Keir Hardie Quotes

Max Muller, on the strength of official documents and a missionary report concerning education in Bengal prior to the British occupation, asserts that there were 80,000 native schools in Bengal, or one for every 4000 of the population. Ludlow, in his History of British India, says that "in every Hindoo village which has retained its old form I am assured that the children generally are able to read, write, and cipher, but where we have swept away the village system, as in Bengal, there the village school has also disappeared."

If the State has no right to interfere to protect the poor struggling against circumstances over which they have no control in the industrial world, it is difficult to see why the same State should be considered a beneficent agency when called in to protect the property of the rich against an infuriated mob of starving people. If the poor are to be left to struggle for existence unaided by the State, then why not the rich?

If...the Social Democrats make substantial gains at the polls every one here...will accept that as indisputable proof that the German people desire peace. ... A great Socialist triumph on that day would not only sweep the clouds of war from off this political horizon, but would also make it easy for an understanding to be reached between Germany and Great Britain concerning future naval policy, and thus relieve the taxpayers of both countries of the crushing burden which the present rivalry in Dreadnought building imposes.

Socialism stood for the divinity of the human race and as such detested war and all preparations leading to war. The one party in the world that could be trusted to be a peace party at all times was the Socialist and Labour party.

They should remember that if wages were not so good as they should be, if the hours were long, and if the conditions of labour were becoming worse, the responsibility rested with those men who would not come inside the union and try to make things better. What was it that kept them apart? Some people said it was because...men held different religious opinions they would not work together in the union. Nothing, in his opinion, could be more stupid. What did it matter to a man whether his neighbour was a Protestant or a Catholic so long as they were working men and had one common interest, to work together for each other's good?

Profit sharing, by anchoring a man to the spot, by breaking down the sense of his own consciousness, which inspired every big strike, had a positive tendency to lower wages and worsen the conditions of employment. Therefore he looked with no hope to profit sharing.

There were those who still believed that women should remain the domestic drudges they had been all through the ages, but they were aware that in every sphere of industrial activity women labour was coming more and more into competition with that of men, and the question they had to decide was whether they wanted women as competitors who would undercut wages or as comrades who would fight side by side to get better conditions for men and women alike. Class exclusion had been removed, but sex exclusion remained, and the time had now come when every cause that divided democracy ought to be removed. ... These women had no option but to make themselves a disagreeable nuisance to every party until their claims had been considered. ... Being outside the franchise, they were justified in being rebels until the State made them citizens. Men had no right to sit in judgment upon their tactics and their methods. They knew their own business and had courage and capacity for carrying the movement through. As a democrat, as a labour man who wanted to see the working classes more fully represented in the seat of power, and as a Socialist, he desired to see the political inequality which ruled women out from citizenship removed.

No law can give freedom to a people which is dependent upon some power or authority outside themselves for the necessaries of life. The owners of the means of life can dictate the terms upon which all who are not owners are to be permitted to live.

Nationalisation of land, mines, and railways was not necessarily of a definite Socialist character. In Germany they had nationalisation of railways, but it did not help the workers, and in India they had nationalisation of land, railways, and mines, and there was more poverty among the workers there than in any other country. They might have all these things nationalised for the advantage of capitalism and the condition of the workers the same as before. Unless they had the State controlled by the working class and abolished class rule they could nationalise what they pleased, but the worker would continue in a subordinate position.

Almost without exception, the early Christian Fathers whose teachings have come down to us spoke out fearlessly against usury, which includes interest also, and on the side of Communism. They proclaimed that, inasmuch as nature had provided all things in common, it was sinful robbery for one man to own more than another, especially if that other was in want. The man who gathered much whilst others had not enough, was a murderer.

By inherited instinct we are all Communists at heart; and if the isolated Ego of self gets the upper hand for a time he produces results so terrifying that the mistake of allowing him to rule is speedily made apparent, and we begin to seek a way whereby we may return to the kindly sway of the spirit of Altruism.

Women have no voice in making the laws which they are expected to obey. "What about Mrs. Pankhurst?" ejaculated one of the audience, to which Mr. Hardie retorted, "If women are not allowed a say in making the laws they are justified in breaking them." (Loud shouts of dissent and a voice, "What about burning houses?") Mr. Hardie continued:—When men were agitating for the franchise not only were houses burnt, but there was armed revolution and rioting. I will oppose every Franchise Bill, including what is called plural voting, until women have the franchise.

If it could be shown that the great Trust magnate or the great Aristocratic landowner, apart from the advantages of his inherited wealth, was a more highly developed species of humanity than the poor struggling sempstress or the unemployed docker, then there might be some justification for allowing the docker and the sempstress as the representatives of a weaker class to die out in order to enable the more highly developed creature to survive; but one moment's reflection will show that the alleged superiority of the landowner or the Trust magnate rests on one fact alone, namely, that he owns certain material possessions, usually inherited, which enable him to dictate the terms upon which his less fortunate fellow creatures shall be permitted to live.

They wanted to see in the House of Commons a strong Labour party, which would be able to compel the employer class and the landlord class to take their hands off the life of the nation and enable the working people to have a chance to live. They knew the terrible curse landlordism had been to Ireland; it had been the same in Scotland. It had been a curse all the time and always, and they wanted to get rid of it. They could only do so by having Labour members in Parliament to fight the cause of the common people.

The events of the past few weeks in the Aberdare and Rhondda valleys must have shown you anew that a Liberal government is first and foremost a capitalist government. If the bloodshed and riotous conduct of which the police have been guilty had taken place under a Conservative government every Liberal platform would have rung with denunciations of the wicked Tories; but, because it is the Liberals who are responsible there is a conspiracy of silence in the press and every Liberal speaker is dumb.