Presbyterians

"The books that influenced me most were Hugh Miller's, particularly his "Schools and Schoolmasters." Also the "Waverley Novels," in conjunction with Scottish History, opened out the great world of national life for and led me on to politics. But Hugh Miller had more influence upon me than any other."

"He had been across the veldt, he had seen the battlefields, the still open trenches, and it all came to Chinese labour. They were told it was going to release the slaves, the Uitlanders, to open up South Africa to a great flood of white emigrants. They were told it was going to plant the Union Jack upon the land of the free. But the echoes of the muskets had hardly died out on the battlefields, the ink on the treaty was hardly dry, before the men who plotted the war began to plot to bring in Chinese slaves. (Cheers.) They could talk about their gold; their gold is tainted. (Hear, hear.) They could talk about employing white men; it was not true, and even if it were true, was he going to stand and see his white brothers degraded to the position of yellow slave drivers? No, he was not. (Loud and continued cheers.) These patriots! These miserable patriots! If they had had the custodianship of the opinions of the country 75 years ago, slavery in the colonies would have continued. When the north was fighting the south for the liberty of men, these men would have counted their guineas, would have told them how many white men had plied the lash in the southern states, and they would have said that for miserable cash, miserable trash, the great name of the country required to be bought and sold. Thank God there were no twentieth century Unionist imperialists in office then. (Loud cheers.)"

"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."

"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."

"The voting strengths of the movement will come from the ranks of labour – the organised intelligent workers – the men who have had municipal and trade union experience – the men of self-respect who know the capacity of the people... They are to be the constructive agents of the next stage in our industrial evolution. But they are not to stand alone. Socialism is no class movement. Socialism is a movement of opinion, not an organization of status. It is not the rule of the working class; it is the organization of the community. Therefore, to my mind one of the most significant facts of the times is the conversion of the intellectual middle class to Socialism."

"The idea that a lax administration of the Poor Law is Socialistic, that putting an unemployed man on a farm for six weeks at the public expense is Socialistic, that feeding school children is the beginning of the Socialistic State, is absurd. We can deal with our unemployed, our sweated workers, our derelicts, only by attacking the causes of unemployment, of sweating, of human deterioration and though at a crisis our humanitarianism will compel us to resort to palliatives and give temporary relief, our action at such times should not be a willing and proud thing but one which is hesitating and temporary."

"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."

"The State does not concern itself primarily with man as possessor of rights, but with man as the doer of duties. A right is the opportunity of fulfilling a duty, and it should be recognised only in so far as it is necessary to the performance of duty... Nor should the State grant the "right" to the franchise unless by doing so it is promoting its own ends...as man approaches the fullness of liberty which he can enjoy only when he is perfect, his rights become more ample... The State regards the man as a carrier of human life between the Past and the Future, and assigns to him the work of realising the Future from the Past. It shows him the path."

"It is to MacDonald's credit that he came out strongly against this one-sided attitude, and in an article of April 27 [1935] in the News Letter, the weekly paper of the National Labour Party, severely criticised the Germans for their intransigent militarism, and the Germanophiles in this country for their blindness in swallowing the German case."

"State Charity is not socialism but may become the greatest menace the Socialist Movement [has been] threatened with."

"Ramsay MacDonald has a front-bench mind. Years ago I tried to get him taken into the Ministry, but others thought otherwise."

"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."

"The Socialist, therefore, cannot consistently address himself to class sentiment or class prejudice. He ought, indeed, to look away from it, because any victory won as the result of siding with one party in the struggle only perpetuates what he desires to eliminate. The appeal to class interest is an appeal to the existing order, whether the class addressed is the rich or the poor. It is the anti-Socialist who makes class appeals; the Socialist makes social appeals. Class consciousness is an asset of the defenders of the existing order of exploitation."

"Mr. Rockefeller not only owns the Standard Oil supplies: he controls the railways, the banks, the shops...upon which his Trust depends. The Steel Corporation not only makes steel; it owns coal and iron fields, ore steamers, the Erie and Pittsburgh mineral railway, as well as the operatives in Homestead. We oppose the Trust, not as an organisation, but because it is controlled by individuals for their own ends...But the Trust points out the line of British advance. In this country, however, the introduction of the Trust should be marked by public ownership."

"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."

"The Hindu from his traditions and religion regards India not only as a political unit naturally the subject of one sovereignty, but as the outward embodiment, as the temple - nay even as the Goddess Mother of his spiritual culture.... India and Hinduism are organically related as body and soul."

"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."

"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."

"On [5 August 1924] Hankey lunched with MacDonald and "took him to task about his unconcealed hatred of Lloyd George whom he always belittles". He stressed that the present conference "was simplicity itself compared with the Paris [Peace] Conference", that Lloyd George "had never allowed anyone to run him [MacDonald] down...when he was the underdog", but had described him as "a very considerable fellow fighting a lonely battle very pluckily". Hankey attributed MacDonald's attitude "to jealously of a much bigger man than he"."

