Rolling back the years – Facts4EU revisits the inspirational ‘Bruges Speech’

If one speech can still inspire to this day, imagine what an organised movement can do

Montage © Facts4EU.Org and Stand for Our Sovereignty 2025

The renowned British fighting spirit can turn everything around and make Britain great again

The country is entering a turning point in its history. Readers have seen a few false dawns in their lives but there’s something about what is going on this time that is different.

This time, the slogans such as “It’s time for change”, “A new kind of politics”, or “A third way” from new political wannabe parties (or those who need to reinvent themselves) have been dwarfed by the “Enough is enough” mentality of a very large proportion of the British population and this time it’s coming from them. This time it’s being spontaneously driven from the grassroots.

The political party that can bottle that will find its product selling like there’s no tomorrow. Indeed, judging from our mailbag, some people are beginning to wonder if there will be a tomorrow if the government continues on its present track. Underlying the majority of these emails are positive messages, however. “At last!!” forms the start of many of these.

Defeatism didn’t win WWI or II, or the Falklands. The indomitable British fighting spirit did.

Like her or loathe her, few embodied this spirit more strongly than Margeret Thatcher

The speech of the late Baroness Thatcher in Bruges, Belgium has been invoked many times - by individuals of each side of the debate on European integration. Federalists have used it to justify their support for an EU superstate and empire, by selectively quoting short phrases.

In fact Margaret Thatcher’s speech became famous for its renunciation of the ‘European Community’ project. On the positive side she spoke of the opportunities, such as the “willing co-operation between independent, sovereign states”, “perusing policies that relate supply more closely to market requirements”, and the “need for the Community to encourage enterprise”.

On the other hand, her overriding message can not have been much clearer. She was firmly against the tyranny of the creation of one enormous country (as yet unnamed at that point, but which we now know as the European Union.

We start with the speech on video. Below that are some selected quotations.

Baroness Thatcher's 'Bruges Speech'
in September 1988.

Selected excerpts

For readers unable to watch the video right now because of the environment they reading this in, we are also publishing the text of some quotes we have chosen from the full speech.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Some key excerpts from Baroness Thatcher's Bruges Speech, 1988

The opening words

“Mr. Chairman, you have invited me to speak on the subject of Britain and Europe. Perhaps I should congratulate you on your courage. If you believe some of the things said and written about my views on Europe, it must seem rather like inviting Genghis Khan to speak on the virtues of peaceful coexistence!”

On the United Kingdom’s sacrifices for Europe

“But we British have in a very special way contributed to Europe. Over the centuries we have fought to prevent Europe from falling under the dominance of a single power. We have fought and we have died for her freedom.”

Other quotations from the speech

“The Community is not an end in itself. Nor is it an institutional device to be constantly modified according to the dictates of some abstract intellectual concept. Nor must it be ossified by endless regulation.”

“To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardise the objectives we seek to achieve.”

“We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

“If we cannot reform those Community policies which are patently wrong or ineffective and which are rightly causing public disquiet, then we shall not get the public support for the Community's future development.”

“The lesson of the economic history of Europe in the 70's and 80's is that central planning and detailed control do not work and that personal endeavour and initiative do. That a State-controlled economy is a recipe for low growth and that free enterprise within a framework of law brings better results.”

“Our aim should not be more and more detailed regulation from the centre: it should be to deregulate and to remove the constraints on trade.”

And finally

“Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour. Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic community—that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic—which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength.”

Feeling inspired to fight back?

Now there are two ways to do this which we can recommend. There is Facts4EU, pumping out well-researched reports on a daily basis for almost 10 years. Tomorrow GB News will be publishing the second part of our special asylum series which we have worked on with SOS. (See below.) Facts4EU loses money every day and will have to scale back significantly unless more of our thousands of readers donate.

Latest EU papers from Starmer's 'Re-set' show we're now going to be dragged back into the EU more rapidly than anyone thought. We need to re-build our team - fast. If you want us to do this, please donate right now.

