Jo Grimond
Overview
 
Quotations

Our long-term objective is clear: to replace the Labour Party as the progressive wing of politics in this country.

November 1953, quoted in Alan Watkins The Liberal Dilemma (Macgibbon and Kee, 1966) p. 91.

Neither the Government nor the local authorities make any wealth or have any money of their own. If we want them to spend more and more we have to pay. The remedy is in our hands. Stop running to them asking them to do this, that and everything under the sun - and demand instead that they stop doing and spending so much.

February 1957, quoted in Michael McManus Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire (Birlinn, 2001) p. 120.

In bygone days, commanders were taught that when in doubt, they should march their troops towards the sound of gunfire. I intend to march my troops towards the sound of gunfire.

"Mr. Grimond names 'enemy we march against'", The Times, 16 September 1963, p. 6.

After listening to the debate on unemployment I can see a danger that Liberals lose to the Tories their claim to have new and sensible ideas and are left saying "Me too" to a Socialist conventional wisdom which is failing...The salient need of this country—to produce more and much more efficiently—hardly figured on the agenda.

The Sunday Times (19 September, 1976).

The state owned monopolies are among the greatest millstones round the neck of the economy...Liberals must stress at all times the virtues of the market, not only for efficiency but to enable the widest possible choice...Much of what Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph say and do is in the mainstream of liberal philosophy.

Jo Grimond, The Future of Liberalism (October, 1980).

Now the employer is to be told that if the unions force him to pay exorbitant wages or go out of business if he tries to continue, he will be taxed. The unions will escape any punishment. The employer will not be allowed to increase employment by paying lower wages nor to attract good labour by paying higher wages. We shall have another huge department to supervise the whole operation...an incomes policy is minted in the thinking of 1945.

In The Spectator (25 September, 1982).

 
x
OK