Labour Party Uk Politicians

"As chief secretary, I was having a terrible time doing what I didn’t go into politics to do — cutting public expenditure. And I was having meetings with every departmental minister about their budget. They all wanted more money — Tony Benn and Barbara Castle more than most. I decided that I could get rid of three Cabinet ministers — the secretaries of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — if I could settle on a formula for their budgets. So I set up this method for allocating public expenditure that the Cabinet then agreed to."

"The real problem is that now no politician wants to tackle it. The Barnett Formula saves people trouble. It saves prime ministers worrying. That’s the way with politics… Here we are, about to make the wrong decision again."

"Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths."

"My first grave doubts as to German diplomacy arose when Germany left the League of Nations for reasons which I have never been able to appreciate, except upon assumptions which meant that the German Government was indifferent to the pacification of Europe."

"I know that, when the troubled history of these times comes to be studied and recorded in the cold and just light of truth, all the blame will not lie at Germany's door. That will not save it, its methods and its self-will, as shown in these latter days, from the blame of destroying the chances of success in peacemaking which were once again presenting themselves to us, and of throwing the mind of Europe suddenly into anxiety and turning it back upon the fatal ways of militarism, thus compelling the nations of Europe to return for an evanescent comfort to increased military equipment."

"The channels of world trade are so obstructed by the pursuit of nationalist economic policy that steps should be taken at once to make it possible to arrive at an international economic agreement which would revive international trade. A return to free trade pure and simple would only increase unemployment."

"The most secure nation in the whole of Europe, until it roused suspicions and fears against itself, was Germany. The German people who believe stories of encirclement cannot help recognising that their latest policy of military expansion, together with the circumstances of its declaration—an army greater than that of any other nation in Europe, an air force already declared equal to ours, a fleet that would be equal to the French and superior to the Italian—must rouse fear and unsettlement in the mind of every nation at which it can strike, and inevitably force the sound pacific idea of general collective security into the dangerous form of military alliances. The nations which were backward in making their contributions are now congratulating themselves that they waited for Germany to make its contribution first."

"The substance of Germany's general case has a background of reason and human nature. I cannot be accused of ever having approached it in the "mind of Versailles," nor in the spirit of one who assumed that a powerful and a proud people could be kept subordinate by force (even by what seems to be an overwhelming force), nor have I ever seen anything but disaster issuing from and to the League of Nations if it is used by victors to perpetuate the position and mind they were in on the day of their victory... But, be that as it may, Germany has acted in such a way as to destroy the feeling of mutual confidence in Europe. It has broken up the road to peace and has beset it with terrors. It claims a measure of armed power which puts most of the nations of Europe at its mercy. Every reflecting and reasonable German must see the force of the point I am making. He must know in his heart that Berlin is not enough—that, in fact, it has upset very much more than it has pacified."

"This nation ought to be quipped to defend itself and to fulfil its responsibility under the League system of mutual assistance in the event of an aggressor coming to threaten us all. A defenceless Britain at this stage of evolution will not be an aid to peace but an incentive to war. But we must watch very closely lest the acceptance of the responsibility to prepare for defence may lead to a policy of militarism for its own sake. We draw this distinction and will continue to observe it."

"I do not intend to carry on when we are through this mess. As soon as we have turned the corner I will get out, but I do not want to leave the Labour Party in a bad position."

"If I had only been able to carry my colleagues with me what we could have achieved! What a chance we had! But we threw it away. If they had only been straight enough to stand by what they had initiated, not what finally resulted from it—I am not saying that—I could have helped them. When they ran away and began to deny that they had ever had anything to do with our proposals, well, I thought to myself that politics had become too degraded for me. Do you know that they turned me out of the Labour Party with a rubber stamp? ... [W]hen I write my book on how the Labour Party betrayed Socialism I will tell the story there."

"You are faced with the problem of what to do in respect to this question, to that question, and to the other question, but perfectly obviously, after you have faced the more superficial aspects of the separate questions, you want to know in relation to a complete plan what you are actually giving and what you are actually getting. Therefore, when the departmental, or compartmental, exploration has gone on to a certain extent it cannot be finished until somebody, co-ordinating all your problems, sets out in one statement and declaration the complete scheme that this Conference can pass in order to give security, to give disarmament, to give hope to the future–until that scheme has been placed before you, you cannot complete your examination of compartmental problems and questions..."

