Activists From England

"Racism divides, exploitation of minorities divides, exploitation of minorities brings about hatred"

"[O]n he goes, glibly, hearing nothing he does not want to hear, and seeing nothing he does not want to see: a god in tiny rooms."

"[The Maastricht Treaty] takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community"

"Labour is clear that we should remain in the EU. But we too want to see reform,"

"We welcome them [foreign doctors], we work with them and we're proud of what they do"

"[It is] perfectly possible to be critical [of EU shortcomings] and still be convinced we need to remain a member"

"So I thought my first Prime Ministers Question time I'd do in a slightly different way and I'm sure the Prime Minister's going to absolutely welcome this as he welcomed this idea in 2005 but something has seemed to have happened to his memory during that period. So I sent out an email to thousands of people and asked them what questions they would like to put to the Prime Minister, and I received forty thousand replies."

"I am opposed to the use of nuclear weapons. I am opposed to the holding of nuclear weapons. I want to see a nuclear-free world. I believe it is possible. I do not think we should be renewing Trident... I think we should be promoting an international nuclear weapons convention which would lead to a nuclear-free world."

"We want to defend the very many gains made by trade unions across Europe that have brought us better working conditions - longer holidays, less discrimination and maternity and paternity leave"

"Corbyn's Labour Party did not lose the 2019 general election because of the Salisbury poisonings alone—but they were a critical moment that embedded the image of Corbyn as weak and foolish. This was driven almost entirely by Corbyn and his team, not by the Labour Party as a whole. Throughout the affair, Corbyn seemed more determined to protect Putin's reputation than British citizens. The most humiliating moment for the Labour Party would come at Corbyn’s hands, as he stood in Parliament and demanded the prime minister explain whether she had complied with Moscow’s ludicrous request to be sent a sample of the Novichok nerve agent used to poison the Skripals, so that, as he later clarified, "they can say categorically one way or the other" whether the Russian state-manufactured nerve agent used in the attempted assassination of a Russian ex-spy belonged to them. The response from Labour’s own backbenchers to this staggering naiveté was so brutal that the deputy speaker was forced to intervene to ask them to stop shouting at their own leader."

"at the moment we're campaigning because we want this sense of unity across Europe"

"[Palestinians in the West Bank live] under occupation of the very sort that would be recognised by many people in Europe who suffered occupation during the Second World War."

"I am vegetarian. … I became one at 20 when I was working in a pig farm. I got attached to the pigs and I couldn’t stand the thought that they would have to go off to be slaughtered."

"Corporal Shalit apparently equals the lives of a very, very large number of Palestinian people. Well I'm glad that those that were released, were released, and I hope they're now in safe places."

"The other evening we had a meeting in parliament in which Manuel [Hassassian], the Palestinian ambassador] made an incredibly powerful and passionate and effective speech about the history of Palestine and the rights of the Palestinian people. This was dutifully recorded by the – the thankfully silent Zionists who were in the audience on that occasion, and then came up and berated him afterwards for what he had said. They clearly have two problems: one is they don’t want to study history and secondly having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either. They needed two lessons, which we could perhaps help them with."

"I say thank you in advance to us all working together to achieve great victories, not just electorally for Labour but emotionally for the whole of our society to show we don't have to be unequal, it doesn't have to be unfair, poverty isn't inevitable, things can and they will change. Thank you very much."

"We believe a leave vote will put many of those things seriously and immediately at risk. We also want to extend those rights and we best extend those rights by working with trade unions, labour parties and socialist parties all across Europe in the interest of the working people all across the continent."

"Well, you have to ask the question why they're in prison in the first place and since the releases that took place after the hunger strike I met many of the brothers including the brother who has been speaking here when they came out of prison when I was in Doha earlier this year, and you just realise that this mass imprisonment of Palestinians is actually part of a much bigger political game."

"[I promise to tackle] grotesque levels of inequality in our society"

"Does the Minister agree that now is the time to repeal the emergency legislation and give the right to a jury trial to everyone in Northern Ireland—a right that has been denied to them for nearly 15 years or more? Does he agree that it is a fundamental right of all citizens that they should have an opportunity, if they are indicted on a serious charge, to appear before a jury, not before the fundamentally unfair system of a judge sitting with no jury and making decisions?"

