takes, misjudged the direction in which events were travelling, and had but a fumbling grasp upon the reins.

All this is of the past. The situation to-day is very different. Democracy is awake, and aware of its own power. It sees things in a better perspective, and realises that at home and abroad the triumph of democratic principles in politics and industry and social life is a matter simply of wise and capable leadership and resolute and united effort on the part of all sections of the organised movement. There never was a bigger opportunity for democracy to achieve its main aims than the one which now offers. It is time that we should begin to think not only of the great social and economic changes that are to take effect in the coming period of reconstruction, but of the methods and means of securing them. The war has proved to democracy that a dictatorship, whether with one head or five, is incompatible with its spirit and its ideals even in war-time. It has also revealed many serious defects in the structure of society. And it has shown the need for drastic change in the composition and organisation of political parties. It is generally acknowledged that the old party system has irretrievably broken down. Evidence of this is afforded by the clamant call for new parties. The appearance upon the horizon of a

National Party and a Women's Party, the probability of separate groups forming in Parliament around the personality of political leaders who have lost or are losing their grip upon the more or less coherent and strongly organised parties of pre-war days, are symptoms of this disintegration. Political power is about to be re-distributed, not only amongst the electors under the Franchise Bill, but amongst the political parties in Parliament which will claim to represent the new democratic consciousness. Minor readjustments designed to adapt orthodox Liberalism or Unionism to the changing psychology of the electorate will not avail. A thorough-going transformation of the machinery of the parliamentary parties and a fundamental revision of their programmes are in my judgment not merely timely but necessary.

The Labour Party, at any rate, has proceeded upon the assumption that reconstruction is inevitable. It has formulated a scheme which is deliberately designed to give the enfranchised millions full opportunity to express their political preferences in the choice of members to represent them in the Reconstruction Parliament which will have to deal with the vast problems arising out of the war. The outline of the new party constitution is now familiar to every attentive reader of the newspapers.

It contemplates the creation of a national democratic party, founded upon the organised workingclass movement, and open to every worker who labours by hand or brain. Under this scheme the Labour Party will be transformed, quickly and quietly, from a federation of societies, national and local, into a nation-wide political organisation with branches in every parliamentary constituency, in which members will be enrolled both as workers and as citizens, whether they be men or women, and whether they belong to any trade union or socialist society or are unattached democrats with no acknowledged allegiance to any industrial or political movement. We are casting the net wide because we realise that real political democracy cannot be organised on the basis of class interest. Retaining the support of the affiliated societies, both national and local, from which it derives its weight and its fighting funds, the Labour Party leaves them with their voting power and right of representation in its councils unimpaired; but in order that the party may more faithfully reflect constituency opinion it is also proposed to create in every constituency something more than the existing trades council or local labour party. It is proposed to multiply the local organisations and to open them to individual men and women, both hand-workers and brain-workers, who

accept the party constitution and agree with its aims. The individually enrolled members will have, like the national societies, their own representatives in the party's councils, and we confidently believe that year by year their influence will deepen and extend. The weakness of the old constitution was that it placed the centre of gravity in the national society and not in the constituency organisation: it did not enable the individual voter to get into touch with the party (except in one or two isolated cases, like that of Woolwich or Barnard Castle) except through the trade union, the socialist society, or the cooperative society. The new constitution emphasises the importance of the individual voter. It says to the man and woman who have lost or never had sympathy with the orthodox parties, "You have the opportunity now not merely of voting for Labour representatives in Parliament, but of joining the party and helping to mould its policy and shape its future."

Under the old conditions the appeal of the party was limited. It has seemed to be, though it never actually was, a class party like any other. It was regarded as the party of the manual wage-earners. Its programme was assumed, by those who have not taken the trouble to examine its whole propaganda, to reflect the views of trade unionists not as citizens

with a common interest in good government, but as workers seeking remedies for a series of material grievances touching hours of labour, rates of wages, conditions of employment. This misapprehension rests upon a too narrow definition of the term "Labour." On the lips of the earlier propagandists the word was used to differentiate between those whose toil enriched the community, and those who made no productive effort of any kind but lived idly and luxuriously upon the fruits of the labours of others. It is that differentiation we design to perpetuate in the title of the party. The Labour Party is the party of the producers whose labour of hand and brain provide the necessities of life for all and dignify and elevate human existence. That the producers have been robbed of the major part of the fruits of their industry under the individualist system of capitalist production is a justification for the party's claims. One of the main aims of the party is to secure for every producer his (or her) full share of those fruits-and to ensure the most equitable distribution of the nation's wealth that may be possible, on the basis of the common ownership of land and capital, and the democratic control of all the activities of society.

The practice of empirical politics, the effort to secure this or that specific reform, will not suffice;