Labour Quotes - page 36
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."
David Lloyd George
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.
David Lloyd George
It is an incredibly bad Bill. It is really an incredible Bill at all for the Labour Government to have introduced. It contains, in my judgment, the worst features of Socialism and individualism without the redeeming features of either. It is State interference without State protection. It has all the greed of individualism without any of the stimulus of competition... The Bill is a complete surrender to one interest-a complete surrender-without regard to the general interest of the community.
David Lloyd George
Quite the most difficult problem in regard to labour was that of securing their wholehearted co-operation in the urgent task of munition production-by sticking in the same workshop, keeping good time, working steadily and avoiding strikes; and in particular by consenting to those relaxations of their trade union rules which would make possible an extensive dilution of skilled by unskilled workers, and a considerable use of overtime in cases of emergency.
David Lloyd George
The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
Edmund Burke
I want a truce of God in this country, that we may compose our differences, that we may join all our strengths together to see if we cannot pull the country into a better and happier condition. It is little that a Government can do; these reforms, these revolutions must come from the people themselves. The organisations of employers and men, if they take their coats off to it, are far more able to work out the solutions of their troubles than the politicians...So let those who represent labour and capital get down to it, and seek and pursue peace through every alley and every corner of this country...And if I have a message to-night for you and the people of this country, it is just this. I would say: "England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."
Stanley Baldwin
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.
Ramsay MacDonald
The socialization or nationalization of production and distribution and the extinction of what is called Capitalism-by whatever name the ideal, and the process for its attainment, is called-would starve the resources, and, in time, drain away the life-blood of the great productive industries which depend for their efficiency on the free play of initiative and enterprise. And Labour is becoming more and more a class organization, an expression and embodiment of what is called "class-consciousness.” That again was significantly illustrated in the general strike, which was directed by organized Labour, and which was countenanced-it is true, in a somewhat shamefaced fashion-by the Parliamentary Labour Party leaders.
H. H. Asquith
It may have been a magnificent demonstration of the solidarity of labour, but it was at the same time a most pathetic evidence of the failure of all of us to live and work together for the good of all. I recognize the courage that it took on the part of the leaders who had taken a false step to recede from that position unconditionally...It took a great deal more courage than it takes their critics now, who are blaming them for not going straight on, whatever happened. But if that strike showed solidarity, sympathy with the miners-whatever you like-it showed something else far greater. It proved the stability of the whole fabric of our own country, and to the amazement of the world not a shot was fired. We were saved by common sense and the good temper of our own people.
Stanley Baldwin
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.
Ramsay MacDonald
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.
Ramsay MacDonald
There are, without doubt, great possibilities in the serious exploitation of the astronomical tale; as a few semi-classics like "The War of the Worlds", "The Last and First Men", "Station X", "The Red Brain", and Clark Ashton Smith's best work prove. But the pioneers must be prepared to labour without financial return, professional recognition, or the encouragement of a reading majority whose taste has been seriously warped by the rubbish it has devoured. Fortunately sincere artistic creation is its own incentive and reward, so that despite all obstacles we need not despair of the future of a fresh literary form whose present lack of development leaves all the more room for brilliant and fruitful experimentation.
H. P. Lovecraft
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
![[The Labour Party's leadership is] dominated by rather rootless intellectuals or obviously bourgeois eccentrics like Mr Michael Foot and Mr Wedgwood Benn. (Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/35/quintin-hogg-baron-hailsham-of-st-marylebone-1007935.webp)
"I choose my physician and my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be "chosen.” The natural and right system respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum.
John Ruskin
[I]n conditions of full employment, such as we have today, it is clear that the bargaining power of Trade Unions is very strong. Employers in general can sell all they can produce profitably and are afraid that they will never get their labour back if they once lose it. Workers know that there is plenty of work available. Thus there is no real obstacle to the steady increase in wages, which in turn leads to corresponding increases in prices. I must tell my colleagues that I do not see any easy answer to this problem.
Rab Butler
On the fall of Chartism, the Liberal party-which as an engine of progress was a party without principles or definition, but has been used as a thoroughly adequate expression of English middle-class hypocrisy, cowardice, and short-sightedness-engrossed the whole of the political progressive movement in England, and dragged the working classes along with it, blind as they were to their own interests and the solidarity of labour.
William Morris