"Tomorrow evening it will be my pleasure and my honour to host an event in parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. I have also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well. Unfortunately, the Israelis would not allow them to travel here, so it is going to be only friends from Hezbollah. So far as I am concerned, that is absolutely the right function of using parliamentary facilities, to invite people from other parts of the world so that we can promote that peace, that understanding and that dialogue. And the idea that an organisation that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled as a terrorist organisation by the British government is really a big, big historical mistake."

"[About the BBC] I think there is a bias towards saying that Israel is a democracy in the Middle East, Israel has a right to exist, Israel has its security concerns."

"The world is a troubled and divided place. I will conclude with this thought. As we speak, the poorest of the poor countries in the world are getting poorer. There is more unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger. Resources are being transferred rapidly from the poor to the rich. Most conflicts stem from poverty and from arguments about resources and power. If one tenth of the money that this country is putting into the defence estimates had gone to the people of Somalia and the other countries that were facing terrible economic strife in the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps there would not be the awful conflicts in that region now. We should be dedicating ourselves to a peaceful world, rather than arming ourselves for war upon war upon war. We should deal with the basic problems of the planet. I hoped at least that there would be a defence review. The review could look at what is, I believe, the unanswerable case for a large reduction in Britain's military spending to make an example to the rest of the world."

"If my hon. Friend is now envisaging the establishment of a federal Europe, will he not reflect that the Maastricht treaty does not take us in the direction of the checks and balances contained in the American federal constitution? It takes us in the opposite direction of an unelected legislative body—the Commission—and, in the case of foreign policy, a policy Commission that will be, in effect, imposing foreign policy on nation states that have fought for their own democratic accountability."

"It seems that we are revisiting the whole argument about a European central bank. Many of us have the deepest misgivings about the establishment of such a bank, with no accountability to member states and an office life of eight years, in which it can do what it likes, provided that it supports the market economy throughout Europe, despite the social consequences. There is no time limit on the period of office of the political directors, and there is nothing about who they would be or where they would come from. But I ask the quite serious question: what on earth are these political directors to do, where do they come from, to whom are they answerable and how do we get rid of them if we do not like what they do?"

"I thank the Foreign Secretary for giving way. I assure him that at least 60 Labour Members voted against the Bill on Second Reading and I am sure that they will vote against the Maastricht treaty again tonight, primarily because it takes away from national Parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community."

"I'm very concerned about it [the massacre] and you have to look at the big picture: in whose interests is it to destabilise the new government in Egypt? In whose interest is it to kill Egyptians, other than Israel, concerned at the growing closeness of relationship between Palestine and the new Egyptian government?"

"Does he concede that the whole basis of the Maastricht treaty is the establishment of a European central bank which is staffed by bankers, independent of national Governments and national economic policies, and whose sole policy is the maintenance of price stability? That will undermine any social objective that any Labour Government in the United Kingdom—or any other Government—would wish to carry out. Does my hon. Friend recognise that the imposition of a bankers' Europe on the people of this continent will endanger the cause of socialism in the United Kingdom and in any other country?"

"The idea that nuclear weapons deter anyone is laughable and horrific. We have the greatest chance ever to rid the world of nuclear weapons now, yet the consensus in this country is apparently that we need to maintain three Trident systems and possibly build a fourth at a total cost of more than £23 billion."

"My hon. Friend is right in saying that the Bank of England has often operated against the interests of Labour Governments. That is due to the mandarins who run it. If the hon. Gentleman has such doubts about the running of a bank which theoretically is state-owned and state-controlled, what influence does he think will be possible in the case of an independent central bank dedicated to a course of Euro-monetarism?"

"Does the Secretary of State not think that there is a case for ensuring that there are permanent representatives of at least Latin America and Africa on the Security Council? Does he not think that consideration should be given of the removal of the power of veto of the permanent members of the Security Council in order to make the organisation more democratic and more reflective of the world's population as a whole?"

