People From Manchester

"Mr. MacDonald...said I promised to make this a land fit for heroes. I ask Mr. MacDonald if he will point out the place, time, and occasion when I promised to make this a land fit for heroes. I say quite frankly that I may have my defects, but I am no braggard. If I boasted I was going to make this a land fit for heroes I would be a sheer blusterer. No one man can do that and I never promised it. What I did do, speaking after the War, on a purely non-political occasion at Wolverhampton, where there were Labour, Conservative, and Liberal adherents, was to refer to the great heroism of our troops and say, "Let us all do our best to make this a land fit for heroes to live in." That was not a pledge I gave; it was an appeal."

"Europe and the world are spending hundreds of millions perfecting the mechanism of slaughter. Pacts of peace, covenants, treaties galore, all fixed on bayonets, and the biting steel is gleaming through it. Women must put an end to that... You cannot trust men altogether, not where fighting is concerned... The woman is the maker of peace."

"There happened to be a very severe winter on the Continent of Europe. Frost destroyed all their cabbages. The Germans found their broccoli withered, and they began to think of some more equable climate. They heard that in Cornwall broccoli still grew, so they ordered a few. (Laughter.) So the Prime Minister says: 'Trade is reviving.' (Laughter.) The next thing he said was, 'Negroes are beginning to take to bicycles'. What a programme! A few hampers of broccoli for frost-bitten Germans, a consignment of push-bicycles for enterprising niggers, and keeping down the wages of the British workmen. (Laughter.) There was a popular song, "Wait till the Clouds Roll By". That seemed to be Mr. Baldwin's election song."

"The Labour Party cannot make up its mind whether to treat the Liberal plan as a freak or to claim its paternity. Mr. Thomas has said it is an absurd abortion, but Mr. Henderson says it is the child of the Labour Party. Mr. MacDonald, as usual tries to have it both ways. He says—often in the same speech—"This is a stunted thing." Then looking at it fondly, he says, "This is my child.""

"If the nation entrusts the Liberal Party at the next General Election with the responsibilities of Government, we are ready with schemes of work which we can put immediately into operation—work of a kind which is not merely useful in itself, but essential to the well-being of the nation. The work put in hand will reduce the terrible figures of the workless in the course of a single year to normal proportions, and will, when completed, enrich the nation and equip it for successfully competing with all its rivals in the business of the world. These plans will not add one penny to national or local taxation. It will require a great and sustained effort to redeem this pledge, but some of us sitting at this table have succeeded in putting through even greater and more difficult tasks when the interests of the nation were involved."

"If it is not reserved for me to lead the people for whom I have fought all my life to the promised land, I shall feel a pang of disappointment."

"Germany has carried out her obligations. She was to reduce her army to 100,000. She was to scrap her great artillery and all her machinery of war. ... Germany had carried out her obligations. That was over three years ago. What have we done? What have the Allies done to carry out that obligation? ... Disarmament is the only guarantee of safety. ... Germany is demanding, and rightly demanding, that we should now carry out our obligations, seeing that she has carried out her's. ... The whole of the British Empire signed that bond, every part of it. When it is asked to carry it out, what is it to say? Is it to say, "We are treating you exactly as we are treating France—you with your army of 100,000 and France with her army of millions"? Is the British Empire to say, "We are treating you impartially and fairly"? Shall Caesar send a lie?"

"The continued occupation of the Rhineland after the Germans had carried out their obligations was an infringement of a solemn treaty. Germany had carried out in letter and in spirit the whole of her engagements with regard to disarmament. What had the Allies done? Nothing... The Anglo-French Pact was the most sinister event since the War."

"A great party is not an errand boy to fetch and carry little parcels in one interest here, a class there, a section somewhere else. It is a great army carrying on behind the pillar of fire that leads the nation to the Promised Land."

"Sincerity is the surest road to confidence."

"Liberty has restraints but no frontiers."

"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired."

"I have come all this distance and am prepared to face thousands of miners in the rain and to say I have done more for them than any of the Labour Party."

"I am making no predictions and the Prime Minister is wise in taking that line, but I am perfectly certain that nothing will enable the German Empire for a generation or two to get anywhere near the same position of dominant force and menace that it was in before the War. I do not say they desire it—I do not believe there is any such desire in Germany at the present moment."

"We are not in the moral position to enforce disarmament in Europe until we cut down our own expenditure at home... I say, quite frankly, that we must take the same risks for peace as we took for war. You must take some risks. Personally, I do not see where the risks are. I do not see an enemy on the horizon. These enemies do not develop very suddenly. They develop over a whole course of years; but I do not see where the enemy is now."

