Ian Hislop TV - Cameron Conaway - Margaret Mead - Bertolt Brecht - Noam Chomsky - Tony Benn - Adlai E Stevenson - George W Bush - Robert C Byrd - Mark Steel - Peaky Blinders TV - The Anti-Vax Conspiracy TV - Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story TV - Simon Schama TV -
In 1862 [Charles] Kingsley wrote the book he’s most famous for – The Water Babies ... He campaigned for improved sanitation and against the pollution of rivers. Ian Hislop’s Age of the Do-Gooders II: Suffer the Little Children, BBC 2010
My next fight would not be measured in rounds, but throughout a lifetime. It would sustain and fulfil me longer than anything in the cage could. My opponent, my fight, would be against the slipping aspects of American society. Cameron Conaway, Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead
There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two. Bertolt Brecht
Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the US in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil. Noam Chomsky
You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that. Tony Benn
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. Adlai E Stevenson
If you’re sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign. George W Bush
I don’t make any apologies for what I do on the campaign trail. George W Bush
Do not run a campaign that would embarrass your mother. Robert C Byrd
Blair and New Labour thrive on pessimism … The antidote to pessimism is the understanding that we do make a difference. Blair didn’t scrap the Poll Tax – we did. New Labour didn’t end apartheid – we did. What keeps campaigners going is not a naive faith that one sugary day we can make the world a better place, but the knowledge that defying authority already makes the world a better place. Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
When our campaign begins, the country will be divided into distinct areas … Please understand what I’m offering you as we go forward, Mr Shelby … Power. Like plugging into the mains. A lighthouse beam. Peaky Blinders s5e5: The Shock, Mosley, BBC 2019
When the Covid vaccine was announced, it promised freedom from lockdowns, economic catastrophe and relatives dying. Who wouldn’t jump at that? Many, it turns out. A powerful movement is exploiting our fears, persuading some to believe the vaccine is designed to control or even kill us. (Covid-19 & Vaccine & Dissent & Campaign & Conspiracy) The Anti-Vax Conspiracy, Channel 4 2021
The antivaxxers: one of the UK movement’s chief crusaders is Jeremy Corbin’s elder brother Piers. At the movement’s heart is the core belief that politicians and profit-hungry drug companies exaggerate the dangers of Coronavirus. Even that the pandemic is a lie. It can be a seductive message. In the height of the third lockdown, thousands of people gather closely to denounce the vaccine and rage against the rules. The Global antivax movement is bigger, more organised and better funded than ever before. ibid.
In the UK 90% of people are for vaccinations, far more than other countries. ibid.
In America one in three people say they don’t want to be vaccinated. ibid.
In 1963 one woman went to war with the sexual revolution. Armed with just a typewriter, she launched her crusade. She amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. And fought a thirty year battle against the permissive society. The original culture warrior. But was her uprising in vain? Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story, captions, BBC 2022
In 1960 Mary Whitehouse was a teacher at Madeley Secondary Modern in Telford. By the 1960s Mary’s Britain was under threat. In 1964 the campaign to ‘Clean Up TV’ was born. ibid.
She genuinely thought that left-wing subversives were trying to destroy the family and our faith in Jesus in order to usher in communist rule in England. ibid. historian
I was left with the dubious honour of being the only author to have a book publicly burnt on television. ibid. Whitehouse
By 1970 the permissive society was in fully swing and Mary’s battleground moved beyond the BBC. ibid. caption
What she embraces is a political agenda that protects women from that danger, the danger of desire, but lashes them to a kind of patriarchal dead-zone, as if the dead zone is safe. Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story II, woman
The first real bit of legislation she helped with was the Protection of Children Act in 1978. There were things in that Act that the fact they were not covered by law is absolutely stunning now. ibid. biographer
We are now facing electronic corruption on a gigantic scale. It’s like a plague. ibid. Whitehouse
Men’s entitlement to women’s bodies: what she doesn’t do with that is to challenge the patriarchal culture that produces pornography. ibid.
Thousands of people reacted to Peterloo by throwing themselves into campaigns of action. Crusades which they embarked on with religious fervour. Those that laboured for change did so now not only in secret political clubs, but in the light of churches and chapels. Their targets were unnatural institutions – the monopoly of the Church of England, the ban on Catholic voters in Ireland. In the manufacturing towns a hue and cry to have their own MPs ... In 1830 a new Revolution in France and a wave of violence in the English countryside meant the votes for change could not be postponed. The Whigs took office for the first time since before 1789 as the champions of reform without revolution. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Forces of Nature, BBC 2002