Member

I am mindful that some of the most powerful speeches that have been uttered in this Chamber are those that have been grounded in the wisdom of long experience. They have come not just from people who are relics of a past age and who are stuck in their ways, but often those who surprise us—and sometimes themselves—by admitting they have changed their minds: those whose broad canvases pull us up by pointing out how much has changed in the world around us. Harold Macmillan was just beginning his service in your Lordships’ House when he used his maiden speech, as the first Earl of Stockton, to defend the miners then striking against the Thatcher Government. He was speaking with the benefit of a political career which had begun 60 years earlier as a Member of Parliament for Stockton-on-Tees. He represented that fine north-east town during the General Strike, he fought in the trenches alongside miners and other working men in the Great War, and that is why he knew that the striking miners were the best men in the world: they beat the Kaiser’s army, they beat Hitler’s army, they never gave in.