Women Born In The 1950s

"Security issues, it appears, are more important to Western countries than women’s rights. What matters is that the region is more stable and opium production is down. This, though, is another insane situation. We pay Turkey to grow poppies. Where do you think codeine and diamorphine come from? It is possible to move from illicit to legal trade and without it Afghanistan will remain cripplingly poor. The other people who see the openings here, of course, are the Chinese who have built roads into the country and want to mine the lithium there."

"Is there anything that women can have for ourselves alone that certain men do not want to take away from us? Or get access to? Anything at all?"

"That we well understand how difficult it is to grow up in a porn-saturated world where the selfie is more valued than actual selfhood?"

"I am under no illusion about the Tories' own record. Austerity hit women and children the hardest. We had two more female prime ministers – a win for equality, if only one that proved women can be equally as useless as men. The problem with Labour people though is that they see themselves as anti-sexist, not to mention morally superior, and think they should be considered upstanding feminists even though they actually do nothing to advance the cause of women's rights."

"I want this bill passed and I want other families to never suffer that risk of not having warning and not having the chance to make a safe exit"

"As activists and as lawmakers we must have our voice and our legislation be heard, we need to make sure we pass laws that protect and expand rights up against the extremist right-wing Supreme Court and Republican Party"

"Anytime I can stand up and say, remember — particularly in Pennsylvania — you still have your rights to abortion care and your privacy of health-care services, that’s really something I want to do"

"Government has a role to play to spread awareness, break stigma, and help save lives"

"National Recovery Month is a time to bring hope to people in recovery and their families. I was grateful to be with my son, Harry, as well as Secretary Jen Smith and other advocates to discuss how we can make recovery more accessible and possible for everyone in Pennsylvania"

"The very powerful first steps to unifying is to take us through what happened here and (ensure) this can never happen again"

"If I don’t tell the story honestly, it will come off like some sort of a patina. And that won’t help anybody"

"I arrived in the camp having thrown up more than I ever had, so somebody said drink some water. We went to our respective beds and the bush toilet was a long way away and the kerosene lamp had gone out. So I did what any camper does and thought I'll just step this way closer to the bushes and go to the loo - slightly forgetting that everything was recorded and on infra-red camera. I was extremely unwell and thought that rather than throw up over camp I'd go for a quick wee-stop in the jungle."

"When it comes to the politics of agitation, Jeremy Corbyn is Hardie’s clear heir. Were Hardie alive in the 21st century he would surely have opposed the Iraq war, visited the Occupy encampments, supported those activists fighting against the "social cleansing" of London and denounced austerity. A charismatic public speaker who frequently addressed huge crowds, he would have recognised the enthusiasm and fervour of the mass audiences that Corbyn has attracted across the country, which so many thought dead in the age of Twitter and Facebook."

"But Hardie’s political trajectory also serves as an important warning to any contemporary radical leader in parliament, the one bit of the job many claim Corbyn cannot do. A strong believer in representative democracy, Hardie nonetheless loathed the deal-making and elitism of parliament itself and was widely acknowledged as a poor leader of the party in the Commons for the very short period he undertook the job from 1906 to 1907."

"There’s no doubt that a Corbyn win would pose an enormous challenge for the centre-right of the party, but the many MPs who oppose him can surely sit on their hands or plot, or both, for only so long. The task is even greater for the member for Islington North, borne in on a wave of popular feeling. If his leadership were to succeed, it would need to be exceptionally generous, imaginative and inclusive. It would have to forge fresh alliances, take surprising positions and make unexpected compromises. Hardie the seer, the agitator, inspires those of us who believe Labour needs to present a bolder alternative to the Conservatives. Hardie the diffident party leader reminds us that we still have a lot to learn about how to shape “divine discontent” into a credible and popular programme."

"There was something unsettling about the serried ranks of New Labour women elected on 1 May last year [1997]. All those structured smiles and cheerful jackets gathered round our leader made me feel like a bad-tempered Daily Mail reader or one of those glorious man-hating feminists of myth who live in Hackney and refuse to shave their legs. What I hadn’t realised was that this unmonstrous regiment of women came much closer to representing the end of something – feminism as a natural ally of radical politics – than to representing a key moment in the long march through the institutions. Nor had I imagined that so many of them would become part of that blancmange known as one-nation politics. There are many reasons why they have proved such a disappointment. Personal ambition is one. Most new MPs live in fear of marginalisation, of being banished to the Siberia of consistently applied principle, of having to face up to the fact that they will never be a bag-carrier for an Under-Secretary of State. Sisterly solidarity, too, plays a part. Top Labour women are ferociously loyal to each other, but their loyalty has so far furthered no cause greater than the right of cabinet ministers to send their children to selective schools or to have their minds changed over tobacco sponsorship of Formula One."

