Activists From England

"Let us not forget that our object here is to try ultimately to bring about full democracy in Northern Rhodesia. We know that that will take a little time. We know that it must involve an acceptance by the white minority themselves of an African State which will be under the control of the African people. We believe that the white minority have an important part to play there, but they must accept the fact that we must get over this hump or past this watershed—whatever the metaphor may be—and that with the pace of events moving as it is in Africa, the time has long since gone when white supremacy can possibly be a viable policy."

"[D]oes [the Prime Minister] realise that it is precisely because of our admirable record in converting a former colonial empire into a free Commonwealth that we ought to welcome and support anti-colonial resolutions in the United Nations, and that to fail to do so inevitably gives the impression that we still support colonialist régimes?"

"We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent it, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable. There are some of us who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love. We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party – with its great past – may retain its glory and its greatness."

"For my part, I hold that the central idea of British Socialism is the brotherhood of man. It is this rather than public ownership which surely inspires all our aims in foreign, colonial, social, and economic policies alike. It is this which inspires our protests about Suez and Hola and Cyprus. It is this which is the common link between our hatred of racial discrimination, our opposition to sabre rattling jingoism, our support for a world order and for aid from richer to poorer countries, our belief in social justice and a classless society, our hopes of building a community based on something better than acquisitiveness and rivalry, our respect for the freedom of the individual."

"It was on account of the [General] Strike that I first came to know Douglas and Margaret. I had been reading some socialist theory as well as economics—Tawney, the Webbs, Marx (about half of volume i of Das Kapital), J. A. Hobson, Hugh Dalton, but I did not at that time follow day-to-day politics at all closely. Thus for me, as I think for many others, the impact of the Strike was sharp and sudden, a little like a war, in that everybody's lives were suddenly affected by a new unprecedented situation, which forced us to abandon plans for pleasure, to change our values and adjust our priorities. Above all we had to make a choice. And how we chose was a clear test of our political outlook. The vast majority of undergraduates [at Oxford University] went off to unload ships and drive trams or lorries. For me this was out of the question. All my sympathies were instinctively on the side of the miners, the unions, the Labour Party, and the Left generally. It was their cause I wanted to help."

"Clause Four] lays us open to continual misrepresentation... It implies that we propose to nationalise everything, but do we? Everything?—the whole of light industry, the whole of agriculture, all the shops—every little pub and garage? Of course not. We have long ago come to accept...a mixed economy... [the]... view of 90 per cent of the Labour Party—had we not better say so instead of going out of our way to court misrepresentation?"

"I conclude that we should make two things clear to the country. First, that we have no intention of abandoning public ownership and accepting for all time the present frontiers of the public sector. Secondly, that we regard public ownership not as an end in itself but as a means—and not necessarily the only or the most important one to certain ends—such as full employment, greater equality and higher productivity. We do not aim to nationalise every private firm or to create an endless series of State monopolies. While we shall certainly wish to extend social ownership, in particular directions, as circumstances warrant, our goal is not 100% State ownership. Our goal is a society in which Socialist ideals are realised. Our job is to move towards this as fast as we can. The pace at which we can go depends on how quickly we can persuade our fellow citizens to back us. They will only do this if we pay proper attention to the kind of people they are and the kind of things they want."

"You can be assured of this. There will be no increase in the standard or other rates of income tax under the Labour Government so long as normal peacetime conditions continue."

"It is wholly untrue that I deplored the strategy of the [general] strike. I did not honestly think a great deal about it. I knew that once the chips were down my part was on the side of the strike. I considered the Government had behaved badly to the miners and that was that."

"I don't believe the present Prime Minister can carry out this policy. His policy this last week has been disastrous and he is utterly, utterly discredited in the world. Only one thing now can save the reputation and honour of our country. Parliament must repudiate the Government's policy. The Prime Minister must resign."

"All I can say is that in taking this decision the Government, in the view of Her Majesty's Opposition, have committed an act of disastrous folly whose tragic consequences we shall regret for years. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, all of us will regret it, because it will have done irreparable harm to the prestige and reputation of our country."

