Dennis Skinner

“I've never done any cross-party stuff. I've no interest in sitting down discussing pensions or whatever with Tories.”

“I always work on the principle that if my heart and my head are together on an issue, write it, say it.”

“Isn't it essential in any prelude to a war to be sure of your allies and be sure of your objectives?”

“You don't enter politics when you come to parliament. I was getting politics for breakfast, dinner and tea when I was a little kid.”

“I worked in the pit for more than 20 years and never had a serious injury.”

“I don't believe in organised happiness.”

“I have bought my flat myself and never charged a penny of it to the taxpayers.”

“I was cycling until I was 68. I used to play football, cricket, tennis, table tennis. I was into road walking - heel and toe.”

“When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.”

“I never, ever romanticise life in the pit. It was a hard, dirty, noisy, tiring, dangerous job in a confined space, a very dark world with no toilets or running water to drink or wash with.”

“I refused to pair with a Tory MP, I refused all foreign junkets and I've never had a drink in a Westminster bar.”

“If I'd not been a coal miner in the past, getting up very early, I wouldn't have been able to have done what I've been doing.”

“We dragged the National Health Service from the depths of degradation. I've got a United Nations heart bypass to prove it and it was done by a Syrian cardiologist, a Malaysian surgeon, a Dutch doctor and a Nigerian registrar.”