Now that we are engaged once more in policy-making it is essential that we should keep clear before us that one of the central principles of Socialis… - Aneurin Bevan

The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.

I am not anti-American...but I do not believe that the American nation has the experience, sagacity, or the self-restraint necessary for world leadership at this time. They are engaged in the most tremendous rearmament programme the world has ever seen, and I cannot see any sense in it, and no one has yet tried to put any sense in it. ... When are we going to have some sense of national pride and tell the United States that she cannot have Great Britain on any terms? The Americans would understand us. They like plain speaking. Why do we not speak plainly to them?

It must now be accepted by all thoughtful citizens that the social and economic consequence of the rearmament programme is only a special instance of a general case. If full employment is accepted as an aim to be ensued, and not only given lip service to, then We have left the automatism of the competitive capitalist system behind us, and deliberate selection and choice at the communal level must take its place. A pool of unemployment is the necessary accompaniment of selection by the price mechanism. It is the shock absorber of the capitalist system. The pool decreases or increases in obedience to the ebb and flow of economic activity, and the unemployed are crucified on the cross of the competitive price mechanism. Security of employment and the competitive society are a contradiction in terms. To promise full employment is to promise the transition from the capitalist system to one where we choose consciously to order the pattern of production and consumption; and the principles we employ in the doing of this must commend themselves to the wishes of a free electorate.