Blog introduced 08 December 2014.

          THE RAT RACE SPEECH

“Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice, lest you jeopardise your chances of self-promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and, before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ puts it, ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul ?”

The above is part of a speech made by the late great Jimmy Reid, the inspirational trade unionist who led the work-in at the Upper Clyde which reversed Conservative Government Policy on the docks. A speech which is as relevant today as it was in the early 1970s.

A speech hailed by the New York Times as the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

James Reid, 9 July 1932 – 10 August 2010. RIP.