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 terrifyin… - Keir Hardie

Surely we had got beyond that stage of civilisation as represented by war and the age of barbarism. What was the deduction from Mr. Haldane's observations? That the mass of the people in the industrial army corresponded to the rank and file in the military Army were to have no opinions, no individuality, no will of their own, no right to think, and no power to act, that they were to be obedient and in subjection to those placed in power and authority over them. That kind of dogma might do for the military feudalism of Germany, but it was alien and contrary to the freedom-loving spirit of Scotland, which inspired the poems of Robert Burns.

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.

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.