Scargill Quotes

#1. Arthur Scargill is the Labour movements nearest equivalent to a First World War General.

Neil Kinnock

#2. I pledge no fudge of compromise', said Arthur Scargill, 'and no carrots of redundancy'. That would make a nice epitaph for him. 'He pledged no fudge'.

Tony Benn

#3. There's a feeling that strength is determined by the size of a union. That clearly is nonsense.

Arthur Scargill

#4. The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain.

Arthur Scargill

#5. The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the day.

Arthur Scargill

#6. All too often miners, and indeed other trade unionists, underestimate the economic strength they have.

Arthur Scargill

#7. I have never been an idealist - that implies you aren't going to achieve something.

Arthur Scargill

#8. Yet what you need is not marches, demonstrations, rallies or wide associations, all of them are important. What you need is direct action. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we'll begin to change things.

Arthur Scargill

#9. The world's most sensible and the most idiotic person lies within us..
the worst part is we can't say who is who

Chetan Bhagat

#10. The trade unions and the Labour Party ... failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.

Arthur Scargill

#11. We will pave the way for a transformation and roll back the years of Thatcherism ... We will turn economic ruin into economic recovery, and above all pave the way for a General Election to elect a Labour Government.

Arthur Scargill

#12. If you've got an industry where you've got massive investment, it doesn't matter whether you bring in alternative supplies. You still lose the money on that industry.

Arthur Scargill

#13. You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament.

Arthur Scargill

#14. Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

Arthur Scargill

#15. Only a fool wants a confrontation and only a fool wants a strike.

Arthur Scargill

#16. You can risk being wrong or you can be boring.

Seth Godin

#17. Parliament itself would not exist in its present form had people not defied the law.

Arthur Scargill

#18. My father still reads the dictionairy every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words

Arthur Scargill

#19. Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

John Grisham

#20. I don't know if we ever have enough distance to "see" our own trajectory. We're in the muddled middle of it. Who knows what will last, what poems will take hold of the imaginations of the future.

Dorianne Laux

#21. I wouldn't vote for Ken Livingstone if he were running for mayor of Toytown.

Arthur Scargill

#22. The Saviour reigned in all their hearts, and they successfully copied the pattern of meekness and gentleness, which he had left them.

John Strachan