, I was speaking from the Tory front bench in company with Margaret to a meeting of small businessmen.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there have been some very serious allegations of that sort. And I think that it could be got back, but it requires political leadership, and that can only come from the leader of the party, the Prime Minister in power.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They couldn't bring themselves to talk about sort of workers as shirkers and all that terrible sort of jargon. They were the people they'd fought alongside, Peter Carrington's tank was hit. There were sort of other guys in that tank with him, you know?”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A very interesting difference when I first got into the parliament in 1966, the orphan of the storm, there were 11 of us new members of parliament on the conservative benches. And it was commonplace to listen to members rise in their place to talk about my honourable and gallant friend. This was the aftermath of the war that the gallant applied to people who had held a field rank in the military. I think that was a formative part of post-war politics that although parodying the situation to an extent, the non-commissioned officers came out and became the trade union leaders. The officers came out and became the Tory candidates. And you can't escape, I mean, Willie Whitelaw and Peter Carrington Brigader Guard's officers at some of the toughest battles. And they...”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I remember saying to him at the time that we were in power with the Lib Dems, and I sat with Joe in the council chamber in Liverpool, and I said, this is carrying coalition itis too far.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge benefit of believing that you did something rather special. And I have to tell you there were tears in my eyes when Joe Anderson, the Labour Mayor of Liverpool, who's quite short, stood alongside.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no. Look, I want to come back to an important point. On the big issues where I have perhaps had some real experience, which is urban regeneration, I have worked with labour leaders and councillors, and there's never been a debate at all about the politics of the decisions. It's all been about how do we solve these practical issues of the fact that there's devolt or that there's not enough opportunity or whatever it may be. And I would, well, I mean, what can I say to labor control Liverpool who gave me the freedom of the city? I mean, how do you?”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the real dividing line tends to be ownership and taxation about creating the conditions of individualism. And the Labour Party, I don't think, are good at that. I mean, they are the party of the great machine, the great union power, the more extreme they move to the socialist communist model, which is a statist we know best, we tell you.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's about a veneration of tradition. It's about a conviction of the role of the individual. It's about the liberty and the tolerance and the culture of individualism and freedom. It's about respect for energy and initiative. It's about believing that there is within each of us a degree of talent and a degree of ability. And you should create the circumstances in which each individual can pursue that to the greatest of their ability and to the better of common accord. And you should therefore hesitate before you constrain that enormous talent that people have.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's another story, but that very funny story. But the issue of fighting liberals, I used to fight. And in Tavistock, when I was elected, There were two liberals in this constituency, but I'm going to win. And I did win.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think probably. I don't know what I'm going to say to them because I don't really know what the conservative platform is going to be. But equally, it's very difficult to see how I could vote for somebody else.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's my problem. So, what do you say? I mean, I'm not going to, but I could name your great swathe of my friends, even my family who are saying just that to me.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be difficult for me. I'm a member of the party. It was a very important point since they took the whip away, but they don't mind taking my money. So I deliberately give money to the Scots Conservatives because they're actually pro-European. So my conscience is absolutely clear. But the real question for me is do you leave the party and leave the field or do you stay and fight? And my position is clear. I am a conservative. You cannot be more conservative in record or conviction in a lifetime than me. And so I'm not prepared to be silenced within the party. If the party wants to move its policies, that's up to it. But they're not going to make me change my fundamental”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's quite right. But when you talk to Margaret and you argued with her, you could persuade her. And that, of course, one of Margaret's greatest achievements, without any shadow of doubt, is the single European market, the market. People say ignorance in this country as to what goes on in Europe. British civil servants queue up to fly to Brussels to be part of the machine. And Margaret was not prepared, quite rightly, to let the French and Germans fix the single market like they fixed the common agricultural policy when we kept away. So she sent Arthur Cofield there to fix it for Britain, quite rightly, and brilliantly did he achieve it. So the idea that there are all these nameless foreigners out there, they're all Brits or French or Germans or whatever it may be.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But curious enough, Margaret, that was one of her, she started here. Foreigners, we don't like foreigners, but Europe, we don't like all that.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Policy anyway. And curious enough, my first revote on the Conservative Party, which was in the 60s, was over the race relations legislation. Wilson, I think, Wilson legislation.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I lost the whip because I voted for Parliament to be given the last say on Brexit. And three weeks after I lost the whip, the government decided that was what they were going to do.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the advantage of hindsight. When I did the things I did, starting in London, not Liverpool, no one believed that I knew what I was doing. Well, I can tell you, when I was in Liverpool, I'll never forget someone on the streets shouting, give us jobs, not trees, because I'd given them a garden festival. So the only benefit I've had, and I'm very proud of it, is years later. And this is, and we haven't talked about regeneration, but there is no short-term fix for regeneration. It's a long-term grind with certain very clear objectives. And so can take comfort from the thought that he's begun to articulate what he wants to try and achieve. If it works, then he'll get the credit. He's short of time, let's be frank, the general election not very far away.