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“[T]he electors are much more interested at the present time in social questions and the problems connected with the agitation of the Labour Party than they are with either the House of Lords or any other constitutional subject.”
Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Memorandum (13 November 1894), quoted in Peter Fraser, Joseph Chamberlain: Radicalism and Empire, 1868–1914 (1967), p. 152
“We had our liberal hour, when we passed the Sexual Offences Act which stopped all homosexuals being criminals. I'm not ashamed of that. We mustn't slip back into illiberal attitudes. You see, there are two strands in the Labour Party. The libertarian strand and the authoritarian puritan strand. By and large, the libertarians have come with us and the others have stayed behind.”
Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with John Mortimer, quoted in John Mortimer, In Character (1983), p. 147
“I have three great interests left in politics, a single currency, electoral reform, and the union of the Liberals with Labour. And all three are languishing.”
Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark to Robert Harris (November 1999), quoted in Robert Harris, 'A Late Friendship', in Andrew Adonis and Keith Thomas (eds.), Roy Jenkins: A Retrospective (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 311
“Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune, 1954
“I certainly think that a Labour Government will have to have effective powers to control the outflow of capital.”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Election Call (21 February 1974)
“I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering...I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside...what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On BBC's Panorama (22 March 1976)
“The history of British Socialism cannot be written without constant reference to the Celts, and perhaps I may say in passing that this was one reason why I was so eager to see a Devolution Act passed through the House of Commons, to help keep the Celts within the United Kingdom. The blood of our Labour Movement cannot tingle properly without them, devolution or no devolution.”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Chartist: William Lovett', lecture delivered in Penzance (8 August 1977), quoted in Michael Foot, Loyalists and Loners (1986), p. 247
“I first joined the Labour party in Liverpool because of what I saw of the poverty, the unemployment, and the endless infamies committed on the inhabitants of the back-streets of that city. I am horrified that the threat of unemployment and economic misery is now being deployed against the same kind of people once again.”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Press conference after his election as Labour leader (10 November 1980), quoted in Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (1981), p. 57 and The Guardian (11 November 1980), p. 1
“No rising hope on the political scene who offered his services to Labour when I happened to be its leader can be dismissed as an opportunist.”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Tony Blair, 1995
“We conceive the function of Tribune to be the expression in popular form, and to as large a public as possible, of the views of the Left and Marxist wing of social democracy in this country. Its policy must be that of those who believe that the present leadership of the Labour Party is not sufficiently Socialist.”
Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter published in Tribune (1976).
“I believe this judgment should firmly convince any trade unionist that it is useless hoping for justice in the courts of this land. The only way we are going to obtain justice in my view is by fighting for democracy as our forefathers did in establishing the trade union and Labour movements.”
Arthur Scargill (born 1938) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (21 December 1977), quoted in Paul Routledge and Ronald Kershaw, "Judge stops attempt to ban pit bonus plan", The Times (22 December 1977), p. 1
“I would fight to change the policy before the General Election. If I failed then I wouldn't accept office in a Labour Government.”
Denis Healey (1917–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What almost halved the support for the Labour Party was the feeling that it has lost its traditional common sense and its humanity to a new breed of sectarian extremism.”
Denis Healey (1917–2015) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the 1983 general election (The News of the World, 19 June 1983)
“I am a socialist who believes that the Labour Party offers the best hope for Britain's future.”
Denis Healey (1917–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Banditry is freedom, but in a peasant society few can be free. most are shackled by double chains of lordship and labour, one reinforcing the other. For what makes peasants the victim of authority is not as much their economic vulnerability - indeed they are as often as not virtually self sufficient - as their mobility.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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
“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)
“[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
“The yvel (as you write therein truely) will labour to peruert the good, And even soo those that be well disposed wyll both lament the foly of the yvel and doo what they canne to make them better. He that eyther feareth not god ne esteameth the kinges Maiesties Iniunctyons preceptes, ordenaunces, and commandementes, is no mete herbe to growe in his Maiesties most catholique and Vertuous garden.”