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Don't leave this to someone else. You are that 'someone else'.

And now there's another way you can make a difference

Secondly, there is the relatively new organisation we co-founded with some other like-minded organisations. Since its launch in July, (announced on GB News), Stand for Our Sovereignty has been a breath of fresh air for millions of people. It was created precisely to push back against the surrender of our sovereignty on a weekly basis by the current government – either to Brussels or to countries far away such as Mauritius, to which we are giving a crucial British strategic base which is part of the Chagos Peninsula, as well as over £30bn.

Backed by a range of senior politicians from four different parties, with a superb legal team in support, Stand for Our Sovereignty (SOS) aims to take on the government via a variety of means. We urge all readers to join it now. The more Members, the louder the voice, and the more powerful and successful it will be in reversing what is going on.

Please join here now.

Coming tomorrow…

Part II in our special Asylum Series for GB News. Not to be missed!

Observations

We hope readers enjoyed today's little look back. This piece is in fact relevant to a further report we will be running in the coming days.

[ Sources: The Margaret Thatcher Foundation ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Wed 13 Aug 2025

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Reader Comments 7

1. Sparky , Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 07:10:

Wow, that speech was 38 years ago. Since then there has been the fall of the Berlin Wall, German Unification, 911, two Iraq wars, Ukraine.
.
I have a lot of respect for Margaret Thatcher, she has to be one of our greatest Prime Ministers.
.
Yet two years after this speech the Conservative Party had voted her out, the Bruges Group had been created, the infighting within the Cons Party was established and now the once great Conservative Party has imploded thanks to Johnson, Truss and Brexit.

2. Gazzablack , Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 08:35:

1, sparkless
.
No sparky they didn't vote her out, she failed to win outright on the first leadership ballot by 4 votes, and was persuaded to withdraw from the second.

3. NH , Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 09:06:

1. Sp
Exactly right, the Conservative party voted her out, not the electorate. She won every election she contested, all 3 of them. The Conservative party voted her out and replaced her with a pro-EU PM. He immediately joined the ERM, which Thatcher was strongly against, and it cost the public an absolute fortune when we crashed out. End of the Conservative party.
.
The electorate voted for Brexit and for Boris Johnson with get Brexit done. Having won the election the conservative party voted for pro-EU policies and removed him and now they are struggling to survive.
.
We now have Eurosceptic parties leading the polls in Germany, France and the UK. At the same time we have fraud investigations of EU politician in Greece, Poland, Spain and other countries for large scale personal use of EU funds and the EU fully accepts it's failed to compete with other major economies.
.
Margaret Thatcher was right.

4. Ann Marie , Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 20:08:

Everyone needs to read this article, especially Sparky and his ilk!
https://thecritic.co.uk/bri...

5. AlwaysBlameSomeoneElse , Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 20:56:

Margaret Thatcher, newly elected leader of the Conservative Party at the time, supported
the UK staying in the EC in the 1975 referendum.
She said, in her famous speech on 16 April 1975, that ‘the Conservative Party has been pursuing the European vision almost as long as we have existed as a Party.’
And she said ‘for Britain to leave would mean denouncing a Treaty … Britain does not break Treaties.’
Unfortunately we don’t have many politicians like her anymore.

6. Gazzablack , Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 22:42:

5, always
.
That was the EEC, not the EU.

7. Andy , Thursday, August 14, 2025, 09:32:

But lets us remember that the British People were induced to support membership of the EEC on a false prospectus. You only have to read the Foreign Office memo which was very reluctantly released to see that. Heath was warned that it would lead to a loss of sovereignty and the inexorable momentum towards a united state, currency, flag, anthem et all. This is exactly what has happened.
The reality is that Britain (England especially) is quite different from Continental Europe. We have different Law and traditions, none of which the EU respected to any great degree. The UK never belonged in the EU and our political class ought to have had more vision and stuck with EFTA. That was the right vision, instead of this totalitarian nightmare they are busy creating. Lady Thatcher wrote a small book called 'On Europe': I suggest you all buy and read it.

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