Ramsay MacDonald Quotes

Let us declare boldly in favour of disarmament. Let us put down our own proposals, arguing them, fighting for them, persuading people to join us, appealing not only to the reason but to the moral sense of the world. Great Britain marching clear away at the head of the great movement for international peace, that is our idea.

We are here preparing, as I see it, this international armaments conference. That ought to be our project. If we can remove the obstacles in the way of that we shall have done a tremendous amount of work that, in its very nature, once it is done, is bound to be permanent, because the reason and morality of the world will stand by it so loyally.

Lower forms merge into higher forms, one species with another, the vegetable into the animal kingdom; in human history one epoch slides into another...Socialism, the stage which follows Liberalism, retains everything of value in Liberalism by virtue of its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism.

You are faced with the problem of what to do in respect to this question, to that question, and to the other question, but perfectly obviously, after you have faced the more superficial aspects of the separate questions, you want to know in relation to a complete plan what you are actually giving and what you are actually getting. Therefore, when the departmental, or compartmental, exploration has gone on to a certain extent it cannot be finished until somebody, co-ordinating all your problems, sets out in one statement and declaration the complete scheme that this Conference can pass in order to give security, to give disarmament, to give hope to the future–until that scheme has been placed before you, you cannot complete your examination of compartmental problems and questions...

[I]f we lose our chance now, which really means if this Government is to be continued in power, that chance will not return either to us or to our children. The memories of the last War will grow dim. The world will get back into its old rut, familiar professions and piety about peace will again soothe us to sleep, and the various countries will once more base their security upon military preparation. So they will all, in the end, find themselves drifting hopelessly upon those currents that make for war—1914 will be repeated... And remember what the next war is to be like. The old lines which divide combatants from non-combatants, the weak and the diseased from the strong and the robust, men from women and children, will all be obliterated and civilization itself assailed, and from sea and sky will be brought to a heap of ruins.

I know that, when the troubled history of these times comes to be studied and recorded in the cold and just light of truth, all the blame will not lie at Germany's door. That will not save it, its methods and its self-will, as shown in these latter days, from the blame of destroying the chances of success in peacemaking which were once again presenting themselves to us, and of throwing the mind of Europe suddenly into anxiety and turning it back upon the fatal ways of militarism, thus compelling the nations of Europe to return for an evanescent comfort to increased military equipment.

The League takes upon itself as its first task the creating once again of the European system, and that European system never will exist until our late enemies have ceased to be our enemies and have come in to take their cooperative part in that system.

The channels of world trade are so obstructed by the pursuit of nationalist economic policy that steps should be taken at once to make it possible to arrive at an international economic agreement which would revive international trade. A return to free trade pure and simple would only increase unemployment.

When Mr. Lloyd George talked...about unemployment he forgot that he was the cause of it. Unemployment...and the increased cost of living were all due to causes that had been begun during Mr. Lloyd George's régime. Mr. Lloyd George went to Paris to try to make good the nonsensical pledges he gave in 1918, and supported a Peace Treaty which had been the cause very nearly of Britain's bankruptcy, and certainly the bankruptcy of many other nations. He, and he alone, was responsible for that... Everything that had happened had been the outcome of Mr. Lloyd George's blunderings, and he was using the calamities of his own policy as a reason why they should send him back to office.

There is too much expected of parliament. Localities should manage their own affairs and unions of localities should be formed when necessary to look after common interests. Our county councils are excellent beginnings in this direction.

[A]ny idea which assumes that the interests of the proletariat are so simply opposed to those of the bourgeoisie as to make the proletariat feel a oneness of economic interest is purely formal and artificial... [T]o-day there is still a goodly number of workmen who cross the line and become employers or employing managers, whilst the great thrift movements, the Friendly Societies, the Building Societies, the Co-operative Societies, connect working class interests to the existing state of things. In addition, there are considerable classes of workers in the community whose immediate interests are bound up with the present distribution of wealth, and who, obedient to class interests, would range themselves on the side of the status quo. Of course (it could be said that) they are making a mistake from the point of view of their own interests, and that if they were properly enlightened they would see that they belong to an exploited class, one and indivisible. That may be true, but a mode of action which is ineffective until men are "fully enlightened" is a chimera.

The end we have to strive for is complete democratic liberty in politics and complete freedom in industry from the tyranny of monopoly and the vagaries of capitalism. Or, employing words appropriate to the spirit of Socialism, we should say that the task of the practical democratic reformer is now to show how the work of democratic liberty, begun so well by the early Radicals but dropped by their modern representatives, is to be completed; how the golden bridge of palliatives between political and social democracy is to be built; and how the foundations of social democracy are to be laid.

The policy of Great Britain is not the policy of alliances with any certain set of nations. It is a policy of friendship with those nations that believe in democratic forms of government and democratic development. The policy of Great Britain now is, and must be, and will be, that all nations in good will, in singleness, and in disinterestedness of heart will meet together, consider the great problems of Europe and the problems of the whole world, and agree, as the result of cooperation, discussion, and joint exchange of opinion, on a common policy which will make alliances absolutely a thing of the past.

If we refuse...what are the prospects? Repression, and nothing but repression, and it is a very uncomfortable repression; a kind of repression from which we shall get neither credit nor success. It is the repression of the masses of the people, the great proportion of these masses being women and children. It is the repression not of organisations and not of bodies; it will develop into the repression of the whole of the population... If, on the other hand, you wish to bind India to you by bonds of confidence, to make her happy within your Empire and Commonwealth, if you wish to hear her praise you in gratitude and remain with you in pride, then accept the work that has been done by the Conference, and instruct the Government to proceed with it to a complete conclusion.

I am so much concerned for the quiet development of industry, the peaceful mind and confidence both at home and abroad, that I will use every ounce of influence I have to prevent another election for the next two years... I wish to make it quite clear that I am going to stand for no monkeying.