"I'll tell you what happens with meaningless promises. You start with a bunch of abstract nouns. They are then pickled into a rigid centrist dogma - a code, irrelevant to the needs of one of the most unequal boroughs in Britain. And you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council - Tower Hamlets - threatening to sack its entire workforce"

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned."

"In the 1980s Tory minister Norman Tebbit organised against craft unionism, seeking to replace collectivism with individualism. He praised the corrupt practice known as lump Labour and promoted what then became bogus self-employment. Crucially, this was accepted in the electrical contracting industry by the EETPU leadership. Bogus self-employment was then gradually forced on other trades in building and maintenance. The neoliberal onslaught since the 1980s has totally transformed British trade unionism".

"We now have had 51 days of unbelievable levels of abuse... I simply say this; if you wish to inhabit the gutter, I will not be joining you there"

"The more I hear Tory MPs fawn over NHS staff, the more I think of those same MPs in 2017 cheering as they voted down a proper pay rise for nurses"

"The callous neglect of older people in nursing homes is a national scandal, but it is the predictable result of the long-term neglect of the care sector, compounded by the cuts to local authorities under Tory austerity"

"The proportion of people with a job who live in poverty went up for the third consecutive year in 2018 to a record high" - The Joseph Rowntree Foundation. "Tackling poverty will always be a priority for this government" - Department of Work and Pensions. (Utter hypocrisy! - ed.)

"Under the Tories the UK has just had its worst decade for productivity growth since the early 1800s, which was the early years of the Industrial Revolution"

"This is a party that was founded for working people, this is a party that I strive every day to make the party of working people"

"Left parties have lost office in Europe because of their inability to articulate an alternative to austerity and cuts. The right offers individualism, a huge and growing wealth gap and a mean and divided society. Socialism is the sharing of wealth, the contribution of ability for the common good, and unity in defending our achievements against attack. It's also our only hope"

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

"If you allow a small minority to live in luxury and so arrange things that the maintenance of that luxury is directly dependent on the poverty of the majority, as we have done in the capitalist world, then undeniably the riches of the few are responsible for the poverty of the many"

"Had we achieved the necessary TUC unity, the 1980s could have been very different. The Thatcher government's most effective ally was a union inside the TUC, the EETPU (general secretary Frank Chapple). That's what should be properly recorded in the TUC history, as we prepare for the TUC's 150th Anniversary"