"Unless we address those problems from the point of view of a world where development is genuinely sustainable, where protection of the environment is vital, where the earth's wealth is redistributed in favour of the poorest people in the poorest countries, in the next few years we shall face a growing imbalance between north and south. Ever-increasing numbers of people will flee from environmental destruction—from rain forest destruction, increased desertification and the increased flooding linked to that. Millions of people will have to flee from the places where they grew up and live and there will be growing imbalances in the world, and growing poverty. There has to be a change in the relationship. That means that higher prices must be paid for commodities. It means that there must be an increased aid programme, and an understanding that we are all in this together."

"The British people have made their decision. We must respect that result and Article 50 has to be invoked now so that we negotiate an exit from European Union. Obviously there has to be strategy but the whole point of the referendum was that the public would be asked their opinion. They've given their opinion. It is up for parliament to now act on that opinion."

"[When asked by presenter Lauren Booth: "Would a Muslim go against his Egyptian brother and open fire?"] It seems a bit unlikely that would happen during Ramadan, to put it mildly, and I suspect the hand of Israel in this whole process of destabilisation."

"Does the Secretary of State agree that it is time for a serious review of Britain's defence expenditure, which now totals more than £23 billion a year? Should not we cancel the nuclear missile programme and consign all nuclear missiles back to base as part of a programme of worldwide disarmament? Should not we try to cut conventional expenditure to at least the European average, which would save £6 billion a year? Should not we also ensure that skilled workers who are at present manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and other forms of armaments are put to making socially useful products, including materials for the health service and housing industry—and recognise that world peace is best achieved by people working for peace rather than by arming themselves for war?"

"The purpose of my Bill is simply to remove the legal nicety which, at the moment, allows the hunting and killing of deer with dogs, which I believe to be a wanton cruelty. The Bill would not prohibit the culling of deer to restrict the deer population and so to protect the deer's habitat, and it would not prohibit the shooting of deer, but it would prohibit the extremely cruel practice of hunting deer with dogs...This Bill is yet another step forward in making this country's legislation on animals slightly more humane and slightly more civilised. I believe that it has overwhelming support throughout the country. Hunting with dogs and the vile killing for bloodlust in the name of sport should not be allowed in this country. The House must represent the views of the vast majority of people throughout the country and pass this legislation to remove this so-called sport, which I believe to be an obscenity, from legal sanction in this country and to abolish it so that we may have fair legislation that guarantees the safety of animals and prohibits and outlaws the cruelty to animals that is part of so-called sport."

"If we are to ban CFC production completely, as I believe that we should, we must also accept that considerable support must be given to other countries which wish to continue to produce refrigerators and similar products. The technology to produce those goods without CFCs must be transferred to China, India and other countries which need it. If that does not happen, we cannot lecture those countries about producing CFCs while we hold that technology to ourselves and use it as an economic lever against poorer countries and poorer people throughout the world. The economic imbalance between countries is at the root of the world's problems...If we are to sort out the problems of poverty and of the environment, we require a real restructuring of the world's economy. That will not be achieved by imposing a model of market forces on the poorest people in the poorest countries but by paying those people for the products that they produce, not hoarding technological advances for ourselves but sharing and spreading them around the world, and not persuading and pushing countries to revert to monoculture production, which is dangerous and damaging to the environment."

"Politics in this country are dominated by debates about our relationship with Europe and the Eurocentralism that goes with that. I am firmly an internationalist, so I am not necessarily opposed to Europe. However, I am opposed to a fortress Europe that basically creates wealth for itself at the expense of the world, creates an undemocratic control of government for the whole of Europe, and, in truth, works only for the good of multinational corporations and banking systems. It will cause further imbalances in world poverty and world trade arrangements. I view the free market of 1992 not as an opportunity, but as a disaster for very many people throughout the world. I believe that Europe will contribute to the economic problems of the world. I do not agree with the sort of racist nonsense that has been published in the Sun and other newspapers during the past few weeks. It is a disgusting way to report matters. However, I believe that the drive towards a market economy in Europe will create poverty on the rims of Europe and an inner-colonialism in which western Europe will act as a sort of colonial master for eastern Europe and much of the rest of the world. It is about time that we began to take an international and global view rather than shut ourselves into a Europe that does not act in a socially just and reasonable manner. I hope that the debate will now begin to turn on those matters."

