Ewan MacColl

"My function is not to reassure people. I want to make them uncomfortable. To send them out of the place arguing and talking^."

"If one worried about backing a loser one would not take part in politics. Anybody who has ever been involved in political struggle, particularly in working class struggle, must accept the fact, for the major part of their life, they're going to be involved in losing battles, on the losing side in battles. If I'd have been afraid of that I'd have packed it up after I joined the YCL in 1929 and spent my time, with a lot of other people, trying to alert people to the dangers of Japanese imperialism when they entered Manchukuo, I'd have given up in 1932 when we were trying to alert people to the dangers of Hitler coming to power, I'd have given up during the Abyssinian War when Mussolini's bombers were bombing Ethiopians, I'd have given it up at every single stage of the struggle ever since. One goes on fighting because not to go on fighting is to prove that you're no longer alive. - "Daddy, What Did You Do in the Strike?" Granada TV Documentary 1985