Mick Lynch, 'We refuse to be poor anymore!', RMT rally following rail strikes - 2022

26 June 2022, King’s Cross Station, London, United Kingdom

There are demonstrations, spontaneous demonstrations of rallies like this one in Scotland, all over England, in Wales, not just for railway workers, but for the very idea that we can organise ourselves and fight back against this suppression of wages, against the stripping out of contracts of employment in terms and conditions, about the robbery of our pension funds, and against the division that this Tory party and the bosses in this country are trying to promote in our society.

And what do they say to us in these interviews? They say, how can your cleaners get a pay rise? Why do they deserve a pay rise? Well what do they think it's going to happen if our people don't get a pay rise? Is it going to go to these mighty workers? Is it going to be transferred somehow from one set of workers to another? Well, I'll tell you what the answer is. The answer is a redistribution of wealth in this country. That's what we need

[applause]

Prices are rampant. Inflation is rampant. But what else is rampant? Profit has never been higher. We've never had so many billionaires in this society. The super rich are getting richer and richer year after year. But workers are getting poorer year on year. And what are we saying? We refuse to be poor anymore!@

They want to make us redundant whenever it's convenient for them. They want to strip out our terms and conditions, just like at P & O. They're saying to us ,either accept this new contract or go out the door. We're not having it. We negotiated those contracts, those terms and conditions, and we are going to defend them every step of the way.

And they say, we can't afford to give you a pay rise. I've never heard such a load of nonsense in all my life. These men and women from Mighty, we've taken Mighty on at St #. We've taken 'em on in Kings Cross, we'll take them on in Paddington and we'll take them on anywhere when they come onto the railway. Cause this is the method of super exploitation. Outsourcing is the biggest evil in the workplace in this country.

All of these men and women working for Mighty and all these other outsourced companies are being ripped off and virtually enslaved by these companies. We're not going to have it any longer. You don't have to be a social scientist to work out who's getting these poor contracts, the black people, the migrant people, the people from minorities, are suffering disproportionately. And we got to stand up and say no to that structural racism.

Every worker, every worker in the NHS, in the public services, in education, in care, in transport, should be on a single contract of employment. Common terms and conditions, common agreements on holidays, sick pay and pension. That's what we used to have and that's what we want back. That's modernization.

All of you have the power, a wheel doesn't turn, a light doesn't go on, without us. We create all of the wealth in this society, all of it.

It's our labour that delivers the services, makes the goods, distributes them, and gets them to the people. All we want is our fair share of that. The rich, the powerful have got to realise that we need redistribution. We need progressive taxation. We need minimum standards at work. We need a Bill of Rights for workers. That's what we need. So they can't fire and rehire. And I've got a message to people in our movement. Keir Starmer and others. They're hesitating. I don't know why they're hesitating. If he could draw a crowd like this with what he says he'd be doing well.

But I want him to be the prime minister. That's what we've got. He must win. But we've got to push him and persuade him to get into a position where he is in the front rank, front rank with you, all of you, helping us, assisting with us, identifying with our causes, identifying with equality in the workplace, identifying with unity.

And we cannot be divided. Do not fall for the tricks of the media trying to play a nurse against a railway worker, trying to play a cleaner off against a caterer. It's absolute nonsense. We are a rainbow. We come from all over the world and everybody's welcome in this country who wants to earn their living. Nobody is illegal.

Jess Phillips: 'The idea that my constituents are not skilled because they do not earn over £30,000 is frankly insulting', Commons Debate - 2019

Embed Block

Add an embed URL or code. Learn more

Labour MP Jess Phillips treats the Commons to an incredible speech pic.twitter.com/IwXaHDH6jl

— The Independent (@Independent) January 30, 2019

29 January 2019,. House of Commons, Westminster, London, United Kingdom

The idea that my constituents are not skilled because they do not earn over £30,000 is frankly insulting.

It is insulting on every level to our care workers, our nurses, our teachers.

There are so many people who do not earn over £30,000.

I really think that that needs to be revisited.

Since I was elected I have met many people who earn way more than £30,000 and have literally no discernible skills, not even one.

I met none before - I thought I had met posh people before I came here, but I had actually just met people who eat olives.

I had no idea of how posh a person could be.

Waitrose is apparently not the marker for being really, really posh.

There is a lovely Waitrose in Birmingham Hall Green; it is the one I like to frequent.

I have not necessarily met such people in this place, although there is a smattering.

I would not let some of those very rich people who earn huge amounts of money hold my pint if I had to go and vote while in the bar.