"I did not start out in state schools. Like so many children of Labour politicians in the 60s, my brothers and I began our education in the private sector. My parents, Tony and Caroline Benn, decided to move us all to state schools around 1963 on the grounds that it was hypocritical to back comprehensives for everyone else and then educate your own children privately. In some people's eyes, this made us four children a collective sacrifice, a living social experiment. We felt only lucky. Our nearest comprehensive was Holland Park, which cynics so enjoyed deriding as a showcase comprehensive and therefore a place of privilege. (If I had a pound for the number of times people have said to me, "Holland Park? Oh that wasn't a real comprehensive!" I could have paid for a year of private schooling, easy.) Holland Park was one of the first purpose-built comprehensives in the country but it was also, by the time I got there in the late 60s, a large rumbustious institution, which drew in a small, albeit highly publicised, section of the middle class who lived around the school. Some of these, like my mother, Caroline, became passionately committed to both the school itself - she was governor of Holland Park for 35 years - and the wider comprehensive cause. My brother Hilary remembers the strangeness of arriving at Holland Park for the first time after attending Westminster preparatory school, where he and my eldest brother Stephen had been usefully designated as Benn I and Benn II. He can still remember how huge the school buildings looked to him and the strange sound of so many boys - and girls - laughing and running and talking in the vast playgrounds."

"A quarter of a century on, the Grunwick dispute remains one of the most significant in modern industrial history. In a sense, the strike was typical of a pattern of similar disputes before and since: a factory with a few hundred workers, a slowly building sense of injustice and a long standoff between employer and worker. But even then, Grunwick seemed a different kind of battle. This was a historic meeting between a traditional trade unionism, still relatively sure of its power, and a growing band of black and Asian workers who were beginning to find an industrial and political voice. Arthur Scargill bought down his Yorkshire miners in a bus - there was even fighting talk of shutting the pits. Grunwick workers travelled to more than 2,000 workplaces over 40 weeks to enlist support. The strike seemed to draw in every progressive movement of the day. "Black and white unite and fight" demanded the banners in Chapter road. Socialist feminists did their picket duty and wrote sternly of the military tactics of their trade union brothers. Jayaben Desai, in her sari and white cardigan, handbag crooked over her arm, was a feminist heroine of the age. Yet perhaps the most lasting consequence of Grunwick and other mass disputes during the 1970s were some of the anti-union laws of the 1980s, particularly those outlawing mass pickets. Today, it is possible to see more clearly the fraud that lay at the heart of the argument advanced by what was then called the "new right", particularly over Grunwick. A few hundred Asian men and women asking for the right to join a union and negotiate from within it was hardly the best example of an overweening and arrogant union movement it claimed was running the country. By any reckoning, Grunwick was a just cause, whose supporters included moderates such as Shirley Williams. In 1977, an independent court of inquiry chaired by Lord Scarman criticised mass picketing but upheld the workers' claim to union recognition. But it was a lost cause: George Ward, the Grunwick owner, refused to give in. This, despite a last-ditch hunger strike by Mrs Desai and four colleagues on the steps of the TUC. The strike fizzled out in early 1978. No walkout since, bar the miners' strike of 1984-5, has quite achieved Grunwick's fame or progressive significance. In the early 1980s, I went to a small factory near Birmingham to cover a similar dispute, led by a group of Asian workers protesting about pay and conditions and the right to union recognition. This time, the streets were empty. As union power declined, so did media coverage - if there's no punch-up, so what?"

"If a week is a long time in politics, a century can seem surprisingly short. With uncanny timing, the centenary of the death of Keir Hardie, Labour’s first leader and arguably its most towering figure, falls at the end of this month, on the very weekend that Labour delegates will gather in Brighton for this year’s annual conference, the first under the party’s new leader."

"Programmers, authors are going to be the future new entertainers ... It might be presumptuous to say they might be new Robert Redfords ... but to a certain extent [they will be] idolized. Tomorrow's heroes."

"I just couldn’t stop. It was compulsive. I started playing it and kept playing. I had a baby at the time, [who] was eight-months old; I totally ignored him. I didn’t want to be bothered. I didn’t want to stop and make dinner."

"If I could only pick one game, I would pick Phantasmagoria, as I enjoyed working on it immensely and it was so very challenging (and I love to be challenged!). However, in my heart, I will always love the King's Quest series and, especially, King's Quest, I since it was the game that really 'made' Sierra On-Line."

"These projects help us turn the face of New York city's long-standing dependence on fossil fuels, ensuring millions of New Yorkers-especially those living in our most vulnerable communities-can have the promise of cleaner air and a healthier future"

"Anyone who commits a crime under our laws...has consequences...I don't know why that's so important to you."