"As long as you have these huge armaments in the world, arbitration and conciliation will be made quite impossible, and that is common sense, because if you have a nation that has got overwhelming power behind it, it is intolerant, it is impatient of argument and of conference. That is really what led very largely to the Great War."

"It was an old struggle that Liberalism stood for. There was the great battle of Naseby when that great Liberal leader Oliver Cromwell planted the standard of liberty, fought a very good by-election for liberty, and won."

"What is the trouble in Europe today? Immediately after the War the danger was Communism. The danger today is an aggressive nationalism. It is the trouble which you get in Italy and South-Eastern Europe. It is the trouble which you get in the Balkans. It is the trouble which you have got on the Eastern Frontier of Germany, where there is a much more powerful party than the Communist party in favour of aggressive action. That is the trouble today, and into this troubled Europe...you throw this stone, this bone of contention. It is a leap in the dark and a leap into a whirlpool."

"He...burst into an enthusiastic defence of the system of raising Party funds by the sale of honours. "You and I," he said, "know perfectly well it is a far cleaner method of filling the Party chest than the methods used in the United States or the Socialist Party." He complained that the Socialist Party was a trade union party solely because of the power of the trade unions to withhold funds. "In America the steel trusts supported one political party, and the cotton people supported another. This placed political parties under the domination of great financial interests and trusts." "Here," said Mr. Lloyd George, "a man gives £40,000 to the Party and gets a baronetcy. If he comes to the Leader of the Party and says I subscribe largely to the Party funds, you must do this or that, we can tell him to go to the devil. The attachment of the brewers to the Conservative Party was the closest approach," said Mr. Lloyd George, "to political corruption in this country. The worst of it is that you cannot defend it in public, but it keeps politics far cleaner than any other method of raising funds.""

"The Chinese were highly civilised when the ancient Britons, to whom he belonged, were barbarian. This was an old, enlightened, and vast community of hard-working people, yet they were deprived of rights enjoyed by some of the smallest nations in the world that only a few centuries ago emerged from savagery."

"No. A Liberal I was born and a Liberal I die. I will not join Labour."

"If we had been as ready in 1924 with definite concrete proposals as we are today, we could have gone to the Labour Party and said: "Here are our proposals with regard to the land, electricity, and the mines, and the condition of our support is that you should deal with them." We should have now been in the third year of carrying out a great programme of social reform instead of being in the horrible muddle we are in at the present moment. Are we going to get another chance? I think we are."

"There was something fundamentally wrong with our economic system. It was based upon injustice and could not last."

"What was the use of talking about freedom if they had millions of people tethered to slums?"

"The inequalities of society at the present moment were far too great to continue. There were certain essentials to material well-being that every man, woman, and child was entitled to... He regarded as the minima: adequate food, raiment, air, shelter, light—he meant the light of Heaven—to maintain a healthy existence—sound education...reasonable leisure for recreation, for enjoyment, and culture. This country could afford to supply them to all its citizens."

"There is only one question of principle, and upon that I stand, and that is if they mean to drum a man out of the Liberal Party because he has erred on the side of conciliation with millions of British workmen in a great dispute, on that proposition I fight right through to the end."

"I see the carrying of [Irish] Home Rule is ascribed to others. I cannot allow that. Home Rule was put through by me entirely, and I don't mind telling you that I sacrificed my Premiership to carrying through Home Rule."

"But they say they cannot put up any longer with me as a colleague. It is a serious thing to split the Liberal Party on whether I am a more attractive colleague than Mr. Pringle. Why am I not? ... I tell you what it is. It is my instability. Now that is an old charge that has always been brought against any man who is alive. It is only the stick-in-the-muds that are stable."

"I was walking peacefully along my path when suddenly I was assailed by an angry bull of excommunication."

"I was convinced that the general strike had no revolutionary purpose and that it was not designed to overthrow our institutions, although if persevered in...it might have had that effect. But its aim was entirely to express sympathy and give support to men in another union who were fighting to maintain a standard of life which was certainly not too high for men engaged in so dangerous and often so deadly a trade. However much I disapprove of this weapon, I could not work myself to a pitch of righteous anger against men who, however mistakenly, however unwisely, however wrongly, were acting from no selfish or destructive impulse, but were risking their own livelihood to help their comrades in a desperate plight."

"I...cannot see my way to join in declarations which condemn the General Strike while refraining from criticism of the Government, who are equally, if not more, responsible... I prefer the Liberal policy of trusting to conciliation rather than to force."

"There is no revolutionary purpose animating the union leaders, who are now in charge... The whole influence of the strike leaders will be exerted in the interests of law and order. Let us trust that a settlement will be reached whilst calm and restraint are being maintained on both sides. There are grave risks in the whole situation. I put my faith on British coolness and in the British Parliament."

