[Y]ou are punishing thousands of innocent people and injuring your country. Who advised you to do this? Not people of great influence, but just a sma… - Clement Attlee

[W]e have asked the workers...to give the biggest possible output they can so that we may have a margin for export trade over the world which, when sold, will purchase us food and raw materials to keep our industry going. Now what does this term "keep industry going" mean? It is the difference between employment and unemployment... We depend on transport, shipping, and the movement of goods to keep up this output. Therefore, this strike is not a strike against capitalists or employers. It is a strike against your mates; a strike against the housewife; a strike against the ordinary common people who have difficulties enough now to manage on their shilling's worth of meat and the other rationed commodities.

...our geographical position put us in the centre of markets. That was one of the great strengths of our position. We did not have to look merely into Europe; we could look outside. We had our relationships with the Colonies overseas, later the Dominions; with the United States; with all continents, just because we were not tied up with the Continent of Europe. Now we are to be tied. It might be right, it may be wrong; but do not make any mistake: it is entirely different from anything we have had before. We are to become part of a larger whole, an appendage to Europe. It may be right now, but, historically, that has not been our position. We may have been at the centre of markets, but we have not been in one market and out of the others. We have had to fight against hostile tariffs; we have had to keep our end up. We have never put ourselves into a position in which we were inside a ring-fence with a number of Continental Powers. Make no mistake: it is an entire change.

When we are returned to power we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.