"I also remind the House that the use of confessional evidence, which is the basis of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, has led to the imprisonment of the Birmingham Six, who have now served almost 16 years in British prisons. I have visited them in prison several times...My experience of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act is that it has nothing to do with the prevention of terrorism and everything to do with policing and patrolling the Irish community in this country. I have lost count of the number of occasions that I have had telephone calls late at night from Irish people who live in my constituency, who were expecting a son, a daughter, an uncle, an aunt or a father to come across to visit them from Dublin or from Belfast, but who find that they have not arrived. They ask me, "Do you know where they are?" I have no idea where they are. We then start an amazing series of telephone calls to find out whether someone is being held under the Act. A Kafka-like mystery surrounds it and it is not clear whether that person is being held until lawyers make contact and eventually application is made for a writ of habeas corpus."

"Does the Minister accept that the attitude of the EEC and of North American countries towards commodity prices has been a major contributory factor in the debt crisis in much of the world? Does she agree that the latest round of Lomé convention prices on exports from ACP countries has resulted in virtually the lowest real terms prices ever achieved by those countries? They are worried about the way in which they have been treated by the EEC. Is the right hon. Lady aware that exports from ACP countries to the European Community are at their lowest level for 25 years? Those countries and many of us are worried about the growing crisis faced by the poorer countries because the richer industrial countries are closing their markets to them and forcing them into debt and low commodity prices."

"The free enterprise policies that produce solely for waste and for profit and that promote a consumerist mentality rather than one of need are damaging to the environment. I am in no sense defending the centralised economies of eastern Europe. They have polluted the north sea and rivers just as industries in Britain and North America have destroyed rivers, wasted natural resources and ruined people's lives by their form of pollution. It is not good enough to promote an economic system that produces for waste and to promote environmental controls in western Europe and North America to look after our environment if at the same time we transfer that destruction of the environment to poorer Third-world countries, either by exporting toxic waste and letting those countries get rid of it by whatever means they can, because they are desperate for foreign currency, or by promoting the destruction of the rain forests, through raping those countries to collect debt payments, when they can make them only by destroying all their natural resources. We live in an age when we have an opportunity to improve our environment and save ourselves from mass destruction through climatic change and environmental disasters."

"I believe honestly and deeply that the treatment of whales is an example of the evil intelligence of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world. We have seen greed of the most impossible kind descending on the Arctic and the Antarctic to destroy the most intelligent and beautiful creatures that the planet can produce...We are in the process of destroying much of the planet through destruction of the ozone layer, leading to the greenhouse effect, and the destruction of life. The whale is an example of how such destruction happens. As the ozone layer is destroyed the plankton in the Southern ocean will die and the whales will lose much of their food. Last year we opposed the Antarctic Minerals Bill because we feared that it would lead to pollution of the Southern ocean and damage the whales' food supply. The Government must oppose any extension of whaling of any type, scientific or otherwise, and I hope and trust that they will do so. But we must go further. Countries which engage in the barbarity of so-called scientific whaling, which in reality is crude commercialism of the nastiest kind, deserve retribution from us all and we must bring every possible sanction to bear against them. If we do not take care of our planet and our environment, and of animals such as the whale, mankind will suffer and our planet will die because we have not cared for the natural environment that we all share."

"I have never been a supporter of or an apologist for Saddam Hussein. Indeed, I recall many lonely occasions in the House when I spoke against Saddam Hussein, his genocide against the Kurdish people and the way that the British Government were financing the re-arming of Iraq. Indeed, the chemical weapons being manufactured in Iraq largely comprise chemicals made in western Europe and north America. Some £1 billion was loaned to Saddam Hussein by British banks, with the agreement of the British Government. His power is largely the creation of western Europe and north America. I do not support him and I do not think that he was right to invade Kuwait...The only purpose of sending troops to the region is to defend and guarantee oil supplies. I find it difficult to accept that the United States is merely defending a small country against a larger country. If that were true, why were Grenada and Panama invaded? What was the Vietnam war about, other than a powerful United States wishing to extend its control and influence throughout the world? ...If the shooting starts and there is war in the Gulf, the retaking of Kuwait will not be a clean, clinical operation—it will be a filthy and long war with hundreds of thousands of dead, and at the end of that war there will still have to be negotiations on the future order and the future government of that area and those countries."

