"Left parties have lost office in Europe because of their inability to articulate an alternative to austerity and cuts. The right offers individualism, a huge and growing wealth gap and a mean and divided society. Socialism is the sharing of wealth, the contribution of ability for the common good, and unity in defending our achievements against attack. It's also our only hope"

"The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done"

"If you allow a small minority to live in luxury and so arrange things that the maintenance of that luxury is directly dependent on the poverty of the majority, as we have done in the capitalist world, then undeniably the riches of the few are responsible for the poverty of the many"

"Had we achieved the necessary TUC unity, the 1980s could have been very different. The Thatcher government's most effective ally was a union inside the TUC, the EETPU (general secretary Frank Chapple). That's what should be properly recorded in the TUC history, as we prepare for the TUC's 150th Anniversary"