Stafford Cripps Quotes

His Majesty's Government have not the slightest intention of devaluing the pound.

The National Government's only remedy for a difficult national problem was to arm and arm and arm, regardless of the lessons of history and the proved fact that armament racing could only end in war. ... If we are plunged in war I devoutly hope that the workers of this country will use it for the purpose of revolution. I hope that the present government can be made to understand that that will happen. It will be a very healthy thought for them to have in the back of their mind.

All sorts of excuses were being given why we should uphold rearmament, including the old-fashioned "For God, King and Country" patriotism, assisted by all the tomfoolery of jubilees and coronations.

I cannot imagine the Labour Party coming into power without a first-rate financial crisis. That is why we ask for full emergency measures.

Production, and production alone, can find us relief in our immediate situation. It is no part of the British character to resign ourselves to such difficulties or to fail to take the measures, however hard, to overcome them. It has been truly said that by our faith we can move mountains. It is by our faith in ourselves, in our country, in the free democratic traditions for which the people of this country have for centuries fought and battled, and for which they must fight again as willingly on the economic front as upon the oceans, on the land and in the air, it is by our faith in the deep spiritual values that we acknowledge in our Christian faith, that we shall be enabled and inspired to move the present mountains of our difficulties, and so emerge into that new and fertile plain of prosperity which we shall travel in happiness only as the result of our own efforts and our own vision.

The problem of dealing with the armed forces of the Crown is the most difficult one we will have to face when we do get into power. The Labour Party will have to face the fact that it is a class Party...It has to be prepared to take steps more forceful than even the steps taken at the time of the Ulster Rebellion.

Money cannot make armaments. Armaments can only be made by the skill of the British working class, and it is the British working class who would be called upon to use them. To-day you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments, and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you.

In 1919 we pledged our honour as a country that we would disarm as soon as possible, and other countries did the same. In the face of that Germany accepted the Treaty of Versailles. We had done nothing. We had offered a Disarmament Conference which might well make the gods laugh if they desired the destruction of the human race. We had got to realize the extraordinary gravity of the European situation—the pass to which the National Government had brought the world. The worst Foreign Secretary for 200 years had led this country into folly after folly in the international field. They ought to warn the Government that in no circumstances would they break any of the pacts they had made not to go to war. There was only one effective way in which they could make that threat effective...and that was to call a general strike. It was for the people of this country, in answer to that call, to put themselves behind the trade unions and to compel the trade unions to draw up plans immediately for that great resistance.

The [Labour] Government's first step will be to call Parliament together at the earliest moment and place before it an Emergency Powers Bill to be passed through in all its stages on the first day. This Bill will be wide enough in its terms to allow all that will be immediately necessary to be done by ministerial orders. These orders must be incapable of challenge in the Courts or in any way except in the House of Commons.

Emphatically no, and I never have been.

The Government decided...to reduce the dollar exchange value of the pound sterling. In the last few days we have settled what the new rate should be and now I have to tell you of that decision; it is that in place of the present rate, fixed in 1946, of $4 3c. for the pound the rate will in future be $2 80c. to the pound.

Our position is such that we could not 'integrate' our economy into that of Europe in any manner that would prejudice the full discharge of these other responsibilities. At the same time, Britain regarded herself as bound up in western Europe, not only in economic, strategic and political interests, but in our culture and indeed in our participation in the heritage of Christian civilization.

Unless during the first five years so great a degree of change has been accomplished as to deprive Capitalism of its power, it is unlikely that a Socialist Party will be able to maintain its position of control without adopting some exceptional means, such as the prolongation of the life of Parliament for a further term without an election.

But it is a fallacy, if one is examining the methods by which security can be attained, to start upon the assumption, as so many hon. Members do, that we get security by an increase of air armaments or an increase of any other form of armaments.

It must be the duty of the next Labour Government in power to make an immediate challenge to the capitalist system and take the banks and the land into the custody of the people. The time had come to drop all hesitancy and to be bold. If they returned a Socialist Government next time, it was going to "do things," whatever it cost.