"The desolation of loneliness is terrible. Was I wise? Perhaps not, but it seemed as though anything else was impossible."

"The Socialist Movement in this country is going to rack and ruin, because it is being controlled by people who are nothing more than critics of the Government, inspired by the idea that all you have to do is to hand out largesse to the community. All sense of principle, of communal organisation, and of service given with one's whole heart to the community, has gone and we are in danger of drifting into a Poor Law frame of mind."

"If we yield now to the TUC we shall never be able to call our bodies or souls or intelligences our own."

"As far back as 1895 I stood as an unflinching opponent of the idea that the progress of Socialism could be made by the declaration of a class war. I have always been opposed to it, and I exemplify that opposition to-day. The only method of social progress is not by dividing society, but by uniting society and giving all of us the community-consciousness that asks us cooperators to reach the great and good state ahead of us."

"Yes, to-morrow every Duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me!"

"All this humbug of curing unemployment by Exchequer grants is one of the most superficial and ill considered proposals that has ever been foisted upon the Party. There is no more Socialism in it than there was in the cup of tea that I had at breakfast this morning."

"As a result of a careful examination of ideas they had come to the conclusion that the great work of every constructive Government must be to put the population on the land. Here was something permanent. They took men body and soul off the pavements, which had no rootable capacity, and put them in the fields to till and sow and harvest. In the worst time they would produce their own food there. It might not be luxurious, but it was healthy."

"If we refuse...what are the prospects? Repression, and nothing but repression, and it is a very uncomfortable repression; a kind of repression from which we shall get neither credit nor success. It is the repression of the masses of the people, the great proportion of these masses being women and children. It is the repression not of organisations and not of bodies; it will develop into the repression of the whole of the population... If, on the other hand, you wish to bind India to you by bonds of confidence, to make her happy within your Empire and Commonwealth, if you wish to hear her praise you in gratitude and remain with you in pride, then accept the work that has been done by the Conference, and instruct the Government to proceed with it to a complete conclusion."

"[The Kellogg Pact is] a mighty moral bulwark against war – and we must never underestimate the effectiveness of moral bulwarks with no bayonet nor bludgeon behind them. The entry of the United States into the Permanent Court of International Justice, the growing confidence in the court, and the increase in the number of nations who have signed the Optional Clause mark definite and, I believe, irrevocable steps in the displacement of military power by judicial process in the settlement of international disputes. Public servants like us will fail in our duty if we do not diminish military power in proportion to the increase of political security... I dare affirm that, in the naval programme of the leading naval powers, there is a margin between real security needs and actual or projected strength, and the world expects this Conference to eliminate that margin."

"To-day, in spite of the prospects, our faith is undiminished. Our hearts may be sad—mine certainly is—but I have handed in none of my papers of enlistment in the Army of Peace. I am still in the ranks of that Army: a fighting soldier to remain there and act there and strive there as long as there is breath in my body and persuasion in my lips."

"I am so much concerned for the quiet development of industry, the peaceful mind and confidence both at home and abroad, that I will use every ounce of influence I have to prevent another election for the next two years... I wish to make it quite clear that I am going to stand for no monkeying."

"The day is coming when we may have to give up orthodox free trade as we inherited it from our fathers."

"We are going to Geneva determined, by persuasion, by arguments, by appeals to what has been written, appeals to measures already taken, appeals to history, appeals to common sense, to get the nations of the world to join in and reduce this enormous, disgraceful burden of armaments which we are now bearing from one end of the world to the other."

"[I]f we lose our chance now, which really means if this Government is to be continued in power, that chance will not return either to us or to our children. The memories of the last War will grow dim. The world will get back into its old rut, familiar professions and piety about peace will again soothe us to sleep, and the various countries will once more base their security upon military preparation. So they will all, in the end, find themselves drifting hopelessly upon those currents that make for war—1914 will be repeated... And remember what the next war is to be like. The old lines which divide combatants from non-combatants, the weak and the diseased from the strong and the robust, men from women and children, will all be obliterated and civilization itself assailed, and from sea and sky will be brought to a heap of ruins."

"There can be no security until the Great Powers have agreed to settle their disputes, which have hitherto led to war, by conciliation and arbitration. This was the policy which the Labour Party was working up to in 1924, and which it will pursue again when it is in office."