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did to produce the circumstances we've got. We've now got inflation. And of course I can say what people are saying, give a bit more. But this is never one off. Every time you give something to someone, someone else says they got it, I want it. And so the inflationary pressures build on themselves. And the only alternative is an element of sacrifice.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that, in a sense, it's what he's saying. And if I was advising him, I would say, look, let's be upfront. You're talking about honesty in politics. Now, let's be honest. Here is a guy who spent extraordinary sums of money of taxpayers' money, borrowed money, in order to combat the most horrendous threat which COVID was, now looks less of a threat, but at the time completely unpredictable with the most awful consequences. And Vichy, first of all, provided the cash to deal with COVID, but produced enormous sums of money to subsidize the people's jobs. And he should be upfront about that. This is what I spent. Of course, it's part of our problem today. And there's a price to pay, and all of us are going to pay it. And I wish it was otherwise, but I would not have changed anything.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it did come over in the sense that he had thought about the issues. He had thought about what people were concerned about, and he was trying to identify with people's concerns, which I suspect he did, that people heard all these points. And he knows what he's doing. Now, what I would expect to see him do is to start trying to say month by month, these are the ways in which The things I promised you are happening. We haven't yet seen, and maybe that's because he's not that sort of person. Where's the vision? Where's the language? Where's the retrovik? Where's the high ground? And he's helped, of course, because his opponent hasn't much skill in that direction either.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you as a genius of the PR political world would have said to him, you've got five points, keep repeating them. Keep repeating them. No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. I don't”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, well, this is where we will see because he's got five plans. And in his interview with Loa Koonsberg, I think he repeated them at least six times.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think that Richie has brought sanity back to British politics. It's a very interesting contrast. I think I understand what he's doing, and I respect it. We've had a roller coaster used quite dramatic language, if you like, about recent Prime Ministers. But what I think Riches said is, look, we've really got to do some hard grind on these big issues. And that means sitting in number 10 with people who understand and working out the details and bringing back the changes that are needed. And that's all rather boring because what people want is someone flying all over the place and waving a flag or jumping in and out of a tank.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was in the House of Commons, yes. So I was in my 30s. The Labour government knew that the Union power had to be confronted. Okay, they didn't do it, and there's plenty of reasons why. I think Jim Callaghan wasn't keen on doing what Hal Wilson wanted to do. But in the end, he played the price because the winter of discontent of 1978 was perhaps one of the most acute social tensions of our modern time. And that was under a Labour government. And that was a year before we came to power in 79. So although you can argue with those Torial Labour who did it, the fact is that all governments knew this issue had to be confronted.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a brain in the end, and there were so many examples of that. But just going back to your question to Alistair, which let me help him, the real confrontation was 1968. Arbor Castle and Hal Wilson White Paper in place of strife. And so the Labour government”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you are right that Margaret wasn't particularly reactive personality. I've always said about Margaret there were two Margaret's one here, the gut, one here. This was very high quality.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Merely hardened the view we can't let them get away with this. And it was a brilliant exercise. Peter Walker, Nigel Lawson, who just piled up the coal at the pits and the power stations.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, you will never know because what you will never know is what people will be like under pressure. But I think he'd been a good prime minister. The descending issue of the trade union power, which was actually where 1979 pushed us, there was complete unity in the cabinet. Indeed, the extraordinary thing about Margaret's cabinet is it was Ted's cabinet given a second chance. And that was invaluable because we were battle hardened and experienced and we knew what we're going to do. There was no dissent. And Willie would have done it in the same way that we all did it. And again, quite in my view, perfectly understandably, we didn't win the first confrontation with the miners. We had to compromise. But that...”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ran down my department by 3% per annum, which was way. And Margaret looked at the techniques I was using and thought they were so impressive that she invited me to give what frankly was a tutorial to the cabinet. It was a disaster. You can imagine, I mean, because it meant really detailed graft and exploration of things like organograms and spreadsheets. And you can imagine Quinton Hailsham and Willie Whitelaw sitting there being told by this extraordinary phenomenon from the Welsh valleys, well, not the valleys, but from Swansea, and a small businessman and all this, telling us, you know, the great figures of historic”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in part, I've just described as colleagues a very good relationship. I mean, that doesn't mean to say we liked each other or were friends. That's ridiculous. That's not the nature of the relationships of people in business or universities or hospitals or politics. But you work alongside someone with someone and sometimes you work for somebody. And in my experience with Margaret, she knew what I believed. And it often coincided with what she believed. Indeed, in some curious ways, she tried to use me to change the process of government. There was a disastrous evening. Because if you look at the number of ministers who actually ran their departments and ran them the way Margaret wanted, I come out top of the queue. I mean, I close down more quangos even than Keith Joseph. I beat him by...”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm so proud of it. And I would do it again. Yes, absolutely. So putting the thing in context, who did Margaret put into the front line on the two great battles that she fought on Sailor Council houses and on the defeat of CND? Me. And our relationship with Margaret as a colleague was a very good one. She thought, she told the chief whip Michael Jopling that she thought I was her natural successor. It was until the European issue became the focal point of her concern that I felt the time had come to go.