Clement Attlee Quotes

The Atlantic Treaty is not aggressive. It is purely defensive. Those who attack it as offensive do so from a bad conscience. They take just the same line as the Nazis did when every attempt by the nations to get together was denounced as the encirclement of Germany. We seek by the pact to gain for the nations a sense of security which they so ardently desire. We seek by the organization of security to make the world safe against aggression and by pooling of strength to reduce the burden of armaments.

In every country in the world the Communist Party was out to hinder and to wreck... countries behind the Iron Curtain longed to come into the Marshall aid plan, which the Communist Party had decided against... They did not care what happened to the workers. They are only concerned with spreading what they call their own ideology.

To-day the most comprehensive system of social security ever introduced into any country would start in Britain. The four Acts—National Insurance, Industrial Injuries, National Assistance, and National Health Service—represented the main body of the army of social security... We cannot create a scheme which gives the nation a whole more than they put into it, and it is always the general level of production that settles our standard of material well-being. Only higher output can give us more of the things we all need. This will decide the real value of the money payments.

[Y]ou are punishing thousands of innocent people and injuring your country. Who advised you to do this? Not people of great influence, but just a small nucleus who have been instructed for political reasons to take advantage of every little disturbance that takes place to cause the disruption of British economy, British trade, to undermine the Government and to destroy Britain's position... Your clear duty to yourselves, to your fellow citizens, and to your country is to return to work.

[W]e have asked the workers...to give the biggest possible output they can so that we may have a margin for export trade over the world which, when sold, will purchase us food and raw materials to keep our industry going. Now what does this term "keep industry going" mean? It is the difference between employment and unemployment... We depend on transport, shipping, and the movement of goods to keep up this output. Therefore, this strike is not a strike against capitalists or employers. It is a strike against your mates; a strike against the housewife; a strike against the ordinary common people who have difficulties enough now to manage on their shilling's worth of meat and the other rationed commodities.

When you find anyone doing this look at him carefully. You will generally find he is a Communist or a fellow-traveller. These people do not want to see Europe restored to health. They want Europe to be weak and disturbed, because they think that the more wretched the people are the greater chance for the Communists. They have a vested interest in chaos.

We shall not accept the Communist doctrine. That doctrine springs in the east. Oriental in its conception, it does not belong to the main stream of democratic thought. We in this country have our own democratic Socialism in which we believe, and we have a higher standard than they have in the east with regard to human rights and, I think, their way of life altogether. It is time those people recognised that we intend to carry on with our way.

In the circumstances it is much to be regretted that the men have not as yet responded generally to the call to return to work. A hold up of the food supplies of London will inevitably cause hardship and grave inconvenience to millions of ​householders; but this is by no means the end of the damage. The handling of the country's overseas trade normally stretches to the limit the capacity of our available shipping. A hold up of any length delays the turn-round of ships and cannot be made up subsequently. The stoppage cuts millions of dollars and other needed foreign currency off our earnings—and cuts them off finally. Already the prospect of attaining this month's export target is affected, the gap in the balance of our payments is widened and the pace of national recovery slowed down. I cannot believe that the general body of strikers have hitherto realised the true consequences of their action. They should return to work and allow any grievances they may feel to be dealt with by the proper machinery.

The nation's economic welfare depends largely upon our ability to make and sell the exports necessary to buy the imports we need to feed our people and keep our industry going. Our costs of production are of vital importance and they depend to a considerable extent on the amount which industry has to pay in profits, salaries and wages. These in turn in the form of individual incomes affect the total volume of money available in relation to the quantity of goods... It is essential, therefore, that there should be no further general increase in the level of personal incomes without at least a corresponding increase in the volume of production. Unless we are prepared to check any such tendency we shall find ourselves unable to fulfil our export task owing to the rise in costs, which will also be reflected in rising prices on the home market.

A divinely inspired saint I know that I am expressing the views of the British people in offering to his fellow countrymen our deep sympathy in the loss of their greatest citizen. Mahatma Gandhi, as he was known in India, was one of the outstanding figures in the world today, but he seemed to belong to a different period of history. Living a life of extreme asceticism, he was revered as a divinely inspired saint by millions of his fellow countrymen. His influence extended beyond the range of his co-religionists. For a quarter of a century, this one man has been the major factor in every consideration of the Indian problem. He had become the expression of the aspirations of the Indian people for independence, but he was not just a nationalist. His most distinctive doctrine was that of non-violence. He believed in a method of passive resistance to those forces which he considered wrong. The sincerity and devotion with which he pursued his objectives are beyond all doubt. The hand of the murderer has struck him down and a voice which pleaded for peace and brotherhood has been silenced, but I am certain that his spirit will continue to animate his fellow countrymen and will plead for peace and concord.

At the one end of the scale are the Communist countries: at the other end the United States of America stands for individual liberty in the political sphere and for the maintenance of human rights. But its economy is based on capitalism, with all the problems which it presents, and with the characteristic extreme inequality of wealth in its citizens... Great Britain, like the other countries of western Europe, is placed geographically and from the point of view of economic and political theory between these two great continental States... Our task is to work out a system of a new and challenging kind, which combines individual freedom with a planned economy, democracy with social justice.

The history of Soviet Russia provides us with a warning here—a warning that without political freedom collectivism can quickly go astray and lead to new forms of oppression and injustice. For political freedom is not merely a noble thing in itself, essential for the full development of human personality—it is also a means of achieving economics rights and social justice, and of preserving these things when they have been won. Where there is no political freedom, privilege and injustice creep back. In Communist Russia 'privilege for the few' is a growing phenomenon, and the gap between the highest and lowest incomes is constantly widening. Soviet Communism pursues a policy of imperialism in a new form—ideological, economic, and strategic—which threatens the welfare and way of life of the other nations of Europe.

A hundred years ago the year 1848 saw Liberals and Socialists in revolt all over Europe against absolute Governments which suppressed all opposition. It is ironical that to-day the absolutists who suppress opposition much more vigorously than the kings and emperors of the past masquerade under the name of upholders of democracy. It is a tragedy that a section of a movement which began in an endeavour to free the souls and bodies of men should have been perverted into an instrument for their enslavement.

Ever since the population of this little island grew large, trade has been its livelihood. We imported food and raw materials and paid for them by exports of coal and manufactures, by earnings from shipping and other services, and by interest on foreign investments. The first world war injured our position seriously, the second had far worse effects. When we stood alone in the second world war we threw all that we had into the battle... We sold our foreign assets. We reduced our production of civilian goods to a minimum. We lost nearly all our export trade and much of our shipping... We have, therefore, to face now before we have recovered from the effects of the war, and before our long-term plans have taken effect, the necessity of relying entirely on our own resources. This is a situation as serious as any that has faced us in our long history.

May I recall here a thing that is not always remembered, that just as India owes her unity and freedom from external aggression to the British, so the Indian National Congress itself was founded and inspired by men of our own race, and further, that any judgment passed on our rule in India by Indians is passed on the basis, not of what obtained in the past in India, but on the principles which we have ourselves instilled into them.