"We're fighting to bring the government back to the people and out of the hands of dictators. And we're here to say that the era of Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, okay? Get outta town, get OUTTA town, 'cause you don’t represent our values. You are not New yorkers, you're not New Yorkers. Because we come from a long line of people who fought for women's rights that happened here first. We fought for environmental justice that happened here first. We fought for labor rights that happened here first. We fought for the LGBTQ rights that happened here first."

"I will have no distractions in my administration because we focused on doing what's best for the people of the state"

"I want to get money out to people. We have way too much money sitting there that should be going to renters and to landlords who are suffering"

"I want by the end of my administration, for every woman to say there are no barriers, there is no longer a ceiling"

"I'm a mother. You're hard-wired to care about your children and your family's safety. So voters need to know that we have a plan"

"I have felt a weight on my shoulders to make sure that every little girl and all the women of the state who’ve had to bang up against glass ceilings everywhere they turn, to know that a woman could be elected in her own right and successfully govern a state as rough and tumble as New York"

"If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day. That is a natural reaction."

"I think the end result will be a somewhat more moderate Kathy Hochul, which I think squares with where she actually is, which is a bit of a common sense, moderate Democrat"

"Young men claim they want change, they want freedom, but the truth is, freedom just confuses them and change makes them quake. Set them on the open road with a purse and a fair wind, and before they’ve gone a mile they are crying for a master: they must be indentured, they must be in bond, they must have someone to obey."

"Honour is a luxury, when someone is trying in earnest to kill you."

"“Their abbots will curse you.” “Curses with me have none effect, because I give them no credit. They may curse till they combust.”"

"When I was first in his service he thought of our Zürich friends as no more than blasphemers who eat sausage in Lent. And Luther, he believed he was the son of a demon, who foams at the mouth when Mass is said. But what you must remember about the king—he was brought up to heed priests and to ask forgiveness for everything he does. You may kick out the confessors and tell him he is justified, but he still has a priest in the head."

"Only a fool sees plots where there are none."

"“The burden of kingship,” he says, “no man can imagine it. All my life, to be a prince: to be observed to be a prince; all eyes to be set on me; to be an exemplar of virtue, of discretion, of excellence in learning; to have a mind young and vigorous yet as wise as Solomon; to take pleasure in what others have designed for my pleasure, or be thought ungrateful; to discipline all my appetites, to unmake myself as a man in order to make myself as a king; to waste not a minute list I be seen to waste it; for idleness, no excuses; always alert to prove, always to show, that I am worthy of the place God appointed me…”"

"You see how, my Lord, by the time my councillors proclaimed me, they had already started lying to me. As soon as you are king, nobody tells you the truth."

"King Henry offers his services as mediator, and declares he will remain neutral. “By which he means,” Chapuys says, he will go to the side that promises him most and cost him least. That is what he means by neutrality.” He says, “What prince would do anything else? He must seize his advantage. “But then,” Chapuys says, “Henry took so much of his honour.” “Oh,” he says, “they all do.”"

"“I hear you will bring in a law,” Kingston says. “It seems harsh, to make them commit a crime in retrospect.” They try to explain it to the constable. A prince cannot be impeded by temporal distinctions: past, present, future. Nor can he excuse the past, just for being over and done. He can’t say, ‘all water under the bridges;’ the past is always trickling under the soil, a slow leak you can’t trace. Often, meaning is only revealed retrospectively. The will of God, for instance, is brought to light these days by more skilful translators. As for the future, the king’s desires move swiftly and the law must run to keep up. Bear in mind his Majesty’s remarkable foresight, at the trial of the late queen. He knew the sentence before the verdict was in. “True,” Kingston says. “The executioner was already on the sea."

"“He was fretting about poison. He mentioned you.” The doctor pauses. “I do not mean to say he accused you.” “Some men always think they’re poisoned. In Italy one hears it.” “Well,” Butts says, “in Italy they are probably right.”"

"“Blessed are the meek,” he says. “Yes, so they claim. I notice where it gets you.”"

"I don’t have a history, only a past."

"“Gregory,” Richard says, “what we want from you is less theology and more swagger.”"

"Usually he is the soul of courtesy. But if you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?"

"The word “however” is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one."

"Richard hugs him; says, “If she had reigned longer she would have given us to the dogs to eat.” “If we had let her reign longer, we would have deserved it.”"

"In any well-ordered country, Suffolk said yesterday, the trial of a noblewoman would be conducted in seemly privacy; he had rolled his eyes and said, but my lord, this is England."

"Whoever else is surprised, they are not surprised in Rome about the turn events have taken. In Rome, of course, it would be unremarkable: adultery, incest, one merely shrugs. When he was at the Vatican, in Cardinal Bainbridge’s day, he quickly saw that no one in the papal court grasped what was happening, ever; and least of all the Pope. Intrigue feeds on itself; conspiracies have neither mother nor father, and yet they thrive: the only thing to know is that no one knows anything."