"The Labour party is no class champion. In politics it is frankly democratic, in economics it is co-operative... It was not bought into being to revenge the wage-earner and mercilessly smash the capitalist... Capitalist and labourer alike feel that some new order must evolve if England is to exist."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Our loss of belief in the Liberal party is therefore owing to the fact that its day of historical fitness has passed away. The new problems of progress will demand treatment by men of different outlook, of a different political principle, of a different mental quality, of a new species of democratic sympathy. The mass of the Liberal party will no doubt continue progressive, but their organisation is not now the sole custodian of the progressive cause... The Independent Labour party is in the true line of the progressive apostolic succession. It alone is able to interpret the spirit of the time."

"There is too much expected of parliament. Localities should manage their own affairs and unions of localities should be formed when necessary to look after common interests. Our county councils are excellent beginnings in this direction."

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

"In the House of Commons once he was not in very good form. He tended to hesitate and repeat himself. I'd never heard him quite so bad ever before. And Jimmy Maxton stood up and said: "Sit down, man, you're a bloody tragedy." You could have heard a pin drop; you could have heard a feather move."

"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..."

"I was surprised when it was conveyed to me that he expected me to call on him... I was shown into the Cabinet room, where I found the Prime Minister alone. Queen Victoria complained that Mr. Gladstone addressed her as if she were a public meeting. I know what she meant. Mr. MacDonald stood up and delivered a long discourse in his beautiful voice and with the phrasing of a practised orator. He began: "I am a layman from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, but I realise to the full the importance and value of religion in the community. It should be a force making for unity and a bulwark against the forces of disruption, which are more powerful to-day than is generally supposed." ... I listened attentively to this speech, storing up questions and points of disagreement for the time when my turn to speak should come. They were wasted; that time never came, for as soon as the Prime Minister had ceased his oration, Mr. Baldwin was shown in and I was shown out, having uttered perhaps two sentences during the whole interview."

"MacDonald then burst out into a general denunciation of the whole crew of French politicians—underhand, grasping, dishonourable. I was entertained the other day, he said, at Versailles... There were present about 70 ex-premiers and would be premiers—everybody, he added, in France wants to be a premier, if it is only for four days. I was seated in the middle of the long side of the table so had a good view of all the men opposite. There wasn't a good face among them. Mme Herriot, a very nice person, was seated next to me. I said to her "can you tell me if there is an honest man here, besides your husband". "Yes", she replied, "I think there are two"."

"I never thought Ramsay would willingly cooperate with the Liberals. He hates them. He is a compound of vanity and vindictiveness. His snobbish instincts incline him to association with Tories."

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

"He had sufficient conscience to bother him, but not sufficient to keep him straight."

"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."

"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."

"In the study there are photographs of Ll[oyd] G[eorge], Ramsay, and S[tanley] B[aldwin]. S. B. had learnt indirectly from one of the maids at Chequers in Ramsay's time that on entering the study for the weekend he always put the Ll[oyd] G[eorge] photograph in the table drawer, "because it makes me see red"."

"He was a much more considerable man than it is now the fashion to admit. He was one of the creators, if not the chief architect, of the Labour Party. He brought it from a small membership in the House of Commons to a position in which it was able to hold office, not without credit...on two separate occasions... His actions in 1931, by which he destroyed his own creation and doomed the Labour Party to a long eclipse, naturally caused intense bitterness among his old colleagues. But the formation of the National Government resulted from real devotion to what he sincerely believed to be the interests of the State... He cannot be blamed for accepting what was the unequivocal view of almost all the leading experts as to what had to be done... The only difference between MacDonald and those who deserted him is that he had the courage to follow the advice which he believed to be sound, while they shrank from the unpopularity of policies which they themselves admitted to be necessary... If in his last years MacDonald sank into a woolly confusion of mind and language, the achievements of his life, taken as a whole, are by no means negligible."

"He reverted again and again to this dislike and distrust of the Liberals. He could get on with the Tories. They differed at times openly then forgot all about it and shook hands. They were gentlemen, but the Liberals were cads."

"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."

"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."

"MacDonald at Llandudno [in 1930] faced the test of a lifetime and, despite his assumed air of a weary Titan, it is hard to deny that he rose to it superbly. Even when his speech is read today – and MacDonald's speeches were very much intended to be heard, not read – its force is apparent. Picture the full scene with the presence, the gestures, the beautiful accent, the whole elegant swaying and lilting integration of voice, mind and body which is what a great MacDonald oration was, and it is not difficult to imagine the spell he cast."

"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."

"The League takes upon itself as its first task the creating once again of the European system, and that European system never will exist until our late enemies have ceased to be our enemies and have come in to take their cooperative part in that system."

"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."

"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."

"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 am in favour of arbitration—I see nothing else for the world. If we cannot devise a proper system of arbitration, then do not let us fool ourselves that we are going to have peace. Let us go back to the past, let us go back to competitive armaments, let us go back to that false, whited sepulchre of security and of military pacts—there is nothing else for us—and let us prepare for the next war, because that is inevitable."

"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."

"We are here preparing, as I see it, this international armaments conference. That ought to be our project. If we can remove the obstacles in the way of that we shall have done a tremendous amount of work that, in its very nature, once it is done, is bound to be permanent, because the reason and morality of the world will stand by it so loyally."

"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."