George Meany Quotes
One cannot have a trade union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed.
Meany, George. Address to the AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention. 12th Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, 8 Dec. 1977, Los Angeles, CA.
He was condemning a practice whereby some nations would have freedoms guaranteed by their constitutions or laws, but the totalitarian government would “suspend” the constitutional guarantees in times of “national emergencies.” Yew was in opposition at the time he made this famous statement. 30 years later when he was the Prime Minister, he had a different view. See {585201}.
Unlike the labor laws in their platform (see {590471}), these rights were never given the Soviet citizen. During Stalin’s reign, there was no longer even any pretense of Russians getting these rights.
This is a classic Egyptian political technique. Egyptian political leaders espouse democratic values and endorse human rights, but control and regulate the actual exercise of rights so that “unacceptable” groups or people can never really assemble or protest. They make an application to demonstrate and find themselves arrested or “detained” so the Egyptians can say that no one is refused the right to assemble. Their permit was not denied.
William George Meany was an American labor union leader for 57 years. He was the key figure in the creation of the AFL-CIO and served as the AFL-CIO's first president, from 1955 to 1979.
