Labour lays down its carefully thought-out, comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of society, which will guarantee freedom, security, and equality. We propose, as a first step, a series of national minima to protect the people's standard of life. For the workers of all grades and both sexes we demand and mean to secure proper legislative provision against unemployment, accident, and industrial disease, a reasonable amount of leisure, a minimum rate of wages. We shall insist upon a large and practicable scheme to protect the whole wage-earning class against the danger of unemployment and reduction of wages, with a consequent degradation of the standard of life, when the war ends and the forces are demobilised and the munitions factories cease work. The task of finding employment for disbanded fighting men and discharged munition workers we regard as a national obligation: we shall see to it that work is found for all, that the work is productive and socially useful, and that standard rates of wages shall be paid for this work. In the reorganisation of industry after the war, the Labour Party will claim for the workers an increasing share in the management and control of the factories and workshops. What the workers want is freedom, a definite elevation of their status, the abolition of the system of wage-slavery which destroyed their inde pendence and made freedom in any real sense impossible. We believe that the path to the democratic control of industry lies in the common ownership of the means of production: and we shall strenuously resist every proposal to hand back to private capitalists the great industries and services that have come under Government control during the war. This control has been extended to the importation and distribution of many necessary commodities-many of the staple foods of the people and some of the raw materials of industry. More than the great key industries and vital services have come under control; and we do not mean to loosen the popular grip upon them, but on the contrary to strengthen it. In the field of national finance the Labour Party stands for a system of taxation regulated not by the interests of the possessing and profiteering classes, but by the claims of the professional and housekeeping classes, whose interests are identical with those of the manual workers. We believe that indirect taxation upon commodities should not fall upon any necessity of life, but should be limited to luxuries, especially and principally those which it is socially desirable to extinguish. Direct taxation, we hold, upon large incomes and private fortunes is the method by which the greater part of the necessary revenue should be raised; we advocate the retention in some appropriate form of the excess profits tax; and we shall oppose every attempt to place upon the shoulders of the producing classes, the professional classes, and the small traders, the main financial burden of the war. We seek to prevent, by methods of common ownership and of taxation, the accumulation of great fortunes in private hands. Instead of senseless individual extravagances we desire to see the wealth of the nation expended for social purposes for the constant improvement and increase of the nation's enterprises, to make provision for the sick, the aged, and the infirm, to establish a genuine national system of education, to provide the means of public improvements in all directions by which the happiness and health of the people will be ensured. One step in this direction will be taken when the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink is no longer left to those who find profit in encouraging the utmost possible consumption. The party's policy in this matter asserts the right of the people to deal with the licensing question in accordance with the opinion of localities; we urge that the localities should have conferred upon them full power to prohibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries, or alternatively to decide whether the number of licences should be reduced, upon what conditions they may be held, and whether they shall be under private or any form of public control. In our relations to other peoples, whether those of our blood and tongue in the British Empire, or those of other races and languages, we repudiate the idea of domination and exploitation, we stand for the steady development of the idea of local self-government and the freedom of nations. On all these points and the problems underlying them, the Labour Party lays down its general principles and policies; * and from time to time Labour's representative assemblies will apply these principles to the problems of immediate and pressing importance, and formulate the programme which the electors will be invited to support. In opposition, and presently as we believe and hope in office, Labour will seek to build up a new order of society, rooted in equality, dedicated to freedom, governed on democratic principles. * For a detailed statement of the party's reconstruction proposals, see "Labour and the New Social Order" printed as an appendix. CHAPTER III SOLIDARITY THE organised workers have displayed a wonderful spirit of loyalty and remarkable fortitude, courage, and determination throughout the period of the war, but from now onwards the need for practical and effective solidarity will become increasingly evident and insistent. The tremendous sacrifices of the present are a blood-offering for the security of the future, and a grave responsibility will rest upon the representatives of the several nations concerned if, from any unworthy motive, they fail to arrange such a peace settlement as will afford the peoples of the world a reasonable prospect of security, freedom, and progress. If such a peace is not realised it will mean that the most vital object of our participation in the present grievous and devastating conflict has not been attained, and that the military failure of Germany has not proved to be a victory for the Allied cause. It is imperative that the workers of the world should realise that they are too intimately concerned |