QUOTE OF THE MONTH [bonus]

'The trouble with this nation is that we have been brainwashed for years into believing that “it can't be done”. Britain has become the “Mr Can't” of the modern world. There are too many who are glad to sit around her, like Job's comforters, explaining why no great change is possible and that therefore she had better like or lump it. We moan and mope about our nationalized industries, which put nearly £1billion a year on to the borrowing requirement of the Exchequer and lose another £180million a year on top of that; but as soon as anyone suggests that if you don't like them, you had better set about getting shot of them and calling in private enterprise and the capital market to do the job, a whole chorus starts up to tell you not to think of such a thing. They don't even say “How wonderful it would be if that were possible! There must be some way or other to surmount the obstacles. Let's try and find it”. They seem not merely reconciled to the impossibility, but positively delighted about it.

 

The same applies to taxation. We have got into a frame of mind in which we are resigned to carrying approximately the same load of taxation until Kingdom Come, and think ourselves mighty lucky if it gets no heavier. So we spend our time debating whether it wouldn't be a bit more comfortable if we shifted a little of the load from one shoulder to the other. Why, only yesterday the Conservative Party conference chose to debate not reduction of taxation – oh dear, no; nothing so wild and irresponsible as that – but taking a bit of taxation off some people and putting it on to other people. Mind, you can hardly blame the public if they regard the tax burden as a whole as being something no more to be altered than the English weather or the other dispensations of providence. After all, during thirteen years of Conservative administration they watched the proportion of public expenditure to national income move downwards until 1958 and then move back up again till it was at the same level when Labour came back in 1964 as when Labour went out in 1951. It begins to look as if there were some law of nature behind it all and that one might as well try to eliminate gravitation as reduce taxation. The same chorus make their appearance, like the chorus of old men in a Greek tragedy, to sing to you the dirge of fate and tell you that every other nation is taxed just as much, or nearly as much, and so you had better keep a stiff upper lip, and shut up about it.

 

This is a perfect breeding ground for socialism. When the population are reduced to a condition of apathy and of disbelieving that it could ever be very different, the virus – I had to get that word in! - attacks them. The Tempter whispers in their ear: “Why struggle? In any case you can't escape. State socialism has all the inevitability of gradualness. So why don't you be sensible? Relax and enjoy it.”

 

Maybe we shall. I don't know. What I do know is that we don't have to. We are free to choose. We are free, if we wish, to choose a dramatic retrenchment in the claims of public expenditure and a drastic reduction in taxation.'

Enoch Powell then set out his own budget, during which he observed that: 'All government expenditure is popular with somebody, and large government expenditure is popular with large numbers of people.' He concluded his speech by returning to Mr Can't:

'The material words are “if it wills”. Of course, it is not easy; the easy things have always been done before you get there. Of course, it demands an intensive effort, spread over the lifetime of a parliament, and the criticism and abandonment of institutions and attitudes, some of which we have ourselves defended and even initiated. Of course, it means that big vested interests, bureaucratic and sectional, must be confronted, and confronted openly and directly. All I say is: there is a choice, the choice is open, and it is yours. Let no one cheat you out of your right to take part in that choice, to make your voice heard on one side or the other, by telling you that there is no choice at all and the thing is impossible. We are surrounded all day long by the great throng of those who lecture us on what we cannot do, until in the end John Bull is replaced as the national type by Mr Can't.

 

By all means, if you prefer it, go staggering along with your present growing load of taxation, with your present diminishing voice in the disposal of the national income which you create. The process slowed down a little at first when the Conservatives were in, and it has speeded up again since the socialists came in; but the caravan still moves unmistakenly onward and upward. If that is you pleasure and your decision, by all means go along with it. But let it never be said that you took no decision at all because you thought that there was none to take. Only that is impossible which you have not the will to do.'

Enoch Powell speaking at a Conservative Rally at the Alhambra Theatre, Morcambe, 11 October 1968