"We are met together this afternoon under the shadow of a grave industrial conflict of unknown magnitude. Apart altogether from the merits of the dispute, every citizen will feel it his duty to support the Government of to-day in the maintenance of order and in the organizing and facilitating of the essential services of the nation. (Cheers.) The country must come first always and all the time. It is very deplorable and all the more deplorable because in my honest judgment it was unnecessary."

"This is a direct attack on one class in the community, and that the largest, and the class that can least afford it."

"Until we have disarmament in Europe, no treaties will avail to prevent war. The temptation would be too great. If there is one Power with overwhelming force where its claims can be established easily and readily, the temptation will be to resort to the battlefield and not to the court of arbitration. It is therefore vital that there should be disarmament."

"Many Liberals who voted Conservative at the last General Election thought the country was in danger from Communism. But the greatest danger from Communism is that we should mismanage our affairs and that we will end in bankruptcy. I am not afraid of Communist orators or leaflets. I am not even afraid of the Russian subsidies to them; but I am afraid of such a muddle of our affairs that the working classes in despair will take anything."

"I appeal that these proposals should be examined, and, if found to be wise, adopted and carried out in that spirit of high and fearless patriotism and resolution which lifted this nation to such heights of endeavour and success but seven years ago."

"Restore the village life of England to its original brilliancy and glory. Every labourer should have half an acre as a right."

"This is not the time to add one torch to the flame of discontent in this land. I speak with solemnity, watching what is going on in the industrial centres. For Heaven's sake, do not let us drive the farm labourer into the ranks of those in rebellion against society."

"If it is right that the State should resume its authority over the land for the purposes of burying the dead, it is surely also right that it should exercise its ownership where it is necessary it should do so to feed the living."

"I know the expense of this would not pay 1 per cent. interest. Perhaps not, but it would pay better than doles to rot men in idleness, and their work would leave the national estate for ever richer. On every account the best exchange for the workless is an exchange of the green doors of the Labour Bureau for the green fields of Britain."

"Russia can play the fool and survive because no Government can destroy her natural resources, but if you have the anarchy which Bolshevism and revolution brings in this country, we shall be inevitably ruined."

"At the last Election hon. Members opposite were very gallantly fighting against the flaming apostles of Zinovieff and beating them badly. To-night they are being herded into the Red Lobby. The hand that directs them will be the hand of the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, but the voice that compels them is the voice of Mr. Cook."

"Quite frankly, the Government were afraid of facing cold steel... The Home Secretary has been delivering a great many speeches recently about the Red peril. It really is no use barking at the Red Flag every time it cracks in the wind, whilst his chief is engaged in humbly gliding the flag staff—and with standard gold. Really it is very sad to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer assisting in that operation. He was very eager to fight the Reds on the Volga. I am very sorry to see him running away from them on the Thames and leaving his purse behind."

"This is a Vote to spend £58,000,000 in protection of our trade routes. Our trade routes are in danger, but they are not in danger from navies. ... They are not naval, they are not military, they are not aerial; they are industrial, and the First Lord of the Admiralty has within the last few days been brought face to face with far and away the greatest danger to our trade routes. It is not in the Pacific; it is at home. It is no use sweeping the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean in order to see whether you can somehow or other find dangers to guard against. The danger is yawning in front of us, and the Government are marching into it, scanning the horizon with telescope glued to one eye, and the other closed."

"The [Conservative] Government seemed hopeless and confused and without purpose... Unfortunately, the men who ought to be awake were slumbering, and in their dreams they babbled incoherencies about good will and subsidies... There had never been a more pitiful exhibition than that made by the Prime Minister in the debate on unemployment."

"The action of the Government which had had the most disastrous effect on British trade was their premature and precipitate restoration of the gold standard before our credit was ripe for that departure. It had made sterling dearer and thus artificially put up the price of British goods in the neutral markets, where we were already competing on very narrow margins with our trade rivals. At this very hour coalowners and miners had been driven to the brink of a yawning chasm of strife, largely through this deed of egregious recklessness by the Chancellor of the Exchequer."

"Honestly, I cannot see how you are going to overcome these factors unless there is some determination by the nation as a whole to grip the problem and face it and deal with it as we dealt with the problems of the War, with courage, with initiative and, above all, without fear of departing from the ordinary channels. The thing that saved us in the War was that we were not afraid of doing something that had never been done before, and you will never get away from it... Honestly, if I had been there another three years, I should have learned something new. I am sick of this slavish adhesion to the Coalition policy."

"It is no use simply saying, "Little children, love one another," if one set of children can get nearly all the toffee and the others have very little."

"The world year by year is spinning rapidly away from that evil environment and the frenzy, carnage, and savagery. The firmament is clearing. The springtime of Liberalism is at hand, and with due labour we shall reap the harvest in season."