Clergyman's

The channels of world trade are so obstructed by the pursuit of nationalist economic policy that steps should be taken at once to make it possible to arrive at an international economic agreement which would revive international trade. A return to free trade pure and simple would only increase unemployment.
- Ramsay MacDonald

The channels of world trade are so obstructed by the pursuit of nationalist economic policy that steps should be taken at once to make it possible to arrive at an international economic agreement which would revive international trade. A return to free trade pure and simple would only increase unemployment.
- Ramsay MacDonald

The day is coming when we may have to give up orthodox free trade as we inherited it from our fathers.
- Ramsay MacDonald

You are faced with the problem of what to do in respect to this question, to that question, and to the other question, but perfectly obviously, after you have faced the more superficial aspects of the separate questions, you want to know in relation to a complete plan what you are actually giving and what you are actually getting. Therefore, when the departmental, or compartmental, exploration has gone on to a certain extent it cannot be finished until somebody, co-ordinating all your problems, sets out in one statement and declaration the complete scheme that this Conference can pass in order to give security, to give disarmament, to give hope to the future–until that scheme has been placed before you, you cannot complete your examination of compartmental problems and questions...
- Ramsay MacDonald

ny idea which assumes that the interests of the proletariat are so simply opposed to those of the bourgeoisie as to make the proletariat feel a oneness of economic interest is purely formal and artificial... o-day there is still a goodly number of workmen who cross the line and become employers or employing managers, whilst the great thrift movements, the Friendly Societies, the Building Societies, the Co-operative Societies, connect working class interests to the existing state of things. In addition, there are considerable classes of workers in the community whose immediate interests are bound up with the present distribution of wealth, and who, obedient to class interests, would range themselves on the side of the status quo. Of course they are making a mistake from the point of view of their own interests, and that if they were properly enlightened they would see that they belong to an exploited class, one and indivisible. That may be true, but a mode of action which is ineffective until men are ""fully enlightened"" is a chimera.
- Ramsay MacDonald

The land will therefore belong to the State in one or other of its several forms, and rent will be State income. The great factory industries will be controlled by associations of consumers which again will be identical with the State in some one or other of its aspects... the socialist state will mainly concern itself with co-ordinating production and consumption so as to prevent gluts, useless labour, unearned incomes, industrial loss, surplus values,—the causes of poverty.
- Ramsay MacDonald

Political leaders, irrespective of party...were beginning to see that, unless in Europe they could create an enormous federation of free-trade nations, there was not a single nation in Europe which could flourish in the industrial standard it ought to occupy.
- Ramsay MacDonald

I have been mixed up a good deal with Army officers, and I never met an Army officer in that time without being told by some of them that they were going to stop Home Rule if that was to be applied to Ulster. I have met them on board ship going out to India, and I have been nearly assassinated by them. I remember one day on the way out to India we got a marconigram saying that Larkin had been sent to goal, and I said I could understand it if it had been Sir Edward Carson. The result of my saying that was that I was very nearly thrown overboard.
- Ramsay MacDonald

I do not intend to carry on when we are through this mess. As soon as we have turned the corner I will get out, but I do not want to leave the Labour Party in a bad position.
- Ramsay MacDonald

We are here preparing, as I see it, this international armaments conference. That ought to be our project. If we can remove the obstacles in the way of that we shall have done a tremendous amount of work that, in its very nature, once it is done, is bound to be permanent, because the reason and morality of the world will stand by it so loyally.
- Ramsay MacDonald