"The order owes nothing to the housing needs of the British people. It is not designed to do so. It is just another example of the Tory Government slaughtering the housing needs and hopes of millions of people on the altar of the market economy, with all its gobbledegook about market forces and who will set and pay rents. I shall not say that this is a landlord's charter; it is worse than that. It is a profiteering landlord's charter. The rent officer will no longer be an independent objective person who ensures that a fair rent once fixed is adhered to and to whom one can appeal if a landlord tries to increase such a rent. People, particularly in London, will be harassed out of protected tenancies by con merchants and thrown on to the streets so that the private rented sector, the free market, can allow the level of rent to rise to its natural level—the highest that can be obtained...The effect of their deregulation has been to force up private sector rents, to have people thrown out on the streets, and there will be greater homelessness and profiteering by landlords...Most of those people who tonight are sleeping on the streets around Waterloo station, the National Theatre and along the South Bank, who are begging at the main stations of this city, who are sleeping over the grilles of tube stations on Charing Cross road, not long ago had somewhere to live. Those people are the victims of market forces, the victims of what this Government are doing and believe should be done to poor people, who cannot afford the landlords' rent."

"I am shocked that we should be debating a Bill such as this which basically shows the Tory party's deep concern for its future. It has to scrabble round the world looking for tax dodgers, crooks, thieves and wastrels, anywhere that it can, in order to get a Tory Government re-elected in two years' time. That is what the Bill is about. It has nothing to do with democracy."

"I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised the problems of the Kurdish people in Iraq, and I am sure that they will be grateful for that. Although the Government may not allow the export of military hardware to Iraq, is it not just as beneficial to the Iraqi Government to be given banking facilities, credits and increased trade? They have exactly the same effect of propping up the Iraqi economy, which is used to finance the war machine that is practising genocide against the Kurdish people."

"I want to mention the British Government's attitude to poorer countries in relation to 1992 and the EEC. There was a delegation here recently led by Mr. Julian Hunte from St. Lucia concerning the implications of the Single European Act for the survival of the Windward Islands. There is a problem because of the likelihood of the closure of markets for bananas and some of the smaller eastern Caribbean countries and the low price that the producers receive for them. It is necessary for the British Government to do something to protect the markets that those islands have traditionally enjoyed. If not, they will become seriously impoverished and further indebted. They will lose out because of Britain's obsession with moving deeper into the Common Market and accepting the Common Market's single economy rather than protecting those who have traditionally supplied goods to this country."

"The right hon. Gentleman should be aware that, two weeks ago, I had an interesting meeting with an environmental campaigning group from the Soviet Union who openly admitted that the industrial policies followed in the past by the Soviet Union and many countries in central and eastern Europe had done a great deal of environmental damage. The difference is that those people felt that they had the power to change the policies to stop the destruction of their own environment. The policies of free-market economies which the right hon. Gentleman propounds have led to the pollution of the North sea and the Irish sea, the destruction of the rain forests in Brazil and Malaysia and long-term serious environmental damage by multinational companies all over the southern countries of this planet."

"In calling for the dismantling of Soviet stocks of chemical weapons, what action will the Minister take towards countries such as Iraq which have used chemical weapons in the recent past? Will he ensure that the maximum possible sanctions are taken against them to show our abhorrence of all chemical weapons wherever they are and by whomsoever they are used?"

"There will have to be three objects for farming and farm products. First, we must end over-production. The over-production that is taking place in Europe and the United States is damaging and obscenely wasteful. It is damaging to the environment, and it is obviously obscenely wasteful when products that are the result of over-production are being burnt in an attempt to maintain prices...Secondly, we must end export dumping. Instead, we must promote aid and trade policies that encourage self-reliant production, which is more protective of the local economy and less dependent on the economies of western Europe and of the United States...Thirdly, what happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries."