Talk:Gerald Kaufman
|
|
A note (for posterity) on "the longest suicide note in history": several web sites attribute this to Greg Knight (presumably the former Tory minister, now MP for East Yorks). None gives an attribution, and they may have got it from a common source. Several more reliable sites (Grauniad, Daily Telegraph, various speeches in the Commons) attribute it to Kaufman, but nobody seems to have a firm source for when and where he said or wrote it. Columbia World of Quotations [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/66/7/32107.html) attributes it to Kaufman, citing Denis Healey's autobiography. Kaufman himself referred to it in a May 1997 speech to the Commons [2] (http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo970514/debtext/70514-04.htm), when he said that "someone described the Labour election manifesto as the longest suicide note in history." The phrase has been applied to other documents, including Jeffrey Bernard's column in the Spectator, and (most recently) Iraq's dossier on its weapons of mass destruction. --rbrwr
It should be noted that Kaufman endorsed that "suicide note", and, indeed, was elected on it.
A common theory is that Kaufman's wing of the party sensed a big defeat and decided to let the manifesto go through in such a way so they would be able to shed many of the policies later. Also a manifesto is not written by every single member of the party - frequently in many parties it is brought to the meeting that has to formally approve it only a few hours before it is due to go the press.
- I've just been listening to Christopher Lee's "This Sceptred Isle" (the Radio 4 series) - regarding the 1983 Labour manifesto, Robert Powell reads from a a book or memoir attributed to a Robert Blake (presumably Robert Blake, Baron Blake and "The Conservative Party from Peel to Major"). In this extract Blake attributes the quote to Peter Shore, but I've not found any evidence to support this suggestion. IVoteTurkey 13:12, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)