"Unemployment cannot be cured by relief work nor by patchwork of any kind. We must develop national resources and improve trade so that there will be increased employment and a tremendous revolution in industry and in power by the use of electricity and petrol, which must be accompanied by reorganisation of transport, including the making of roads, the reconditioning of railway plant and equipment, an extension of pensions which must enable the more aged workers to retire, the raising of the school age with necessary maintenance grants. We must dam the influx of premature people into industry."

"We want no injustice done to other people. I do not appeal to you merely as a class, but I do appeal to you workers to form yourselves into an organisation which will use political power in order to protect our human conditions and give you fair play in life."

"I see that Mr. Lloyd George last night confessed that he read the betting news in the papers. (Laughter.) Ah! I shake my head at the Rake's Progress. (Laughter.) ... The only Liberal contribution to the programme advocated by Mr. Lloyd George is its headline... It is just a certain amount of improvised jazz—that is their programme."

"In 1918 Mr. Lloyd George let himself produce such a programme of development as would astonish his rivals. He was going to hang the Kaiser. You said, "That is the man who has the ear of the public." He was going to build one million houses. He was going to make the land fit for heroes to live in, and you said, "That's the thing." He was going to search the pockets of Germany for the last penny, and you said, "That the stuff." My friends, it was stuff. (Cheers and laughter.) ... If unemployment had been tackled in a business-like fashion in the first three years after the War, it would not have grown to the proportion it had now reached... Mr. Lloyd George has been in office, nay in power, with a majority of 300; Mr. Baldwin has been in power with a majority of 200. What have they done? Have they broken the tale of heartbreakening worsening? Nowhere. It is only to the Labour Party that you can look for the solution of your troubles."

"We do not believe that a nation can flourish on the poverty of its masses. Empty pockets are not only poverty, but breed poverty. Our own backs and stomachs still are the most neglected and yet the most profitable of our markets. Those who believe that safeguarding or protection is any aid to the development of that market had better study protected countries, where wages are low, unemployment is habitual, and poverty even worse than it is here. Unemployment insurance is not a dole, it is a benefit which has been paid for just like life insurance. These payments must be made adequate for the purpose in order to safeguard our people against the demoralisation of charity. We have concentrated this policy into two points and they stand as representing our purpose. Work first of all, but if no work, maintenance."

"Let us declare boldly in favour of disarmament. Let us put down our own proposals, arguing them, fighting for them, persuading people to join us, appealing not only to the reason but to the moral sense of the world. Great Britain marching clear away at the head of the great movement for international peace, that is our idea."

"Political leaders, irrespective of party...were beginning to see that, unless in Europe they could create an enormous federation of free-trade nations, there was not a single nation in Europe which could flourish in the industrial standard it ought to occupy."

"I can assure you that, whatever your political colour may be, in the Old Country political parties, even in the heat of battle, never obscure national or Imperial interests."

"One of the great reasons why I belong to the Labour Party and hold the Socialist views of what a wise and just social structure is, is because I detest class politics and want to end them in real national unity. In bringing that about we have to consider the claims of the great mass of our people, who, on account of their poverty, cannot adequately protect themselves. What has national unity meant to them? A change in a machine can make them outcasts; a change in fashion can make them paupers... The Labour Party wants to bring within the bounds and the meaning of this national unity the bottom dog, as he is called. For this purpose we have organised our great public services. The Labour Party wishes to develop them."

"The policy of Great Britain is not the policy of alliances with any certain set of nations. It is a policy of friendship with those nations that believe in democratic forms of government and democratic development. The policy of Great Britain now is, and must be, and will be, that all nations in good will, in singleness, and in disinterestedness of heart will meet together, consider the great problems of Europe and the problems of the whole world, and agree, as the result of cooperation, discussion, and joint exchange of opinion, on a common policy which will make alliances absolutely a thing of the past."

"During all my political life I have anchored myself firmly upon the conviction that if progress is to be well-rooted, it can only be carried on by what is called political or constitutional ways... I can see no hope in India if it becomes the arena of a struggle between constitutionalism and revolution. No party in Great Britain will be cowed by threats of force or by policies designed to bring government to a standstill; and if any sections in India are under the delusion that that is not so, events will very sadly disappoint them. I would urge upon all the best friends of India to come nearer to us rather than to stand apart from us, to get at our reason and our good will."