Because they would almost certainly do it wrong.

Ramsay MacDonald: 'We are not on trial', Labour Party Conference - 1930

7 October 1930, Llandudno, United Kingdom

It is not the Labour Government that is on trial; it is Capitalism that is being tried. We told you in those days that the time would come when finance would be more powerful than industry. That day has come.... We told you in those days that the time would come when the man who went into the workshop and into the factory, and his employer as well, would no longer be in the simple relationship of maser and man, but that the master would become impersonal, and that powers that have nothing to do with industry would control industry—the powers of gambling with credit. That day has come....

So, my friends, we are not on trial; it is the system under which we live. It has broken down, not only in this little island, it has broken down in Europe, in Asia, in America; it has broken down everywhere, as it was bound to break down. And the cure, the new path, the new idea is organization—organization which will protect life, not property; organization which may protect property, but protect property in proper relation to life; organization which will see to it that when science discovers and inventors invent, the class that will be crushed down by reason of knowledge shall not be the working class, but the loafing class. This is the policy that we are going to pursue slowly, steadily, persistently, with knowledge and with our minds working upon a plan.

Oswald Mosley: 'The nation has to be mobilised', Movietone speech on unemployment - 1930

1930, London, United Kingdom

This is a MovieTone interview with then Labour MP Sir Oswald Mosley about unemployment. He would later lead the Fascist Party.

It is the one problem that really matters today.

We live in a period in which politicians are not very popular. And believe me, you have my sympathy. Politicians are regarded as people who have learned to talk but not to act.

And you demand action, and rightly demand it, in dealing with unemployment.

We live in a period, when Britain can only survive by vigour and by action.

We have resources, of intellect, of energy, of craftsmanship, of skill, second to none in the world.

But those resources must be mobilised, for a great effort, of a united nation.

To do that, government and statesman, must take their courage in their hands.

Keir Hardie: 'The Sunshine of Socialism", 21st Annioversary of formation of Independent Labour Party - 1914

11 April 1914, Bradford, England

I shall not weary you by repeating the tale of how public opinion has changed during those twenty-one years. But, as an example, I may recall the fact that in those days, and for many years thereafter, it was tenaciously upheld by the public authorities, here and elsewhere, that it was an offence against laws of nature and ruinous to the State for public authorities to provide food for starving children, or independent aid for the aged poor. Even safety regulations in mines and factories were taboo. They interfered with the ‘freedom of the individual’. As for such proposals as an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to work, and municipal houses, any serious mention of such classed a man as a fool.

These cruel, heartless dogmas, backed up by quotations from Jeremy Bentham, Malthus, and Herbert Spencer, and by a bogus interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, were accepted as part of the unalterable laws of nature, sacred and inviolable, and were maintained by statesmen, town councillors, ministers of the Gospel, and, strangest of all, by the bulk of Trade Union leaders. That was the political, social and religious element in which our Party saw the light. There was much bitter fighting in those days. Even municipal contests evoked the wildest passions.And if today there is a kindlier social atmosphere it is mainly because of twenty-one years’ work of the ILP.

Scientists are constantly revealing the hidden powers of nature. By the aid of the X-rays we can now see through rocks and stones; the discovery of radium has revealed a great force which is already healing disease and will one day drive machinery; Marconi, with his wireless system of telegraphy and now of telephony, enables us to speak and send messages for thousands of miles through space.

Another discoverer, through means of the same invisible medium, can blow up ships, arsenals, and forts at a distance of eight miles.

But though these powers and forces are only now being revealed, they have existed since before the foundation of the world. The scientists, by sympathetic study and laborious toil, have brought them within our ken. And so, in like manner, our Socialist propaganda is revealing hidden and hitherto undreamed of powers and forces in human nature.

Think of the thousands of men and women who, during the past twenty-one years, have toiled unceasingly for the good of the race. The results are already being seen on every hand, alike in legislation and administration. And who shall estimate or put a limit to the forces and powers which yet lie concealed in human nature?

Frozen and hemmed in by a cold, callous greed, the warming influence of Socialism is beginning to liberate them. We see it in the growing altruism of Trade Unionism. We see it, perhaps, most of all in the awakening of women. Who that has ever known woman as mother or wife has not felt the dormant powers which, under the emotions of life, or at the stern call of duty are even now momentarily revealed? And who is there who can even dimly forecast the powers that lie latent in the patient drudging woman, which a freer life would bring forth? Woman, even more than the working class, is the great unknown quantity of the race.

