"It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it."

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.”

“It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat.”

“I am asking this movement to exert itself as it has never done before, to show the qualities which we have, the socialist imagination that exists in our movement, the readiness to reforge the alliance, stronger than ever, between the government and the trade unions, and above all to show the supreme quality in politics, the red flame of socialist courage.”

“It's quite a change to have a prime minister who hasn't got any political ideas at all.”

“No rising hope on the political scene who offered his services to Labour when I happened to be its leader can be dismissed as an opportunist.”

“What is needed is a strong shift leftwards. This party in Parliament ought to start the process, and if it won't, the party conference will do it for them”