I earnestly hope that the Government will give unprejudiced attention to the suggestions I have ventured to make. They are put forward in no spirit of controversy but in the general interest. If we do not get this country going again pretty soon, if we do not get the great wheels turning, we may lose for ever our rightful place in the post-war economic world and we may involve our finances in dire and irretrievable confusion. It is no party matter, but one in which the House as a whole should make its opinion felt in a way that will override all hesitations and obstacles which are found in the path. In order to bring us all together, I will end this practical discourse in a philosophic vein. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. In the present case, where an overwhelming majority of Service men and women would gain the blessings, can we not unite on the broad democratic principle of “the greatest good of the greatest number”?

Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 22 October 1945

It may be necessary for us to seek and accept American aid in the plight into which we have fallen, but it should be the first aim of every Briton to free ourselves from that condition at the earliest moment, not only by hard work but by laying aside every impediment and above all by not allowing party doctrines and party fads to impede the national effort and rob the people of the fruits of their exertions and sacrifices.

How Socialist ministers can go about bragging of their social programme and of the nationalisation of industry on Party grounds, how they can deride the system of free enterprise and capitalism which makes America so great and wealthy, and then at the same time eagerly seek the aid which has hitherto been so generously granted from across the Atlantic, is a position which baffles the limitations of [our] language to explain.

We are oppressed by a deadly fallacy. Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. Unless we free our country while time remains from the perverse doctrines of Socialism, there can be no hope for recovery. This island cannot maintain its population as a great power. The most energetic and the nimblest will emigrate, and we shall be left here with a board of safe officials brooding over a vast mass of worried, hungry and broken human beings. Our place in the world will be lost forever, and not only our individual self-respect but our national independence will be gone. These hard-won privileges have been dear to us in the past. But all this structure of obstinacy and unwisdom erected for Party and not national aims must be viewed in the light of the supreme and dominating fact of our present position. The Socialist Government in London has become dependent upon the generosity of the capitalist system of the United States.

We are not earning our own living or paying our way, nor do the Government hold out any prospect of our doing so in the immediate future. It is this terrible fact which glares upon us all.

I had hoped that the thousand million loan we borrowed from the United States in 1945 would be used to tide us over the transition from war to peace and that it would give us at least 4 years’ breathing-space to adjust our affairs after the exhaustions of the war. It was spent and largely squandered in 2 years and we are now dependent upon further American generosity and also eating up from hand to mouth the remaining overseas investments and assets accumulated under the capitalist system of former years.

As my friend in the corner so naively said in the House of Commons the other day, “We are eating the Argentine Railways this year, what are we going to eat next year?

Winston Churchill, Perth (May, 1948)

Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be. There is a great gulf fixed. It is not a gulf of method, it is a gulf of principle … Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference … Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly.

Winston Churchill (May 1908)

The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.

Winston Churchill, Wolverhampton, CS VII, 7835 (July 23, 1949)