More about John Calvin at Calvin 500

Return to Ealing

Return to Ealing, by John Betjeman (1961)

Return, return to Ealing, 
Worn poet of the farm! 
Regain your boyhood feeling
Of uninvaded calm! 
For there the leafy avenues
Of lime and chestnut mix’d
Do widely wind, by art designed, 
The costly houses ’twixt. 

No early morning tractors
The thrush and blackbird drown, 
No nuclear reactors
Bulge huge below the down, 
No youth upon his motor-bike
His lust for power fulfil
With dentist’d drill intent to kill
The silence of the hills. 

In Ealing on a Sunday
Bell-haunted quiet falls, 
In Ealing on a Monday
‘Milk-o!’ the milkman calls; 
No lorries grind in bottom gear
Up steep and narrow lanes, 
Nor constant here offend the ear
Low-flying aeroplanes. 

Return, return to Ealing, 
Worn poet of the farm! 
Regain your boyhood feeling
Of uninvaded calm! 
Where smoothly glides the bicycle
And softly flows the Brent
And a gentle gale from Perivale
Sends up the hayfield scent. 

RIP Margaret Thatcher 8 Apr 2013

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive. --Margaret Thatcher

I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, and my fai hair gently waved: the Iron Lady of the Western World! - Margaret Thatcher , speech in Finchley 31 Jan 1976, after the Red Army newspaper had given her the name.

I an the rebel head of an Establishment government - Margaret Thatcher quoted in Hugo Young, One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher p. 242"

Creating wealth must be seen as a Christian obligation if we are to fulfill our role as stewards of the resources and talents The Creator has provided for us. - Margaret Thatcher, speech to a Conservative Women's Conference, London, 1981 in Andrew Thomson, Margaret Thatcher: The Woman Within, pp 68-69

I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. "I have a problem, I'll get a grant." "I'm homeless, the government must house me." They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation. - - Margaret Thatcher"Aids, Education and the Year 2000," Woman's Own, 3 October 1987,Page 10

There is a living tapestry of men and women, and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend on how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves. And each of us, by our own efforts, is prepared to turn round and help those less fortunate. - - Margaret Thatcher"Aids, Education and the Year 2000," Woman's Own, 3 October 1987,Page 10

Parliament isn't the great institution of life. Churches are your great institutions, as are your great voluntary associations. And you're entitled to look to them and say, "Look, there are certain standards, and if you undermine fundamentally these standards you'll be changing our way of life." When the authority of those institutions is undermined because they haven't been forthright [about the behavior that causes the spread of AIDS], it is then that people turn too much to the State.- Margaret Thatcher"Aids, Education and the Year 2000," Woman's Own, 3 October 1987,Page 10

Class is a communist concept. It groups people in bundles, and sets them against one another. Margaret Thatcher in Brenda Maddox, Maggie the First Lady,

Enemies within are those who do not believe in the democratic system but who will use violence or intimidation - some means other than democracy - to attain their ends. - Margaret Thatcher, speaking on Channel 4 TV quoted in Brenda Maddox, Maggie the First Lady, p160

To have the state as servant and not as master - Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power,p372

America, my friends, is the only country in the world actually founded on liberty-- the only one. People went to America to be free. -- Margaret Thatcher

Any set of social and economic arrangements which is not founded on the acceptance of individual responsibility will do nothing but harm. We are all responsible for our own actions. We cannot blame society if we disobey the law. We simply cannot delegate the exercise of mercy and generosity to others.
Margaret Thatcher, speech to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, 21.5.88

Regarding Christianity and public policy: "May I also say a few words about my personal belief in the relevance of Christianity to public policy - to the things that are Caesar's? The Old Testament lays down in Exodus the Ten Commandments as given to Moses, the injunction in Leviticus to love our neighbour as ourselves, and generally the importance of observing a strict code of law. The New Testament is a record of the Incarnation, the teachings of Christ, and the establishment of the kingdom of God. Again we have the emphasis on loving our neighbour as ourselves and to 'Do-as-you-would-be-done-by.' I believe that by taking together these key elements from the Old and New Testaments, we gain a view of the universe, a proper attitude to work and principles to shape economic and social life. We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. 'If a man will not work he shall not eat,' wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of Creation.
Margaret Thatcher, speech to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, 21.5.88