"What we have to do is to doom the slums. And we have done it. It is going to take a year or two. We are not only going to doom slums, we are going to doom overcrowding. Next Session the House of Commons will...pass legislation which is going to doom overcrowding as we have already doomed the slums."

"What the Liberals have done to the Labour Party's programme is to come along like a gipsy, steal our child, get it in gaudy attire, and then produce it on platforms to perform at the General Election."

"He was a free-trader, because he felt it was the best, with all its drawbacks. There were higher wages in protected America, but there was corrupt politics. Protection in America meant more sweating in America than free trade did in England. The very worst of conditions and slums in England were a paradise compared with the conditions of steel workers under protection in Pittsburg. The whole of the protection system was meant not for workers, wage-earners, or the wives of working men, but to make capitalists millionaires."

"I do think...that the way the Daily News and the Westminster Gazette behaved [during the election] was contemptible. We expect nothing better from the Daily Mail and such miserable products. The result, however, of the whole fight has been to dig both deeply and broadly a ditch between Liberalism and Labour. From all over the country I hear from my friends who fought that the Liberal fight was dirtier than the Tory, and I have seen leaflets like that issued by [Sir Henry] Webb who fought [Hugh] Dalton in Cardiff, which are simply amazing in their dishonesty. The line he took was that whilst we pitied the poor German who was being asked to pay £2,000,000,000 we had no qualms in imposing a Capital Levy upon Englishmen to the extent of £3,000,000,000."

"Mr. Lloyd George's campaign in its gross demagogic vulgarity has also increased both the number and the value of the reasons why we should have nothing whatever to do with his Party."

"When Mr. Lloyd George talked...about unemployment he forgot that he was the cause of it. Unemployment...and the increased cost of living were all due to causes that had been begun during Mr. Lloyd George's régime. Mr. Lloyd George went to Paris to try to make good the nonsensical pledges he gave in 1918, and supported a Peace Treaty which had been the cause very nearly of Britain's bankruptcy, and certainly the bankruptcy of many other nations. He, and he alone, was responsible for that... Everything that had happened had been the outcome of Mr. Lloyd George's blunderings, and he was using the calamities of his own policy as a reason why they should send him back to office."

"Felt the virtues of the Victorian times so condemned by Mr Strachey. The simple honesties can always be made a butt by the impish unrealiabilites."

"We will endeavour to unite the whole country in opposing French aggression... We cannot stand by and allow the resources of Germany to be deteriorated by French action. The British occupation of the Rhine, if it is part of the French policy, cannot be allowed to continue."

"We do not believe that military alliances are going to bring security. We believe that a military alliance in an agreement for security is like a grain of mustard seed—small to begin with. That is the essential seed of the agreement, and that seed with the years will grow and grow and grow, until at last the tree that has been produced from it will overshadow the heavens, and we shall be back exactly in the military position in which we found ourselves in 1914."

"They were going to work their own country for all it was worth, to bring human labour into touch with God's natural endowments, so that the land would blossom like the rose and have houses and firesides where there would be happiness and glorious aspirations."

"Might and spirit will win and incalculable political and social consequences will follow upon victory. Victory must therefore be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed honour among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her guardians...History, will, in due time, apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in times that have gone. Whoever may be in the wrong, men so inspired will be in the right. The quarrel was not of the people, but the end of it will be the lives and liberties of the people. Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country - which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts, keeping it clear of thought which I believe to be alien to real patriotism - I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. I wish the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood and similar movements to face their duty. To such it is enough to say 'England has need of you'; to say it in the right way. They will gather to her aid. They will protect her when the war is over, they will see to it that the policies and conditions that make it will go like the mists of a plague and shadows of a pestilence."

"Let us understand what we are out for. I say unhesitatingly...I say perfectly definitely that this country, if it retains any shred of honour at all, cannot accept a peace unless peace is forced upon it which means the sacrifice of Belgian sovereignty to any extent. If Germany imagines that there is any section of this country that is prepared to accept peace at the sacrifice of any portion—and I emphasise this—not merely of Belgian sovereignty, but of any portion of it, then the sooner German public opinion is disabused of that delusion the better."