"I have no doubt myself that the reason why Colonel Nasser acted in the way that he did, aggressively, brusquely, suddenly, was precisely because he wanted to raise his prestige in the rest of the Middle East. ... He wanted to challenge the West and to win. He wanted to assert his strength. He wanted to make a big impression. Quiet negotiation, discussion around a table about nationalising the Company would not produce this effect. It is all very familiar. It is exactly the same that we encountered from Mussolini and Hitler in those years before the war."

"The fact is that this episode must be recognised as part of the struggle for the mastery of the Middle East. That is something which I do not feel that we can ignore. One may ask, "Why does it involve the rest of the Middle East?" It is because of the prestige issues which are involved here. ... [P]restige has quite considerable effects. If Colonel Nasser's prestige is put up sufficiently and ours is put down sufficiently, the effects of that in that part of the world will be that our friends desert us because they think we are lost, and go over to Egypt."

"We cannot forget that Colonel Nasser has repeatedly boasted of his intention to create an Arab empire from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. The French Prime Minister, M. Mollet, the other day quoted a speech of Colonel Nasser's and rightly said that it could remind us only of one thing—of the speeches of Hitler before the war."

"I am a Socialist and have been for some 30 years. I became a Socialist quite candidly not so much because I was a passionate advocate of public ownership but because at a very early age I came to hate and loathe social injustice, because I disliked the class structure of our society, because I could not tolerate the indefensible differences of status and income which disfigure our society...because I hated poverty and squalor... Pay people more if they do harder, more dangerous, and even more responsible work; pay people more if they have larger families. But the rewards should not be, as they still are, dependent upon the accident of whether you happen to be born of wealthy parents or not... I am a Socialist because I want to see fellowship, or if you prefer it, fraternity...[while preserving] the liberties we cherish. I want to see all this not only in our country but over the world as a whole. These to me are the Socialist ideals. Nationalisation...is a vital means, but it is only one of the means by which we can achieve these objects."

"I just cannot share this Gandhi outlook... If people have more money to spend they may, it is true, gamble or smoke or drink it away. But a lot of them will also enjoy nicer holidays, which is a very good thing for them. We really must keep under control, and pretty strict control, the area within which "the man in Whitehall knows best"."

"I am not easily roused to anger but I must say that this latest cry to cut back the spending of worse off people to cure a crisis mostly caused by too much spending by better off people is intolerable."

"In recent years, hours of work have been reduced, holidays have been increased, the age of entry into employment has gone up, and above all, our general health and expectation of life as a people have markedly improved. It is a natural corollary of these changes that we should work longer and retire later."

"Conditions have greatly changed in Great Britain since the end of the war owing to the existence of full employment. Negotiations about wages between the two sides of industry now take place in entirely different circumstances. There is no reserve of labour to compete for jobs. ... If wages rise faster than productivity the increases in cost can usually be passed on in increased selling prices. There is thus in the economic system very much less check on the upward movement of money wages. ... [I]f wages at home rise unchecked, it is more likely in general that exports will gradually cease to be competitive and there will be balance of payments difficulties. These can be met, in the end, by devaluation. A succession of devaluations completely undermines confidence in any currency. ... It is clear that a very difficult problem faces a country such as ours, which wishes to maintain full employment and yet to avoid the undoubted evils of rising prices and balance of payments difficulties abroad."

"Between the wars, the heavy unemployment in Great Britain and keenly competitive conditions abroad were factors which had to be taken into account in wage negotiations. Employers were afraid that higher wages, by adding to their costs, would make it more difficult for them to sell their goods, especially in export markets. If this happened unemployment would increase and workers' representatives had to bear this in mind also. The larger the number of unemployed, also, the more difficult it was to maintain full workers' solidarity, i.e. an employer could resist a strike, and make cuts in wages more easily the more workers were out of work. Thus in the last resort it was the existence of heavy unemployment, at home and abroad, which allowed employers to resist wage claims and discouraged workers from pressing them too far."

"I want to say a word about industrial relations in this industry. This takes my mind back nearly 20 years when, fresh from the University, inexperienced but keen, I started my earning career by lecturing in a small mining town... That was in 1927 just after the end of the coal strike. I do not know that I taught the miners much in the way of economics, but they taught me a great deal. They taught me what economic feudalism was. They taught me what the naked exercise of arbitrary economic power meant. They taught me what it was to be victimised... They taught me what was the reality of economic life."

