Michael Foot: Quotes about homeland

Michael Foot was British politician. Explore interesting quotes on country.

Michael Foot: 108 quotes0 likes

“It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country—and especially the rights of trade unionists—if those precious things in the past had been left to the good sense and fairmindedness of judges, we would have precious few freedoms in this country.”

Michael Foot

Speech to the Union of Post Office Workers at Bournemouth (15 May 1977).
1970s

“People must learn more and more that the strength of this country is the democratic power of the trade union movement”

Michael Foot

The Morning Star (1976).
1970s

“The crisis afflicting this country, along with other countries of the Western world, is a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of the dominant economic system that prevails in all those countries.”

Michael Foot

Speech to the House of Commons (Hansard, 20 January 1976, Col. 1126)
1970s

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

Michael Foot

Source: On the ITV's Weekend World (4 April 1976)

“The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. <br class="br">1980s

“We are paramountly concerned, like, I am sure, the bulk of the House—I am sure that the country is also concerned—about what we can do to protect those who rightly and naturally look to us for protection. So far, they have been betrayed. The responsibility for the betrayal rests with the Government. The Government must now prove by deeds—they will never be able to do it by words—that they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge. That is the charge, I believe, that lies against them. Even though the position and the circumstances of the people who live in the Falkland Islands are uppermost in our minds—it would be outrageous if that were not the case—there is the longer-term interest to ensure that foul and brutal aggression does not succeed in our world. If it does, there will be a danger not merely to the Falkland Islands, but to people all over this dangerous planet.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands. <br class="br">1980s

“I have respect for the history of this House. There is nothing reprehensible in people recalling that some of the liberties of the people of this country enshrined in this House go back not merely to the conflicts of the seventeenth century, which will certainly apply to many of the matters with which we have to deal—the power over taxation which resides, or is still to reside, in this House—but to the controversies which prevailed in the House of Commons during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. If people say to me that all these are remote, old-fashioned ideas, I reply that they are as up-to-date as the ideas that brought the Labour Party into being.”

Michael Foot

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1972/feb/17/european-communities-bill#column_741 in the House of Commons (17 February 1972) <br class="br">1970s

“THE ARMAMENTS RACE IN EUROPE MUST BE STOPPED NOW. … I am not in favour of going to war in order to defend the Foreign Investments of British financiers, or the protective tariffs of British industrialists. … I am a young man. I appeal to the Youth of the Monmouth Division to consider what the world offers to our generation. WAR and POVERTY are the twin dangers which threaten our chances of a decent, happy life in the World. All over Europe youth is being recruited into the ranks of Fascism. Fascism represents the last attempt of those who control economic power to maintain their supremacy. … I WANT TO SEE A GOVERNMENT IN THIS COUNTRY WHICH WILL SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THE DESERVING MANY, AND NOT THOSE OF THE WEALTHY FEW.”

Michael Foot

Source: Election address (c. November 1935), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (Victor Gollancz, 1994), p. 43

“It is a justifiable proposition that every wave of immigration we have had into this country has benefited this country.”

Michael Foot

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1965/nov/23/schedule-acts-continued-till-end-of#column_365 in the House of Commons (23 November 1965)

“We are in for fierce and angry times in this country.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1970/dec/03/coal-industry-bill#column_1506 in the House of Commons on the Coal Industry Bill (3 December 1970) <br class="br">1970s