The essential point here is that all people with small, insecure incomes are in the same boat and ought to be fighting on the same side. Probably we could do with a little less talk about capitalist and proletarian and a little more about the robbers and the robbed. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the labouring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something. Wendell Phillips
There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood. Walter Reuther
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. Aboriginal activists group, Queensland 1970s
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century – solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others. Elie Wiesel
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know. W H Auden
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that ... They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that. Do you know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And do you know something – they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe ... what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people ... continue – and these are people of modest means – who continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all. George Carlin, Who Really Controls America
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. Angela Davis
We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. Fred Hampton
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
You see blokes on the picket line you’d never have dreamed would be there. And often they’re the ones who have the best ideas about what to do next.
I suppose most of the blokes still feel that this is just part of ordinary life. But I must admit for me it’s like living history. I feel that one day I’ll be telling those children’s children what it was like being in the Great Steel Strike of 1980. Tom Bartholomew
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. Robert F Kennedy
In our country, true teams rarely exist ... social barriers and personal ambitions have reduced athletes to dissolute cliques or individuals thrown together for mutual profit ... Yet these rugby players, with their muddied, cracked bodies, are struggling to hold onto a sense of humanity that we in America have lost and are unlikely to regain. The game may only be to move a ball forward on a dirt field, but the task can be accomplished with an unshackled joy and its memories will be a permanent delight. The women and men who play on that rugby field are more alive than too many of us will ever be. The foolish emptiness we think we perceive in their existence is only our own. Victor Cahn
Despite the killings the demonstrations continued. Back at the barracks the soldiers were becoming increasingly angry at what had happened, and when their officer tried to force them back on to the streets again, they let their feelings known. The Russian Revolution in Colour, 2005
The revolution appeared unstoppable. Tsarist symbols were torn down. And the country rushed enthusiastically into uncharted territory. ibid.
What the matchgirls 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. Amanda Vickery, Suffragettes: Forever! The Story of Women and Power II, BBC 2015
Just what could be achieved with direct action: a new type of political protest was born. Banner: National Federation of Women Workers. ibid.
No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. Aristotle
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson
What are the men thinking about? Don’t tell me that they’re trying to safeguard the future because they got none whatever way it goes. And they may as do what’s right. Alan Bleasdale, Boys from the Black Stuff: George’s Last Ride, George to sons, BBC 1982
The only reason things got better ’cause of men like your father. ibid. Mary Malone
But my dreams – those dreams of long ago they still give me hope and faith in my class. I can’t believe that there’s no hope. Can’t. ibid. George to Chrissie
You know what he stood for? Yeah well that’s dead and all. ibid. Chrissie to Loggo
At the front of the picket lines were the Italians. The Italian Americans: Becoming Americans 1910-1930, PBS 2014
The Socialist – very much against his will – finds himself in the midst of this horrid battle, and he appeals to the other combatants to cease from fighting and establish a system of Brotherly Love and Mutual Helpfulness, but he does not hypocritically pretend to practise brotherly love towards those who will not agree to his appeal, and who compel him to fight with them for his very life. He knows that in this battle he must either fight or go under. Therefore, in self-defence, he fights; but all the time he continues to appeal for the cessation of the slaughter. He pleads for the changing of the system. He advocates Co-operation instead of Competition; but how can he co-operate with people who insist on competing with him? No individual can co-operate by himself! Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Exactly the same lack of feeling for each other prevailed amongst the members of all the different trades. Everybody seemed glad if anybody got into trouble for any reason whatever. ibid.
But a new form off politics was spreading; a youthful, vibrant movement loosely connected to music and anti-racism. The punk scene, which had started as an anarchic tantrum, even flirting with fascist insignia in an effort to cause outrage, was developing as an opposition movement … The amorphous blend of musical rebellion and political activism coalesced in the form of the Anti-Nazi Leagues, which was launched at the height of the punk period, and in particular at the ANL carnivals of 1978. Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
I was coming to understand the importance of small victories as the engines that keep people going. A civil servant told me how he’d once succeeded in getting the staff of the British Museum to walk out on the day it received a visit from General Caetano, the military ruler of Portugal. And there was the celebrated tale of the Tilbury dockers who, as General Franco lay on his deathbed, won a vote to send him a telegram that said, ‘Die you bastard, die.’ ibid.