We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism
Tony BennCabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital; it does not create it....The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge; the permanent officials.
Tony BennI'm interested in language. We used to call it the War Office. Then it became the Ministry of Defence. We used to talk about the hydrogen bomb, now we talk about a deterrent. And the language is very cleverly constructed to give the impression that it's not what it is.
Tony BennIt is government policy to phase out subsidies to nationalised industries. In line with this, the government hopes that the coal industry will be able to operate without the need for assistance apart from social grants.
Tony BennChristians believe that God created man, and humanists believe that man invented God. But whichever way you look at it, we're brothers and sisters. Either we're brothers and sisters because we're children of God, or because we've banded together to invent God. So the ethics of the humanist and the ethics of some Christians are very similar. And we don't want to create divisions between humanists and Liberation Theologians, any more than we want between the New Worker and the Trots. It's not helpful.
Tony Benn