Rights is not privileges. Made in Dagenham 2010 starring Bob Hoskins & Miranda Richardson & Sally Hawkins & Geraldine James & Rosamund Pike & Andrea Riseborough & Jaime Winstone & Daniel Mays & Richard Schiff & Phil Cornwell et al, director Nigel Cole, Rita
It was a matter of principle. You had to stand up and do what was right otherwise you wouldn’t be able to look yourself in the mirror ... When did we in this country decide to stop fighting? ... We are the working classes, the men and the women ... Equal pay for women is right. ibid. Rita at conference
We have to fight for our rights. Barbara Kopple, Harlan Country USA ***** miner’s wife at meeting, 1976
I believe that animals have rights which, although different from our own, are just as inalienable. I believe animals have the right not to have pain, fear or physical deprivation inflicted upon them by us ... They have the right not to be brutalized in any way as food resources, for entertainment or any other purpose. Roger Caras ABC-TV News December 1988
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. Maximilien Robespierre 24th April 1793
Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right. Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of judgment, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimize an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract ch4
I never remember discussions about human rights ... The intelligence information that should have been stopping the arms trade was possibly helping it. Robin Robison, Cabinet Office 1985-1990
False Flag is something that happens historically, happens regularly. Perfectly standard thing for intelligence agencies to get involved in. Annie Machon, MI5 whistleblower, interview 30th April 2010
They decide it’s in their interests ... to carry out an atrocity in order to build up a market for things like the arms industry, in order to build up an environment politically where they can get away with taking away our basic rights ... Vested class interests. ibid.
A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi ... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for. Thurgood Marshall
There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where the police were allowed to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country where the government is entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your e-mail communications; if we lived in a country where people could be held indefinitely based ... on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, the government would probably discover and arrest more terrorists, or would-be terrorists.... But that wouldn’t be a country in which we would want to live. Senator Russ Feingold
Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights. Garry Kasparov How Life Imitates Chess, 2007
Putting surveillance states, putting cameras everywhere, putting helicopters over my head, putting surveillance on you; soon it’s gonna be ID cards; for school-kids they’ve got to get fingerprints to get food. This is becoming a dictatorship, totalitarian state. Everywhere you look it’s governance, governance, governance, and our rights have been taken away. Ethan Cruise, campaigner & researcher, televised interview drowned by circling helicopter
All of high society was here ... Was she a suicide mission or was it simply a stunning stunt? ... The cause had gained a martyr. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power ***** BBC 2015
That saw women fire-bomb buildings. Assault. Or commit acts of terrorism across the country. ibid.
A fight that is centuries old. And a fight I believe that is still going on today. ibid.
300 wife fairs ... Wives fairs were technically against the law ... The woman was the property of her husband, so why should he not sell her like a piece of meat? ibid.
Rape in marriage was not made a crime until 1991. ibid.
A petition: these women were Levellers, a radical political movement that argued the new Republic of England should be democratic. ibid.
The worse crime a woman could commit in the eighteenth century was the murder of her husband. ibid.
1958 until they were legitimately permitted to sit in the House of Lords. ibid.
Today Mary Wollstonecraft is fated as Britain’s first feminist. She’s so hip. ibid.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women was now smeared with the blood of the guillotine. Its brief moment was past ... She suffered a tabloid-style destruction. ibid.
The mother of the movement for women’s rights. ibid.
‘Charity is the call of the lady, the care of the poor her profession.’ ibid Moore
With a lawyer for a husband, and a politician for a lover, Caroline knew full well that legal rights had to be secured by act of parliament. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power II
It wasn’t just women who were politically disadvantaged in nineteenth century Britain ... Only one in five men could vote. ibid.
‘The real question is whether it is right and expedient that one half of the human race should pass through life in a state of forced subordination to the other half.’ ibid. John Stuart Mill
Another Victorian giant John Ruskin ... A critic and social thinker. ibid.
The Contagious Diseases Acts encouraged the arrest, detention and screening of women as young as thirteen on suspicion they might be infected with a sexually transmitted disease. ibid.
They did not have the right to be awarded a degree. ibid.
The spectacle of the female cyclist. ibid.
The Conservative Party’s Primrose League. ibid.
They remained second-class citizens ... The injustice of sexual discrimination. ibid.
What the Match-girls did next: In July 1888 1,400 women and girls walked out through the gates of the Bryant and May match factory here in Bow East London. ibid.
Just what could be achieved with direct action: a new type of political protest was born. Banner: National Federation of Women Workers. ibid.
The militant suffrage campaign had stirred up a vocal opposition. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power III
The growing popularity of female football ... Women’s teams were banned. ibid.
Fundamental sexual inequalities still remain. ibid.
But I am Chancellor of England. And I will not have it said that the Law acts against the people. The people themselves have rights. Sword of Sherwood Forest 1960 starring Richard Greene & Peter Cushing & Sarah Branch & Nigel Green & Vanda Godsell & Edwin Richfield & Charles Lamb & Richard Pasco & Niall MacGinnis & Jack Gwillim & Oliver Reed & Patrick Crean & Dennis Lotis & Derren Nesbitt et al, director Terence Fisher, heroic dude
Truth and mercy require the exertion – never the suppression – of man’s noble rights and powers. Gerrit Smith
Today we seem to think that the rights of the individual take precedent over the comfort of the majority. James V O’Connor, Cuss Control: The Complete Book on How to Curb Your Cursing
Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others. Pasquier Quesnel
Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas ... Children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. Nicholas Humphrey, Amnesty Lecture Oxford 1997
Sorry, we have more rights here because we are a majority. You have fewer rights because you are a minority. Absolutely, that’s how democracy works. So, it is a question of accepting the rules within democracy and you must operate in them. Jacob Zuma, President’s Question Time 13th September 2012