Already we see how their emergence into politics is affecting the prospects of men. Their agitation has produced a state of affairs in which even Radicals are afraid to give more votes to men, since they cannot do so without also enfranchising women. Henceforward we must march forward as comrades in the great struggle for human freedom.

The Independent Labour Party has pioneered progress in this country, is breaking down sex barriers and class barriers, is giving a lead to the great women’s movement as well as to the great working-class movement. We are here beginning the twenty-second year of our existence. The past twenty-one years have been years of continuous progress, but we are only at the beginning. The emancipation of the worker has still to be achieved and just as the ILP in the past has given a good, straight lead, so shall the ILP in the future, through good report and through ill, pursue the even tenor of its way, until the sunshine of Socialism and human freedom break forth upon our land.

Jeremy Corbyn: 'Shake your chains to earth like dew', Glastonbury 2017

24 June 2017, Glastonbury Festival, United Kingdom

Michael, don't go!” Mr Corbyn said, calling Mr Eavis back. “Can you all give it up for Michael Eavis please? Thank you for all you've done.

I want to say thank you to Michael for lending us his farm, for giving the space all those years ago, for people to come here and enjoy music, good company and inspiring thought. You paved the way for all of us.

I want to say thank you to Michael for lending us his farm, for giving the space all those years ago, for people to come here and enjoy music, good company and inspiring thought. You paved the way for all of us.

You brought the spirit of music, the spirit of love, the spirit of ideas, and you brought the spirit of great messages. There's a message on that wall for President Donald Trump, And do you know what it says? Build bridges, not walls.

Politics is actually about everyday life. It's about all of us, what we dream, what we want, and what we want for everybody else.

The commentariat got it wrong. The elites got it wrong. Politics is about the lives of all of us, and the wonderful campaign that I was involved with, that I was so proud to lead, brought people back into politics because they believed there was something on offer for them.

But what was even more inspiring was the number of young people who got involved for the first time. 

Because they were fed up with being denigrated, fed up with being told they don't matter. Fed up with being told they never participate, and utterly fed up with being told that their generation was going to pay more to get less in education, in health, in housing, in pensions and everything else.

That they should accept low wages and insecurity, and they should see it as just part of life. Well it didn't quite work out like that did it? 

And do you know what? That politics that got out of the box, is not going back in any box, because we're there demanding and achieving something very different in our society and in our lives. There's a number of things they're very simple very basic questions we should ask ourselves.

Is it right that so many people in our country have no home to live in and only the street to sleep on? 

Is it right that so many people are frightened of where they live at the moment, having seen the horrors of what happened at Grenfell Tower? 

Is it right that so many people live in such poverty, in a society surrounded by such riches? No it obviously is not. 

And is it right that European nationals living in this country, making their contribution to our society, working in our hospitals, schools and universities, don't know if they are going to be allowed to remain here.

I say, they all must stay, and they all must be part of our world, and be part of our community.

Because what festivals, what this festival is about, are about coming together. This festival was envisaged as being for music yes, but also for the environment, and for peace.

You heard the message from E P Thompson earlier on, and what a wonderful man he was.

Do you know what? When people across the world think the same, cooperate the same, maybe in different languages, in different faiths, in different cultures, peace is possible, and must be achieved. 

And do you know what? Let's stop the denigration of refugees, people looking for a place of safety in a cruel and dangerous world. 

They are all human beings just like all of us here today, looking for a place of safety and looking to make their contribution to the future of all of us, so let's support them in their hour of need, not see them as a threat and a danger.

But let's also look at instability and problems around the world and tackle the causes of war: the greed for natural resources, the denial of human rights, the imprisonment of political opponents.

Let's look to build a world of human rights, peace, justice, and democracy all over the planet.

This place in Glastonbury is truly wonderful. I remember coming to this area as a child being taken up to Glastonbury tour by my mum and dad and thinking what a wonderful place it is, because there's something very special about it.

It's a place where people come together and they achieve things.

We have a democracy because people laid down their lives that we might have the right to vote, because women laid down their lives that women would get the right to vote at the time of the First World War.

That determination of the collective, won us, won us all, the principle of healthcare as a human right for all of us.

Nothing was given from above, nothing was given from above by the elites and the powerful, it was only ever gained from below by the masses of people demanding something better, demanding their share of the wealth and the cake that's created.

So it is about bringing those ideas together, it is about the unity that we achieve and we achieve inspiration though lots of things.