Nevertheless, the Tenth Commandment - 'Thou shalt not covet' - recognises that making money and owning things could become selfish activities. But it is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but love of money for its own sake. The spiritual dimension comes in deciding what one does with the wealth. How could we respond to the many calls for help, or invest for the future, or support the wonderful artists or craftsmen whose work also glorifies God, unless we had first worked hard and used our talents to create the necessary wealth? -- Margaret Thatcher, speech to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, 21.5.88

I think back to many discussions in my early life when we all agreed that if you try to take the fruits of Christianity without its roots, the fruits will wither. And they will not come again unless you nurture the roots. But we must not profess the Christian faith and go to church simply because we want social reforms and benefits or a better standard of behaviour - but because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn: 'When I survey the wondrous Cross/ on which the Prince of Glory died/ My richest gain I count but loss/ and pour contempt on all my pride.'--Margaret Thatcher, speech to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, 21.5.88

When Abraham Lincoln spoke in his famous Gettysburg speech of 1863 of 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people,' he gave the world a neat definition of democracy which has since been widely and enthusiastically adopted. But what he enunciated as a form of government was not in itself especially Christian, for nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned. Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together, their purpose is not (or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit - something which may be quite different.
Nevertheless I am an enthusiast for democracy. And I take that position, not because I believe majority opinion is inevitably right or true - indeed no majority can take away God-given human rights - but because I believe it most effectively safeguards the value of the individual, and, more than any other system, restrains the abuse of power by the few. And that is a Christian concept.
Margaret Thatcher, speech to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, 21.5.88

Recently there have been great debates about religious education. I believe politicians must see that religious education has a proper place in the school curriculum. The Christian religion - which, of course, embodies many of the great spiritual and moral truths of Judaism - is a fundamental part of our national heritage. For centuries it has been our very lifeblood. Indeed we are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible. Also, it is quite impossible to understand our history or literature without grasping this fact. That is the strong practical case for ensuring that children at school are given adequate instruction in the part which the Judaic-Christian tradition has played in molding our laws, manners, and institution. How can you make sense of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, or of the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century in both Scotland and England, without some such knowledge? But I go further than this. The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long.
Margaret Thatcher, speech to theChurch of Scotland General Assembly, 21.5.88

The Old Testament prophets did not say,"Brothers. I want a consensus."--Margaret Thatcher

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It is not a day when you lounge around doing nothing: it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it. Margaret Thatcher

In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations of the world -
Baroness Thatcher at the Conservative conference , The Times, 9.10.99

I owe nothing to Women's Lib. Margaret Thatcher The Observer December 1, 1974

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.
Margaret Thatcher, Woman's Own, 31 October 1987.

We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state. -- Margaret Thatcher

One can never do without straightforward common sense in matters great as well as small. -- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p31

We still have to find some way of combining Christian charity with sensible social policy-- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p11

Personal virtue is no substitute for political hard-headedness.-- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p11

I had the patriotic conviction that, given great leadership of the sort I heard from Winston Churchill in the radio broadcasts to which we listened, there was almost nothing that the British people could not do.- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p31

I came across some of my father's loose sermon notes slipped into the back of my sixth form chemistry exercise book.
"Men, nations, races or any particular generation cannot be saved by ordinances, power, legislation. We worry about all these things, and our faith becomes weak and faltering. But all these things are as old as the human race - all these things confronted Jesus 2,000 years ago...This is why Jesus had to come."
My father lived these convictions to the end. .- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p164

The common law will remain the basis of our legal system, and our Courts will continue to operate as they do at present..- British Government White paper 1971 on the effects of the proposed entry into the European Common Market,, quoted in Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p210

Communism was the regime for the priveleged elite, capitalism the creed for the common man..- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p156

Your President, President Clinton, he is a great communicator. The trouble is he has absolutely nothing to communicate.
Margaret Thatcher in Memories of Maggie, ed Iain Dale.

When Gladstone met Michael Faraday, he asked him whether his work on electricity would be of any use. "Yes, sir" remarked Faraday with prescience, "One day you will tax it." .- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p176

It was the religious writing of that High Anglican C.S.Lewis which had most impact upon my intellectual religious formation.--Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, Harper Collins,1995, p40