Michael Foot Quotes

The right hon. Member for Heseltine—[Laughter.]—well, that is what he is; he sticks to that principle more than he does to Henley.

I am bitterly opposed to any form of legislation, particularly legislation introduced by a Labour Government, which involves an element of colour bar. It is an appalling thing to have happened. I want to see us returning as swiftly as possible to a situation where we wipe away this stain on the reputation of the Labour movement.

I know a fascist when I see one.

How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges"?

It is all the more necessary that we should prevent an extension of the powers of the European Assembly, however it may be elected. I have been opposed to the extension of those powers, and I remain so. ... We must preserve every precious part of the power that we retain in the House.

Even the victor in a just cause is susceptible to the passions which war arouses. Every inhuman feeling is at once exacerbated. Truth, decency, morality, justice are the first casualties in any war. The accumulated effect makes a just settlement impossible. ... The pacifist treasures justice, liberty; but he believes that they can only be lastingly secured by peaceable means and that the use of force will only contaminate them. ... Armaments themselves provide an independent cause of war owing to the suspicion and fear which they breed. ... Unilateral disarmament offers the only way to escape once the policy of collateral disarmament has failed.

I sometimes wonder whether hon. Members opposite really have any understanding of what hot industrial fires they are playing with and whether they understand what deep fissures they are driving into our society, at a time when we in this country, of all countries, should be showing how violent tensions can be relieved without violence... When I look across at the benches opposite, not only at the Front Bench but at those behind, it seems to me very often that what they speak for is...a narrow, blinkered, suburban England with no conception whatsoever of industrial Britain.

You just want the Tories in, and then we will be in the Common Market for life. You, with your halo of martyrdom. I've been anti-Market longer than you.

Like it or not, one of the most spectacular events of our age is the comparative success of the Communist economic systems. ... Do you seriously imagine that there is no challenge from the Communist States on this level? And who do you think will win the contest if we stumble on as we are—the Communist States, which are not afraid of full production, or the Western States, which have still never achieved for any considerable period full production and full employment without inflation? Yes, who will win—the Communist States, who are turning out trained technicians at an unexampled pace, or the Western powers, who contentedly spend more on advertising than education?

The national strike of the miners in 1972 performed, I believe, a great service, not only to the miners, but the people in Britain today who wanted coal

The crisis afflicting this country, along with other countries of the Western world, is a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of the dominant economic system that prevails in all those countries.

It is a justifiable proposition that every wave of immigration we have had into this country has benefited this country.

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?

<small>THE ARMAMENTS RACE IN EUROPE MUST BE STOPPED NOW.</small> ... I am not in favour of going to war in order to defend the Foreign Investments of British financiers, or the protective tariffs of British industrialists. ... I am a young man. I appeal to the Youth of the Monmouth Division to consider what the world offers to our generation. <small>WAR</small> and <small>POVERTY</small> are the twin dangers which threaten our chances of a decent, happy life in the World. All over Europe youth is being recruited into the ranks of Fascism. Fascism represents the last attempt of those who control economic power to maintain their supremacy. ... <small>I WANT TO SEE A GOVERNMENT IN THIS COUNTRY WHICH WILL SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THE DESERVING MANY, AND NOT THOSE OF THE WEALTHY FEW.</small>

[T]he England of the Conservative Party...condoned Fascism, consorted with Fascism, connived at imperialist war, abandoned any hope of building a sane and secure international society... Yet there was still another England. This other England detested Fascism from the day of its birth. It fought against the betrayal of Abyssinia. It denounced the policy which led to the massacre of Spain. It struggled in opposition throughout those years to build an international society and it understood that the chief enemy which must be fought was Fascism in whatever guise it might appear and in whatever land it might capture the apparatus of the State. This was the England of the Left, the England of Labour, the England which inherited and adapted to the modern age the European policy which made this country the leader of the nations in the nineteenth century. This England made errors too, but they were errors of a quite different nature from those crimes committed by the men who believed they could reach comfortable terms of settlement with the forces of Fascism which threatened to engulf the continent in a new Dark Ages... It was the resurrection of this other England which saved the world, and the hopes of the European revolution which must follow the defeat of our enemies on the battlefield will depend on which England rules as the fighting subsides.