Rema on Tony Benn

“If I had rescued a child from drowning, the national press would no doubt have headlined the story “Benn grabs child.””

“The word 'socialism' on my poster has not lost me a single vote. People will support you if you're serious. My complaint about the Labour movement is that it hasn't done any teaching for 40 years; it has always been on the defensive. Thatcher was successful because she was a teacher. Her values, of course, were rotten.”

“[T]he Party must have a much wider appeal. We have thought of the Party a bit narrowly, in terms of economic and industrial policy, as if every problem could be solved by setting up a quango. We have got to think of the appeal to women, to blacks, to the wider peace movement, the ecological movement and the regions. We have got to think out the whole devolution argument... You and I come from old-fashioned radical liberal families, and libertarianism is what it is about.”

“He said he did not approach the EMS proposal in a theological way. In his view the West German Government wanted it in order to cripple their competitors; the French wanted it because they wished to be equal to the Germans; and the EEC commissioners wanted it because they believed in a federal Europe. "It would mean that a British government could only get permission to devalue, if we wanted to, if we made big cuts in public expenditure. It would be quite impossible to implement Labour's Programme, 1976 and party conference decisions if we went into EMS. We ought to make it clear...that we are not prepared to go into it and we would veto it if it was not in the national interest."”