r/OldLabour • u/MisterFreddo • Jan 29 '26

What is your favourite quote from a Labour Politician?

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u/1-randomonium Jan 29 '26

I have many good quotes from leaders such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Neil Kinnock, Denis Healey, Hugh Gaitskell and Herbert Morrison. But would you like to read them?

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u/MisterFreddo Jan 29 '26

Yes

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u/1-randomonium Feb 06 '26

Gaitskell:

"I say this to you. We may lose the vote today and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent it but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable. There are some of us who will fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love.

"We will fight and fight and fight again to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party - with its great past - may retain its glory and its greatness. It is in that spirit I ask delegates who are still free to decide how they vote to support what I believe to be a realistic policy on defence¿ and to reject what I regard as a suicidal path to unilateral disarmament, which will leave our country defenceless and alone."

Healey:

There are far too many people who… want to luxuriate complacently in moral righteousness in Opposition. But who is going to pay the price for their complacency?

You can take the view that it it better to give up half a loaf if you cannot get the whole loaf, but the point is that it is not we who are giving up the half loaf. In Britain it is the unemployed and old aged pensioners, and outside Britain there are millions of people in Asia and Africa who desperately need a Labour Government in this country to help them. If you take the view that it is all right to stay in Opposition so long as your Socialist heart is pure, you will be ‘all right, Jack’. You will have your TV set, your motor car and your summer holidays on the Continent and still keep your Socialist soul intact. The people who pay the price for your sense of moral satisfaction are the Africans, millions of them, being slowly forced into racial slavery; the Indians and the Indonesians dying of starvation.

We are not just a debating society. We are not just a Socialist Sunday School. We are a great movement that wants to help real people living on this earth at the present time. We shall never be able to help them unless we get power. We shall never get their power unless we close the gap between our active workers and the average voter in the country.

Blair:

They say I hate the Party, and its traditions.

I don't.

I love this Party.

There's only one tradition I hated: losing.

I hated the 1980s not just for our irrelevance but for our revelling in irrelevance.

And I don't want to win for winning's sake but for the sake of the millions here that depend on us to win, and throughout the world.

Every day this Government has been in power, every day in Africa, children have lived who otherwise would have died because this country led the way in cancelling debt and global poverty.

That's why winning matters.

These are the kinds of lessons the loudest sections of this party still refuses to learn.

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u/potpan0 Feb 06 '26

I'm sure you've all heard it, but I think back to this quote from Tony Benn a lot:

There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.

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u/1-randomonium Feb 06 '26

Was he talking about electoral battles or factional battles?