As far back as 1895 I stood as an unflinching opponent of the idea that the progress of Socialism could be made by the declaration of a class war. I … - Ramsay MacDonald

I do think...that the way the Daily News and the Westminster Gazette behaved [during the election<nowiki>]</nowiki> was contemptible. We expect nothing better from the Daily Mail and such miserable products. The result, however, of the whole fight has been to dig both deeply and broadly a ditch between Liberalism and Labour. From all over the country I hear from my friends who fought that the Liberal fight was dirtier than the Tory, and I have seen leaflets like that issued by [Sir Henry] Webb who fought [Hugh] Dalton in Cardiff, which are simply amazing in their dishonesty. The line he took was that whilst we pitied the poor German who was being asked to pay £2,000,000,000 we had no qualms in imposing a Capital Levy upon Englishmen to the extent of £3,000,000,000.

Unemployment cannot be cured by relief work nor by patchwork of any kind. We must develop national resources and improve trade so that there will be increased employment and a tremendous revolution in industry and in power by the use of electricity and petrol, which must be accompanied by reorganisation of transport, including the making of roads, the reconditioning of railway plant and equipment, an extension of pensions which must enable the more aged workers to retire, the raising of the school age with necessary maintenance grants. We must dam the influx of premature people into industry.

The England of 1844 did not break out into revolt; Chartism did not develop into socialism... The class war created trade unionism; the working classes became citizens; law, morality, the force of combination, lifted to some extent the pall of darkness which hung over the land. The Marxian today still wonders why England fell from grace. Neither Marx nor Engels saw deep enough to discover the possibilities of peaceful advance which lay hidden beneath the surface. Their analogies misled them.