Thomas Cromwell (1485–1540) first seen 1536 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Lisle and the Council at Calais (8 June 1539), quoted in Roger Bigelow Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Volume II: Letters from 1536, Notes, Index (1902), p. 227
“They say Gladstone was at the Treasury from 1860 to 1930. I'm going to be Minister of Labour from 1940 to 1990.”
Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark after being appointed Minister of Labour (c. 13 May 1940), quoted in Francis Williams, Ernest Bevin (1952), p. 217
“It makes one feel a bit old, for your early days at school coincide with my beginnings in the Labour Movement. I can never escape from the Victorian era in which I grew up — an era which, in the light of the last thirty years, had some points of vantage in the way of tranquillity.”
Clement Attlee (1883–1967) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to A. L. Rowse after reading his autobiography A Cornish Childhood (1942), quoted in A. L. Rowse, 'C. R. Attlee', Glimpses of the Great (1985), pp. 64-65
“[A] movement like Mau Mau, out to murder Africans, Indians, and British, has got to be put down whether there is Conservative, Labour, or any other Government in charge.”
Clement Attlee (1883–1967) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Press conference in Delhi (5 January 1953), quoted in The Times (6 January 1953), p. 6
“My wife, she is a beautiful woman, but in labour she turned into fucking Jack Nicholson from The Shining. "You. You fucking did this to me!" "But I thought it was a shared experience" "No. You fucking did this!”
Lee Evans (comedian) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem of dealing with the armed forces of the Crown is the most difficult one we will have to face when we do get into power. The Labour Party will have to face the fact that it is a class Party...It has to be prepared to take steps more forceful than even the steps taken at the time of the Ulster Rebellion.”
Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Manchester Guardian (28 May 1934), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (1957), p. 150
“I cannot imagine the Labour Party coming into power without a first-rate financial crisis. That is why we ask for full emergency measures.”
Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Manchester Guardian (5 November 1934), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (1957), p. 150
“It must be the duty of the next Labour Government in power to make an immediate challenge to the capitalist system and take the banks and the land into the custody of the people. The time had come to drop all hesitancy and to be bold. If they returned a Socialist Government next time, it was going to "do things," whatever it cost.”
Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Canning Town (26 June 1935), quoted in The Times (28 June 1935), p. 13
“The reactionaries of our Movement are keen to prevent Socialists from coming into it. The last thing anyone should do is to pander to the reactionaries by staying out. James Maxton and Harry Pollitt should be the Leaders of the Labour Movement today”
Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bristol (13 February 1937), The Manchester Guardian (15 February 1937), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (1957), p. 151
“Jack: (to camera) My office! (indicates mess) I'm sorry about all this, but we in the Labour Party link drabness with idealism, see. I'm a paid agent of the party, but whenever I need to know anything I have to ring up Conservative Central Office. It's a very plush place, that - carpets plucking at your bleeding ankles. You see, they link drabness with idealism, too.”
Dennis Potter (1935–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[partition of Ireland], ... the betrayal of the national democracy of Industrial Ulster, would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it lasted.”
James Connolly (1868–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for the hired Greeks in Persian service, thousands of the dead were to be buried, but the prisoners were bound in fetters and sent to hard labour in Macedonia, 'because they had fought as Greeks against Greeks, on behalf of barbarians, contrary to the common decrees of the Greek allies.”
Robin Lane Fox (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our talks were very pleasant, as usual. Remember I used to vote Labour when I was here.”
Hastings Banda (1890–1997) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dr. Banda Denies Civil War", The Times, 12 December 1964, p. 6.
“The great underlying conflict was between freedom and organization. Could the war be conducted by 'Liberal' methods—that is, by voluntary recruiting and by laissez-faire economics? Or must there be compulsory military service, control of profits, and direction of labour and industry?”
A. J. P. Taylor (1906–1990) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Politics in the First World War', Politics in Wartime and Other Essays (1965), p. 21
“There are some moral principles more important to me than economics. I am against racial discrimination. I am against privilege. I am for the sovereign independence of this country and for the unity of the Commonwealth. Labour does not help me on any of these.”
A. J. P. Taylor (1906–1990) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Why I won't be voting Labour this time', The Sunday Express (7 June 1970), p. 25
“It was a hard life, but, physically, they throve on it, the men standing up well to the hard labour of the fields and the women, in addition to their washing, scrubbing and cooking and nursing, bearing a child almost annually.”
Flora Thompson (1876–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]f a Labour Government is ever to be tried in this country, as it will be, sooner or later, it could hardly be tried under safer conditions.”
H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Liberal Club after the general election resulted in a hung Parliament (18 December 1923), quoted in The Times (19 December 1923), p. 16
“The Labour Party are going to bring in a law that means you can go everywhere you want in the country. I have checked this with two people and they both said it was true. People will be able to walk into your garden and pick your flowers. It is absurd. My garden is a blaze of flowers. I don't want anyone In there.”
Barbara Cartland (1901–2000) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed by Alex Bellos for "Why I vote Conservative: 'Sleaze? Never heard of it'" The Guardian (2 April 1997), p. 16
“We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons. ...The Liberal party, high and low, have discovered, if they ever forgot it, that the real road to success...lies in adhering to the old principles of the party.”
Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to Liberals in Belmont (2 January 1903), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1973), p. 394
“The bonds of mutual understanding and esteem are strengthening between the peoples, and the time is approaching when nothing can hold back from them the knowledge that it is they who are the victims of war and militarism; that war in its tawdry triumphs scatters the fruits of their labour, breaks down the paths of progress, and turns the fire of constructive energy into a destroying force.”
Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the opening of the 14th Inter-Parliamentary Conference in the Royal Gallery of Westminster Palace (23 July 1906), quoted in The Times (24 July 1906), p. 3
“Chapter III - The Problem of Capital, Labour & Employment”
Alice Bailey (1880–1949) said by 1949 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“David Cameron never mentions it, but the Conservative Party won a by-election in Birmingham, and they sent out little kids with leaflets that said, "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour." And if political correctness has achieved one thing, it's to make the Conservative Party cloak its inherent racism behind more creative language.”
Stewart Lee (born 1968) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From 41st Best Stand-Up Ever (2008).
“Believing that these propositions, and the [conclusions] I draw from them can not be successfully controverted, I, for the present, assume their correctness, and proceed to try to show, that the abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government, must result in the increase of both useless labour, and idleness; and so, in pro[por]tion, must produce want and ruin among our people.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragments of a Tariff Discussion", Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 1, p. 415; according to the source Lincoln's "scraps about protection were written by Lincoln, between his election to Congress in 1846, and ta…
“In the year 1871, Mr. Gladstone's Government introduced and passed the first Trade Union Act, by far the most important victory, up to that time achieved by the champions of labour organizations.”
Edward Jenks (1861–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dominant notion of rationality is a capitalist notion of rationality, that is, whatever is profitable, whatever can be organised in terms of social control of labour-power and control of natural resources.”
David Harvey (born 1935) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (January 1984) "The history and present condition of Geography: an historical materialist manifesto," YouTube video, 1:10:15, posted by "IGU Channel," 7 May 2014.
“The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times.”
David Harvey (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money could not be converted into capital if wage labour did not exist.”
David Harvey (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because the earth is not a product of labour it cannot have a value.”
David Harvey (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only solution to the contradictions of capitalism entails the abolition of wage labour.”
David Harvey (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rocking on a lazy billow With roaming eyes, Cushioned on a dreamy pillow, Thou art now wise. Wake the power within thee slumbering, Trim the plot that's in thy keeping, Thou wilt bless the task when reaping Sweet labour's prize.”
John Stuart Blackie (1809–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the Edinburgh Students. Quoted by Lord Iddlesleigh, Desultory Reading; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 756.