In every child there's a poem, in every child there's a painting, in every child there's music, and do you know what? As people get older we get embarrassed about that, thinking wooooh, can't be thinking that sort of thing, can't be writing poetry.

No. I want all our children to be inspired, all our children to have the right to play music, to write poetry, to learn in the way that they want.

In this festival, this wonderful festival, with all its stages and all its music, gives that choice and that opportunity to so many young musicians that they can achieve and inspire us all and I'm proud to be here for that, I'm proud to be here to support the peace movement and its activities here and the way that message gets across, but I'm also very proud to be here for the environmental causes that go with it.

We cannot go on destroying this planet through global warming, through pollution, through destruction of habitat, through pollution of our seas and our rivers.

We have to live on this planet, there is only one planet, not even Donald Trump believes there's another planet somewhere else.

And so let us protect the planet we have got, use the technology we have to manage and control the use of our natural resources that the planet has her for future generations in better state than it is at the present time.

But it's also about our creativity, creativity that brought us the things we have talked about, but that creativity together can be a tool for getting a message across, a message that racism is wrong, divisive and evil within our society.

Racism in any form divides, weakens and denies us the skills and brilliance of people who are being discriminated against in just the same way that sexism was, be it in lower pay for women, less opportunities for women, or less aspirations.

We need to challenge sexism in any form in our society, to challenge homophobia, to challenge all the discrimination that goes on and to ensure that the society that we want to build is one that's inclusive for all.

I want to see a world where there's real opportunity for everybody within our society, that means sharing the wealth out in every part of our country and looking to global policies that share the wealth, not glorify in the injustice of inequality where the rich seem to get inextricably richer and the vast majority continually lose out, and those that are desperately poor live on the margins of society euphemistically known as the fourth world.

Surely we can as intelligent human beings do things differently and do things better.

And when we are here in Glastonbury we are doing things differently, we are doing things better, and we are seeing that inspiration. 

And there are many people that we learn from in our lives, we learn from our parents, we learn from our teachers, we learn from those that have written music for us or written poetry for us.

It's that sense of unlocking the potential in all of us that I find so inspiring, and I'm inspired by many poets and many people, and I think we should adopt a maxim in life, that everyone we meet is unique, everyone we meet knows something we don't know, is slightly different to us in some ways.

Don't see them as a threat, don't see them as an enemy, see them as a source of knowledge, a source of friendship, and a source of inspiration.

And if I may, I would like to quote one of my favourite poets Percy B. Shelley, who wrote in the early 19th Century, many, many poems and travelled extensively around Europe. 

And the line I like the best is this one: rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number.

Shake your chains to earth like dew: Which in sleep had had fallen on you. You are many, they are few!

I quote Shelley because he inspired like so many others do. I'm proud to be at Glastonbury because it inspires so many music festivals all over the country.

Let us be together and recognise another world is possible if we come together to understand that , understand the power we have got, and achieve a decent, better society where everyone matters, and those poverty-stricken people are enriched in their lives and the rest of us are secured by their enrichment.

Thank you very much!

Jeremy Corbyn: 'It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery that will fuel the wars of the future', anti Iraq War rally - 2003

15 Feburary 2003, Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom

Thanks Carol, and thank you to every single person that's here today in the biggest ever political demonstration in the history of this country.

And today, there are 600 and more demonstrations in cities all around the world. Every country, every continent, everybody in the world has a chance today to say no, absolutely no, to war on Iraq.

We are a force that's not alone, not isolated, and very, very relevant to today's world. Those, George Bush, Tony Blair, [As-na 00:00:59] [Bal-es-co-di 00:01:00], who want war, they are the ones who are isolated and alone and desperately searching for friends.

Because there is no justice whatsoever in the planned war against Iraq, and I say that because there is much talk of the possibility of a second United Nations resolution. I say this. Even if the United Nations is bribed and cajoled and cobbles together some form of words that give some kind of pretext for an attack on Iraq, it would be wrong, and I would be against it. We would be against it, because we're against the war.

As a member of the British Parliament, I am very angry that we have so far been denied a vote on the possibility of going to war. I find it deeply distasteful that the British Prime Minister can use the medieval powers of the royal prerogative to send young men and women to die, to kill civilians, and for Iraqis to die.

I want a vote in the British Parliament, not to legitimise war, but to give me the opportunity on behalf of the multicultural community I represent, to vote against any war with Iraq.

Around the world, the image of this country has been reduced to that, of our Prime Minister and our Foreign Secretary, in all the conference halls of the world, whenever George Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney speak, all they can do is get up and say, "Me too."