"Peace can only be secured by re-establishing the rule of law in international affairs...neither a neo-nationalism nor a cowardly surrender to Fascism will be accepted by the vast mass of our people. For the moment rearmament is also essential...the scandalous gaps in our defences have become a byword."

"While prepared to fight for the democratic ideals as such and for the ideal of collective security as such there is little to attract us in fighting merely to preserve the territorial integrity of the British Empire."

"Fascism has become the last defence of a crumbling economic system. It is the last bulwark of Capitalism."

"So long as production is left to the uncontrolled decisions of private individuals, conducted, guided and inspired by the motive of profit, so long will Poverty, Insecurity and Injustice continue."

"Socialists should understand that it is their duty to do anything in their power directly or indirectly to assist the revolutionary opposition within fascist countries."

"It must be admitted that politically communism is the same [as fascism]."

"I was a witness of two civil wars and their ghastly and tragic consequences, and I learnt, as never before, to value the freedom of British political traditions."

"[T]he fundamental objective and criterion by which policy must be judged [is] the achievement of Economic Equality... [W]ithout it Labour policy becomes merely opportunist, distinguishable only from the policies of other parties by the suggestion of attractive means to 'Prosperity', a greater humanitarianism, and, as some would have it, far less favourable circumstances in which to take action... A failure to advance in the direction of that ideal [of social justice] is bound to appear little short of betrayal."

"The destruction of this inequality, the creating and maintaining of a society in which it cannot exist becomes the essential and direct purpose of all Socialist activity."

"The success of the middle class alliance depended on the acceptance by the working class element of middle class leadership and middle class ideas."

"Chartism] might have become purely proletarian—in which case there would always have been a tendency towards revolution—or it might have progressed by a middle and working class alliance—in which case a pacific policy was almost essential. In fact...the extremists undermined the case of the moderates and the moderates queered the pitch of the extremists. Nevertheless it is unlikely, even if their respective fields had been clear, that either could have succeeded."

"Men trade unionists are accused of sex privilege and prejudice … A belief in the divine right of every man to his job is not peculiar to kings and capitalists, and men in organised trades are not disposed to share these advantages with a host of women competitors."

"It is the trifles of life that are its bores, after all. Most men can meet ruin calmly, for instance, or laugh when they lie in a ditch with their own knee-joint and their hunter's spine broken over the double post and rails: it is the mud that has choked up your horn just when you wanted to rally the pack; it's the whip who carries you off to a division just when you've sat down to your turbot; it's the ten seconds by which you miss the train; it's the dust that gets in your eyes as you go down to Epsom; it's the pretty little rose note that went by accident to your house instead of your club, and raised a storm from madame; it's the dog that always will run wild into the birds; it's the cook who always will season the white soup wrong—it is these that are the bores of life, and that try the temper of your philosophy."

"Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey."

"What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasants never do argue; they use abuse."

"Brussels is a gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle of woodland as any butterfly that rests upon moss."

"When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time."

"Even of death Christianity has made a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan and the stoical repose of the Indian."

"A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection — unless you lie — in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician."

"It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by his characters. They resist him, they are not easy to live with."

"But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost."

"Each play was, for me, 'a different kind of failure.' And that fact, I suppose, sent me on to write the next one. (p. 15)"

"We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: 'Failure of communication...' and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rear-guard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility. (15)"

"The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness. (p. 14)"

"So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken. My characters tell me so much and no more, with reference to their experience, their aspirations, their motives, their history. Between my lack of biographical data about them and the ambiguity of what they say lies a territory which is not only worthy of exploration but which it is compulsory to explore. (p. 13)"

"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. (p. 11)"

"I saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time."

"The government of the US has no moral authority to elect itself as the judge over human rights in Cuba, where there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959, and where despite the economic blockade, there are levels of health, education and culture that are internationally recognised."

"The U.S. is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany... Nazi Germany wanted total domination of Europe and they nearly did it. The U.S. wants total domination of the world and is about to consolidate that... Blair sees himself as a representative of moral rectitude. He is actually a mass murderer. But we forget that — we are as much victims of delusions as Americans are."