Ken Loach Quotes

What the working-classes really need is to be allowed some part in the direction of public affairs.

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

You need to remind people that you vote, you matter, and that they can't succeed without your help.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

Trade unionism is not a discovery or a formula. It grew and evolved slowly out of the needs of human experience.

The Labor Community is carrying on … a very significant and instructive struggle.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

I'm convinced democracy will grow from the ground up, from the community.

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing.

I think that power comes in numbers, and we're in an industry where the actors need to have a bigger voice.

We've got to stand up for what we believe in as a labour movement. And that means the party's membership needs to be even bigger so it becomes a genuinely mass organisation.

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

There will always be a place for us somewhere, somehow, as long as we see to it that working people fight for everything they have, everything they hope to get, for dignity, equality, democracy, to oppose war and to bring to the world a better life.

We can't fool ourselves that they will ever be enough to overthrow Capitalism. If we're serious about that we need to organise ourselves in our workplaces and communities, making the links with other workers internationally.

What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins.

I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.

Women movements would form among the factory workers, a great mobilisation that destroyed the old models.

One person alone can't do anything as important as bringing genuine democracy to a country.

Politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live.

We must care. We must all care. And while I am working, while the governments is working, so must the people also work.

I think people instinctively know that their job is to give service and that they are part of a community. It had a great impact on me when my father walked the picket lines and I walked with him during the civil rights movement.

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

I have always believed that on important issues, the leaders must lead. Where the leaders fail to lead, and people are really concerned about it, the people will take the lead and make the leaders follow.