Gaitskell wants to make capitalism work better – but with controls. That’s what makes him so dangerous. He wants capitalism to go on existing – but w… - Aneurin Bevan

I knew this morning that I was going to make a speech that would offend, and even hurt, many of my friends. I know that you are deeply convinced that the action you suggest is the most effective way of influencing international affairs. I am deeply convinced that you are wrong. It is therefore not a question of who is in favour of the hydrogen bomb, but a question of what is the most effective way of getting the damn thing destroyed. It is the most difficult of all problems facing mankind. But if you carry this resolution and follow out all its implications — and do not run away from it — you will send a British Foreign Secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the conference chamber. ... And you call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.

Unless we plan our resources purposefully, unless we are prepared to accept the disciplines that are necessary, we shall not be able to meet the challenge of the Communist world. As the years go by, and the people see us languishing behind, trying to prevent the evils of inflation by industrial stagnation, trying all the time to catch up with things because we have not acted soon enough—when they see the Communist world, planned, organised, publicly-owned and flaunting its achievements to the rest of the world—they will come to be educated by what they will experience. They will realise that Western democracy is falling behind in the race because it is not prepared to read intelligently the lessons of the twentieth century.

In his management of delicate parliamentary situations Mr. Baldwin was more subtle than is Mr. Churchill. In 1929, when the General Election returned a stronger but still a minority parliamentary Labour Party, Mr. Baldwin did what he had done so successfully in 1924. He sat down and waited. “Give them a chance,” he said, knowing well this was precisely what they didn’t have! Mr. Baldwin was a past master in the use of political inertia. He waited for Mr. MacDonald to weaken his Government by policies which offered a series of rhetorical gestures in place of effective action. Then, when the time came, he struck with remorseless and deadly precision. Because of his restraint and apparent laziness, Mr. Churchill called Mr. Baldwin a “power miser”. But this was a superficial appreciation of the subtlety of Baldwin’s mind. I rate him very high indeed in the ranks of Conservative Prime Ministers. It is true that he presided over a period of capitalist decline in Britain. But there was no capitalist way of preventing the decline. The most that can be said against Mr. Baldwin is that being a Conservative he could not get out of his economic dilemma by applying Socialist policies. In contrast with Baldwin, MacDonald was a pitiful strategist. Instead of putting forward bold and imaginative proposals to deal with the economic and financial crisis he waited like Micawber for “something to turn up”. It was eventually Mr. Baldwin who turned up by kicking Mr. MacDonald into the Premiership of a so-called National Government in which MacDonald was the ignominious prisoner of a Conservative majority. In 1930, Mr. MacDonald, the alleged enemy of capitalism, was waiting anxiously for capitalism to solve its own crisis, and therefore rescue him from his embarrassments.