DAVID KIRKWOOD

A Socialist Government cannot carry on a capitalist system better than the capitalists. The men bred by a capitalist system are men of affairs who understand their business. They are not apprentices.

I was not a conscientious objector. I was a political objector. I believed that finance and commercial rivalry had led to war.

There we were, men who a few years before had been scorned, some of us in jail and many more of us very near it, now being the men to whom the people pinned their faith.

I welcome this new ship, not only for the good that it will bring to my own constituency, but for what I really believe it means to the shipbuilding and engineering industries of this country … as long as this ship lies like a skeleton in my constituency, so long will depression last in this country, because as it lies there … it shouts, “Failure! Failure!” To the whole of Britain.

A Socialist Government cannot carry on a capitalist system better than the capitalists. The men bred by a capitalist system are men of affairs who understand their business. They are not apprentices.

I was not a conscientious objector. I was a political objector. I believed that finance and commercial rivalry had led to war.

There we were, men who a few years before had been scorned, some of us in jail and many more of us very near it, now being the men to whom the people pinned their faith.

I welcome this new ship, not only for the good that it will bring to my own constituency, but for what I really believe it means to the shipbuilding and engineering industries of this country … as long as this ship lies like a skeleton in my constituency, so long will depression last in this country, because as it lies there … it shouts, “Failure! Failure!” To the whole of Britain.