“If Reg Prentice is cut down it is not just the local party that is undermining its own foundations by ignoring the beliefs and feelings of ordinary people, the whole legitimate Labour Party, left as well as right, is crippled if extremists have their way. … If tolerance is shattered formidable consequences will follow. Labour MPs will either have to become creatures of cowardice, concealing their views, trimming their sails, accepting orders, stilling their consciences, or they will all have to be men far far to the left of those whose votes they seek. Either would make a mockery of parliamentary democracy. The first would reduce still further, and rightly reduce, respect for the House of Commons. It would become an assembly of men with craven spirits and crooked tongues. The second would, quite simply, divorce the Labour Party from the people.”

Speech in Newham, London (11 September 1975), quoted in The Times (12 September 1975), p. 1
1970s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If Reg Prentice is cut down it is not just the local party that is undermining its own foundations by ignoring the beli…" by Roy Jenkins?

Roy Jenkins51

British politician, historian and writer 1920–2003

Related quotes

“The Labour Party has now been taken over by extremists…The Labour Party is now committed to a programme which is frankly and unashamedly Marxist, a programme initiated by its National Executive and now firmly endorsed by its official Party Conference. In the House of Commons the Labour Left may still be outnumbered, but their votes are vital to the continuance of Labour in office, and that gives them a strength out of proportion to their numbers. And make no mistake, that strength, those numbers, are growing. In the constituency Labour parties, in the Parliamentary Labour Party, in Transport House, in the Cabinet Room itself, the Marxists call an increasing number of tunes…let's not mince words. The dividing line between the Labour Party programme and Communism is becoming harder and harder to detect. Indeed, in many respects Labour's programme is more extreme than those of many Communist parties of Western Europe.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (8 October 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103105 <br class="br">Leader of the Opposition

“Lenin's thesis is that the party Central Committee should have the privilege of naming all the local committees of the party. It should have the right to appoint the effective organs of all local bodies from Geneva to Liege, from Tomsk to Irkutsk. It should also have the right to impose on all of them its own ready-made rules of party conduct. It should have the right to rule without appeal on such questions as the dissolution and reconstitution of local organizations. This way, the Central Committee could determine, to suit itself, the composition of the highest party organs. The Central Committee would be the only thinking element in the party. All other groupings would be its executive limbs.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

“In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Article for The Sunday Telegraph, citing the swing to the Conservatives in his constituency and others with large working-class electorates (18 October 1964), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 364
1960s

“Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Tribune, 1954.
1950s

“The Labour Party is the sister Party for the Democrats and their progressive views are the ones that we are most aligned with.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

On Question Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etg5lm92Io8, 18 September, 2008.

“Labour freed up enormous amounts of money for third sector initiatives, which was magnificent. But it also became too statist. Charities became very reliant on state funding to pursue their agendas, so charities became distant from local communities. Despite all the funding, there was no transformation of the lives of excluded poor people. The greatest gift of the big society will be the renewal of the Labour Party. If it takes civil society and people power seriously, and listens to people who have a following in their own communities, it will find that it has reconnected with its own political traditions.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Interview with Third Sector, 6 June 2011 http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/interview-lord-glasman/infrastructure/article/1073529

“The combination of the Liberal and Labour Parties is much stronger than the Liberal Party would be if there were no third Party in existence. Many men who would in that case have voted for us voted on this occasion as the Labour Party told them i. e. for the Liberals. The Labour Party has "come to stay"…the existence of the third Party deprives us of the full benefits of the 'swing of the pendulum', introduces a new element into politics and confronts us with a new difficulty.”

Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician

Late 1910s, quoted in E. H. H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 141.
1910s

“I joined the Labour Party not because it was Left Wing, but because it was definitely internationalists and would seem to be the group in the Labour Party which would serve my purpose best for propaganda along internationalist lines.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

After All (1951)

“Are we going to celebrate a Labour version of Brexit? No. We must have the Labour Party this week saying no to Brexit and we must lead the campaign to remain.”

Emily Thornberry (1960) British politician (born 1960)

Jeremy Corbyn faces calls to resolve Labour Brexit divisions https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49787467 BBC News (22 September 2019) <br class="br">2019

“The behavior of the Taliban as well as their extremist attitudes do not correspond in any way with a tolerant Islam. We have always been opposed to extremist tendencies of Islam and we still are. We have not stopped insisting on defending an Islam of tolerance which would be profitable to every Muslim, in Afghanistan and in the whole world, and we will always defend it.”

Ahmad Shah Massoud (1953–2001) Afghan military leader

Meeting with European legislators http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2000/june/jun23i2000.html (11 June 2000).

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Roy Jenkins51

Related quotes

Related topics