Josh Self

Replying to @Josh_Self_

Politics.co.uk Verified account @Politics_co_uk · 12h

“It breaks my heart to see – and I cannot interfere – what is happening in our country today. This terrible strike, by the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's and Hitler's armies and never gave in.”

On this day in 1984, former prime minister Harold Macmillan – who had been created Earl of Stockton earlier that year – gave his maiden speech in the Lords.

‘Supermac’ delivered an artful indictment of Thatcherism, and an impassioned restatement of the one nation conservatism that defined his premiership.

The unflappable former prime minister questioned where monetarist theories had really come from. “Was it America?”, he inquired, “Or was it Tibet?”.

He segued into a scathing analogy, telling peers: “Many of your Lordships will remember that it operated in the nursery. One nanny said, ‘Feed a cold’ – she was a neo-Keynesian. The other said, ‘Starve a cold’ – she was a monetarist.”

He judged laissez-faire economics to be “just as bad as collectivism.”

He said: “Good men, good Christian men, like [free traders Richard] Cobden and [John] Bright, closed their eyes to factories working appalling hours, employing children under 12 – and not only hours in the factory, but underground, too.”

He added: “[But] no, the government could not interfere; it was against the doctrine of laissez-faire.

“Once you get a doctrine, that is the end of you. Pragmatic politics are the only good ones.”

He referred to a “terrible strike” being carried out “by the best men in the world” in a thinly veiled criticism of Thatcher’s view of the strikers as the “enemy within”.

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