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Neil Kinnock
34 quotes
“The army of brokers, jobbers and other quaintly named parasites.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the City of London, Labour Monthly (December 1974)
“Devolutionary reform will not provide a factory, a machine or jobs, build a school, train a doctor or put a pound on pensions.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: South Wales Echo (1 November 1975)
“The House of Lords must go - not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune (19 November 1976)
“[T]he only reason why I espouse centralism now, the central organisation and co-ordination and government of our resources in this country, and would like to see much more of that co-ordination and organisation and control and democracy of resources in a Socialist country, is that I think that it is a structure that can give the best advantage to the people—the people I think I am here to represent, working-class people, irrespective of their nationality.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 May 1978) on the Wales Bill
“In my right hon. Friend's reply to the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition, was he not rather unsympathetic, especially now that she appears to be the last pro-Marketeer in Britain? Is not this disturbance manifested by her use of the word "abrasiveness"? For the right hon. Lady to protest a dislike of abrasiveness is rather like Count Dracula professing a distaste for blood. Will my right hon. Friend give an undertaking to increase his abrasiveness until he rubs out altogether the common agricultural policy?”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (15 March 1979)
“We live in a country afflicted by a senile and selfish capitalist system...where families are homeless, sick people unattended, children untaught whilst building workers, nurses and teachers are unemployed”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Introduction’, in Why Vote Labour? (1979), p. 2, quoted in Tudor Jones, ‘Neil Kinnock's socialist journey’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. pp. 568–569
“[Labour has] always believed that the community as a whole should have a greater control over these “commanding heights of the economy”.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Introduction’, in Why Vote Labour? (1979), p. 3, quoted in Tudor Jones, ‘Neil Kinnock's socialist journey’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 569
“[Labour's] socialist argument recognised that the system of economic gambling, commercial whim, speculative profiteering and profligate waste of the earth's resources that is dignified by the title 'private enterprise' is increasingly demonstrating its inability to meet human needs for food, employment, security and fulfilment.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Forward into the Eighties—the Choice’, in Why Vote Labour? (1979), p. 19, quoted in Tudor Jones, ‘Neil Kinnock's socialist journey’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 569
“We must not look for some kind of Messiah.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Explaining to the Bedwellty Constituency Labour Party why he would not vote for Tony Benn in the election for deputy leader (19 June 1981), quoted in Robert Harris, The Making of Neil Kinnock (1984), pp. 157-8
“By emphatically pressing the view that it is only possible to support radical Labour policies by supporting Tony Benn, Tony's associates have turned the contest into a gamble with policies, [yet any] disagreement with those claims has been slandered as 'opportunism', 'careerism' and evidence of every kind of departure from socialist conviction and purpose. That is the truly dangerous product of these months of contest.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Personality, Policies and Democratic Socialism", Tribune (18 September 1981)
“Heckler: At least Mrs Thatcher has got guts. Neil Kinnock: It's a pity that other people had to leave theirs on the ground at Goose Green to prove it.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On TVS television's programme The South Decides during the 1983 general election campaign, quoted in The Daily Telegraph (7 June 1983). Kinnock was forced to write letters to the families of the war dead to apologise.
