“To many of us it seems that there is precious little difference between the policies of the Communist Party and the policies of the Labour Party.”

— Margaret Thatcher

Prime Minister's Questions (11 December 1980) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104460
First term as Prime Minister

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Margaret Thatcher 348

British stateswoman and politician 1925–2013

Reginald Maudling (1917–1979) British politician

The Times (26 April, 1976).

“The British Labour Party has always been nationalist, if not insular, and…not just democratic but parliamentarian. But it is confrontation with the EEC that has presented the Labour Party with an uninhibited appeal to patriotism. Internationalist it may be in phrases; when it comes to policy, it is nationalist.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'In judgment on political casebooks', The Saturday Times (9 April 1983), p. 5
1980s

“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
Leader of the Opposition

“It stems from the loss of the election and the growth of the 'cowboys'. The Labour Party has got out of the way of losing elections. We are now the natural party of government… These cowboys are absolute Trots. The number of Communists in the party is very small but the Trots are much more sinister. They are negative and have no policy. There is a fairly high number of— not intellectuals but let's say intelligentsia element there, stemming not least from the growth of sociology as a discipline in the universities.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Interview with The Times (7 April 1981), p. 12.

“The history of the Democratic Party commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the Democratic Party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its present alarming culmination.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

Speech (1859)

“Is the Unionist party, the Conservative party, to be without a definite policy of social reform? It is to our party that they owe the whole of that body of legislation connected with the Factory Acts, free education, the distribution of lands in the shape of allotments and small holdings, the compensation for accidents to workmen in the course of their employment…The policy of resistance, of negation, is no sufficient answer to that Socialist opinion which is growing up amongst us—the Socialist opinion the objects of which are, after all, worthy of earnest and even favourable consideration…that policy, by whomsoever propounded, is a policy which means money, which means expenditure, it is closely connected with the third object of our party officially declared—that fiscal reform is the first constructive policy of the Unionist party.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers.
Speech (25 June 1906), quoted in ‘The 1900 Club.’, The Times (26 June 1906), p. 14.
1900s

“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

“The Communist Party must be a revolutionary party our it will cease to be a Communist Party.”

Tim Buck (1891–1973) Canadian politician

Tim Buck A Conscience for Canada

“When I speak here of our policy, I use the word without regard to anything immaterial and superficial, but in the sense which since the beginning of the party it has had for us in contrast to all other parties, – in the sense of the policy of the class struggle, which has very often changed in form, but in substance has remained the same, – our unique proletarian class policy, which separates us from all other political parties in the world of bourgeois society and excludes us from intercourse with them.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

On the Irrepressible Conflict (1858)

“To many of us it seems that there is precious little difference between the policies of the Communist Party and the policies of the Labour Party.”

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Margaret Thatcher 348

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