Well, surely the message today in London, in Glasgow, and ordinary people on the streets of this country, is this. Why are we spending three and a half billion pounds on a war that nobody wants, when there is an AIDS pandemic sweeping Africa? When a quarter of the world's children die in poverty and starvation? And we say there isn't money sufficient for our own public services!

Well, the answer is an obvious one. No to war, yes to peace. Yes to rehabilitation and rebuilding.

For those who say that this is a necessary and just conflict because it will bring about peace and security: September the 11th was a dreadful event. 8000 deaths in Afghanistan brought back none of those who died in the World Trade Centre. Thousands more deaths in Iraq will not make things right. It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation, that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.

You cannot humiliate the Palestinian people in the way that they've been humiliated and not expect some problem in the future. You cannot arm regimes like Iraq, Iran, and many others, without expecting further problems in the future.

Our message, our message today here in London, a million and more strong, is this. We want to live in a world free from war. The way to free us from the scourge of war is to free ourselves from the scourge of injustice, of poverty, and the misery that's associated with that. This movement, this movement is giving that message to the British government. Stop now, or pay a political price.

Thank you very much.

Aneurin (Nye) Bevan: 'Now private enterprise cannot build houses to last', Public Housing speech - 1946

Aneurin (Nye) Bevan was a socialist leaning member of the Labour Party who was Health Minister post war in the Atlee government. He is the most significant figure in the history of the NHS, Britain's national health care program. This speech is about housing policy.

London, 1946

Mister Chairman, and comrades, the last time that I spoke in this hall was when I was leading an [inaudible] demonstration. It was a most unorthodox affair frowned upon by large numbers of respectable persons. You fellas have gone right mad now these days. This is a nuisance. But nevertheless the task that lies ahead of us is far greater than what we have already accomplished. We want to get those 45,550 families back into their homes as quickly as possible, because we want to get those 140,000 building workers on clean straightforward jobs of new building. Now I know Mister Chairman, dribbling about in a war damaged house is not a very satisfying job for a craftsman, and the sooner we can put this behind us the better. Comparisons are being made at the present time with the housing policy in different parts of the country. Our critics, and there are a good many of them, are going to be confounded.

At the end of the last war no houses at all were being built, yet we have got, as I said, throughout the country as a whole, not only to replace the consequences of a destruction of war, not only to put up the houses that Hitler's bombs blew down. Not only have we got to repair the houses that were damaged, not only have we to make up the arrears of six years of lack of housing maintenance, but in addition to that, in addition to what the enemy did to us, we have got to try and make up for the arrears of housing left by 50 years of Tory misrule in Britain.

A house is at the end of the production line, not the beginning. A house is the last product. Before you can start building on any scale, every single industry in society has got to be organised and stimulated into production. A house, a modern house, is a most complex economic production. Every single industry is a contributor. Not only the simple building materials of bricks and mortar and cement and plasterboards and slates, and tiles, and timber, but every single component and all the furnishings of a house make it built upon every single conceivable industry. And therefore before we can start houses going up in any great numbers, all these industries have got to be manned and organised, and it is to that task that I have been devoting myself during the winter months.

It was my purpose, and it is still my purpose, to try and get houses started everywhere so that as the men come home from the forces, some building work should be going on near their homes, because we want to try and make it possible for all the building operatives to do their building work and get back to their own homes at a reasonable hour. That purpose can only ... [skip]

We don't know what they are doing, where they are doing it, or how they are doing it. How is it going to be possible for the government to plan the production of all 101 components of a house unless we know what the contractors are doing, and therefore I made up my mind. As this plan had to be implemented to a plannable instrument, that the only plannable instrument lying ready to hand were the great public authorities. And so I decided to place the principle responsibility for the main features of the housing programme upon the public authorities. And there was a further reason.

Now private enterprise cannot build houses to last, because you don't make money that way. Private enterprise makes profit out of houses only when it builds houses to sell, and therefore as the primary consideration was to provide houses to let poor people, or for relatively poor people, then again the only instrument able to build houses to let in good numbers are the local authorities. And there was another ...[skip]

And that competitor is a black market in building repairs. Now repairs have to be done, as I said, because there are great arrears to be made up. A licence is obtained by a building contractor who enters a house, and then all sorts of things happen from then on. All sorts of things that I could describe if I had time, and that you could tell me about. Now comrades, that isn't good enough. That isn't good enough. There is a sacred obligation upon every building worker to refuse to engage ... [skip]

Our housing prices have got to be brought under control ...