“The roots of defeat which were put down by some of the elements of our party in the two or three years after 1980 made victory difficult to achieve.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Labour Party's defeat in the 1983 general election, quoted in The Times (10 June 1983), p. 1
“I don't believe that the policies on which we fought the [1983] election ought to be ejected like some sort of spent cartridge.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune (15 June 1983)
“I didn't come to it intellectually, I came to it pragmatically. What intellectual appeal there was came initially entirely from Bevan mainly because of the way in which Bevan, in speech and writing, articulated exactly what I was feeling.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Sam Aaronovitch for Marxism Today (June 1983)
“When I started to encounter Marxism at 16, the elementary truths of the surplus value theory and more than anything else, the logical argument that he produced that labour was the source of all wealth, gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Sam Aaronovitch for Marxism Today (June 1983)
“Someone up there likes me.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to reporters on surviving a high-speed car crash (13 July 1983), quoted in Robert Harris, The Making of Neil Kinnock (1984), p. 223
“If anyone wants to know why we must conduct ourselves [with commonsense and realism], just remember at all times, with all temptations, how you, each and every one of you sitting in this hall, each and every Labour worker watching this conference, each and every Labour voter, yes, and some others as well, remember how you felt on that dreadful morning of the tenth of June. Just remember how you felt then, and think to yourselves: 'June the ninth, 1983, never ever again will we experience that.'”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference after winning the 1983 leadership election (2 October 1983), quoted in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1983, p. 30
“We support the efforts to keep the pits open until exhausted.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Scotsman (12 March 1984)
“[Margaret Thatcher is a] stubborn Salome who wants the miners' heads on a plate.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Gloucester during the miners' strike (25 January 1985), quoted in The Times (26 January 1985), p. 2
“I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council—a Labour council—hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services. The people will not abide posturing.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth (1 October 1985)
“We believe there should be reforms in the EEC which would benefit all the members. If these were not achieved, our policy is to preserve the ultimate option of withdrawing Britain. That option would not, this time, need a referendum, as it did before.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Labour policy regarding the EEC (8 January 1986)
“I'm a father. And no matter how much I try to convince myself towards the course of 'enlightenment' I know damn well that, put to the test, I'm what people would call a reactionary. I know it. I try and rationalize it but it's no good. I come to the same conclusion all the time. My children stand a chance of being hurt in the forseeable future by what's called permissiveness.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Everywoman magazine (28 August 1986), quoted in The Times (4 September 1986), p. 16
“Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1287 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Provisional IRA; speech in the House of Commons (23 October 1986), reported in Hansard, 6th series, vol. 102, col. 1287
“That sort of fundamentalism which treats possession of private property not as a desirable economic and personal asset but as a condition of liberty is a form of primitive religion.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to National Housing and Town Planning Conference, Bournemouth (28 October 1986)
“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Welsh Labour Party conference, Llandudno (15 May 1987)
“David Frost: If you haven't got nuclear weapons, the choice in that situation would be to subject your forces to an unfair battle. Neil Kinnock: Yes, what you're suggesting is that the alternatives are between the gesture, the threat, or the use of nuclear weapons, and surrender. In these circumstances the choice is posed, and this is a classical choice, between exterminating everything you stand for and the flower of your youth, or using all the resources you have to make any occupation totally untenable.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Television interview with David Frost on TV-AM (24 May 1987), quoted in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987 (1987), p. 103
“What has happened is that there are people who, for reasons best known to themselves, have voted for maintaining division in our country.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks following the Labour defeat at the 1987 general election (12 June 1987), quoted in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987 (1987), p. 103
“In the years between our defeat in 1979 and our defeat in 1983 Labour was increasingly seen to be a party slipping towards impossiblism, succumbing to fads, riven by vicious divisions, speaking the language of sloganised dogma – and usually voicing it in the accents of menace. It was almost as if sections of the party measured the purity of their socialism by the distance which they could put between it and the minds of the British people.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 535
“[A]lterations in policy had to be made with continual reference to the need to be elected in order to be able to put principles into power. I repeatedly had to reinforce the message that the real penalty for our defeat was paid by the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the young and the old that the Labour Party existed to help.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 540
“I manifest no paranoia when I say that there has been in the Labour Party an element which has treated realism as treachery, regarded appeals to party unity as an excuse for suppression of liberties and scorned any emphasis on the importance of winning elections as a contaminating bacillus called 'electoralism'.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 540
“Oh I detest him. I did then, I do now, and it's mutual. He hates me as well. And I'd much prefer to have his savage hatred than even the merest hint of friendship from that man.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments on Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984-1985 strike. BBC Press Office - Kinnock detests Scargill (27 February 2004).
“I celebrated this by going to the PLP meeting [and saying], "I'd like to congratulate the parliamentary party on this real step forward for proper recognition of women in politics. And nobody's willy has dropped off.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As cited in "'We needed a massive amount of resilience': the female Labour MPs from the class of '87", The Guardian (24 March 2023)
“Never mistake the enthusiasm of the minority for the support of the majority.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harriet Harman, "A Woman's Work" (Penguin Books, 2017)
“If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain – when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance – when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty – when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can't pay. I warn you that you will be cold – when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don't notice and the poor can't afford.I warn you that you must not expect work – when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don't earn, they don't spend. When they don't spend, work dies. I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light. I warn you that you will be quiet – when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient. I warn you that you will have defence of a sort – with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding. I warn you that you will be home-bound – when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up. I warn you that you will borrow less – when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. And I warn you not to grow old.”
Neil Kinnock (born 1942) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bridgend, Glamorgan, on Tuesday 7 June 1983. Thursday 9 June 1983 was polling day in the general election. Quoted in Robert Harris, The Making of Neil Kinnock (1984), p. 208