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chinese did it just, but I think the answer is much simpler that he who wheels a knife never wears the crown. And Margaret had a great following in the party, and I was perceived to be the person who had brought her down. And of course I did play her part in it. I also think I'd help save the party because I got rid of the poll tax as part of the process. We'd have got decimated if we'd fought with the poll tax in place. But that did cause a great division and I was the cause, or seemed to be the cause.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Process. And to my pleasure, I thought, well, that's good news, but I never heard another word. And it was later after the referendum, I talked to a senior guy in number 10. I said, why did you never use me? And they said, because you were perceived to be too European, that you might have said you liked the idea of the Euro and we don't have that. I think what David Cameron did was to look at the public opinion polls which showed that a lot of the European issue, resentments all about economics. So David focused his defense of the European venture on economic grounds. Actually, there's no emotion in economics. The real issue for Europe are thousand years of warfare.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, I did a bit of research on this and curiously enough, about a month ago, I got a letter from a former Tory MP who told me that David Cameron had told him that he couldn't use him in the referendum campaign because he was too pro-European. And that struck a chord with me because just about the time before the referendum campaign I was invited to go to an evening occasion which had politicians of serious stature from all parties and I was asked to make my European view clear and I made the speech and forgive me for saying so but unanimously people came up and we've never heard that said before we've never understood the basis upon which all this happened and you must be part of the”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's perfectly fair. But my guess is that as a failure to deliver Brexit, because it never could be delivered, but as it becomes more clear and as the frustrations grow, and as the younger generation become a much larger part of the electorate, it may not create anger, but it might create an intellectual understanding.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The younger generation. Because to me, the most appalling thing of Brexit is what it's done to the younger generation because it has really said to them, look, you may all feel that we're in the same continent and there are all these environmental issues that are going to affect us and all sorts of other big international things. But you're not going to be at the table where these things are discussed. Sorry about that because we know best. We're independent. We're free. We're going to be a new imperial power or whatever rubbish you want to put. And they can see that they are the European colleagues all together taking decisions in which they have no part.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when you're facing your ninetieth birthday, questions about your longevity have a certain sensitivity, if I may put it to you frankly. So I'm not going to get a secret. I'm not going to get carried away and say we're going to be having a new referendum tomorrow. But do I think that we'll change? Yes, I do.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them somebody else. And if you can throw in a few foreigners with red tape, tying us and shackling us, how much more coherent is that to people feeling that they're”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that is true. And I think, of course, we've given an awful lot of thought to this issue. In a curious way, I don't think the referendum was about Europe. Of course, it technically was. But what were people really voting about? And I think if you ask that question, they were voting for change. And if you're going to argue for change, the important thing is to dangle in front of people something that they can identify that they want to change. Well, the first thing, you've always got to do, and this is true of all general elections, is prosperity. You've got to show them hope that things can get economically better for them. Now you've got to have some people to blame. And who are you going to blame? Well, it's quite important politically not to blame people who might vote for you. So the important thing is to have foreigners.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was part of a movement within the University Conservative Association to get a more democratic franchise for the election of officers, and we started to breakaway organization called the Blue Ribbon Club. And the Blue Ribbon Club, not surprisingly, had a blue cover for its membership, but it had three interwoven circles on the cover. And they were, of course, Commonwealth, the United States, and Europe interwoven. And I was 18, 19 at that time.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“However you want to think about it, we did play the most incredible role from 1939 to 1940. We were alone and we really were. We should also say, of course, with the backing, the incredible backing of the Commonwealth and Empire countries. But in the immediate context of our homeland, we were alone and threatened, threatened by the submarines, the U-boats in the Atlantic. And of course then came the remarkable speech that Chachilean speech, we must create a kind of United States of Europe. That was the background to my early political experiences. Now, it's been questioned. What did he mean? Some say he didn't mean us, but he didn't say they should create. He said we must create.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Must never happen again. People talk about Europe as a sort of economic phenomenon, not an economic phenomenon. If you look a thousand years of our history, what were we doing there, battling with virtually every European nation, battling across the world? For the people of my generation, they remember three wars in three quarters of a century, Franco-Prussian War, First World War, Second World War. And the absolute obsessional conviction It must never happen again. It didn't start with economics. It started with the Schumann plan, which was basically to try and get a grip on the war-making industries, coal, iron and steel. It became a wider platform. And it presented for this country a very understandable and traumatic choice.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think the two events are in any way linked because I don't think I knew the Hitler analogy until much later. But of course, why I do remember a European experience is because I lived through the Second World War. I actually remember standing in the garden of our home in Swansea with my grandfather watching the searchlights, searching for the German bombers. We had a little dog and he knew every night the bombers would come and he'd be sitting at the top of the stairs waiting to go to the cellars. We weren't there the whole of the war because we followed my father, but we were there enough of it to know of the experience. And my first very clear memories are broadly associated with the feeling in Europe it might be.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's not one I'm proud to recall, but it is a matter of historic fact. It was the day that Hitler took power in Nazi Germany.”
2023-01-16 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source