Unionism Quotes

…moderates were inexorably sucked into the vortexes of the sectional passions that led to the war. [American Civil War]

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.

Churchill the right-winger has been elevated to a status where you can't criticise him. People from the time remember him as an imperialist, a hard-right politician, very instrumental in the oppression of Ireland and the attempt to defeat the general strike.

Out of the west came Lincoln, and all that he had he gave to the preservation of the Union that had been bought so dearly and was falling to pieces.

Speaking of myself, I was made to realize long ago that the old trade union was utterly incompetent to deal successfully with the exploiting corporations in this struggle. I was made to see that in craft unionism the capitalist class have it within their power to keep the workers divided, to use one part of them to conquer and crush another part of them. Indeed, I was made to see that the old form of unionism separates the workers and keeps them helpless at the mercy of their masters.

No, I don't think I've ever really favoured English independence. My view is that if the Scots want to be independent then we should aim for the same thing.

From infancy, I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession.

But if I ever fight in Northern Ireland again, I want it to be at Windsor Park.

'Free State of Jones' went beyond that. It got into how the South wasn't as homogenous as we thought it was - or even the North for that matter, where we like to assume everyone wanted to free the slaves and they were all abolitionists. It actually shows how complex these ideologies were on both sides.

My dear friend Randeep Hooda says I am more a unionist than an actor. I reminded him I was a star and not just an actor.

I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.

This war is not waged ... for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing ... established institutions [referring to slavery] ... but to defend … the Constitution and to preserve the Union.

In truth, also, however the matter may be disguised, the combinations among workmen to obtain higher wages, which are now so general and so much complained of, are practical attacks on the claims of capital…. On the side of the labourers there is physical strength, for they are more numerous than their opponents. They are also fast losing that reverence for their opponents which was and is the source of their power, and they are daily acquiring a moral strength which results from a common interest and a close and intimate union …

The Confederacy was formed for the purpose of seceding from the Union because those states could not part with their rights to own slaves.

The doctrine of states’ rights was itself a sound and true doctrine; as a starting point of American history and constitutional law there is no other which will bear a moment’s examination ... its prostitution to the base uses of the slave power was one of those unfortunate enlargements which often perturb and mislead history

Scotland just isn't terribly Tory.

For the first time we are facing the prospect of seeing legislation introduced which denies the right of trade unionists to come to the assistance of other unionists and denies the right of trade unionists to seek the support of others in their disputes. There is only one response. Faced with this legislation we should say we will defy the law. It is the only action we can take and it is the only response this movement can give. If there is an attempt to use this legislation then you defy it not as an individual union but as a movement.

I will not nullify, I will not secede, but I will under sovereign State authority fight in the Union another revolutionary conflict for civil liberty, and a Union which will defend it.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and it I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

In 1860, the Republicans put Lincoln in the White House, and Southerners left the Union. Their absence opened the way for the new party to reshape the national government, from protecting the wealth of propertied men to promoting economic opportunity for everyone.

The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.

I will use the power of the government of the United States within my control to prevent the labor unions ... from destroying the open shop.

I don't want Scotland to be more important than England. There's just a cancer of low self-esteem in Scotland and a general feeling that if we were to break away it would be game over and we would be bankrupt. If that is the case then that's exactly what we should do. Why are we, a country that would be bankrupt, leaching off another one?

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.