Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

CHAPTER II
AN OUTLINE OF THE LABOUR PARTY’S GENERAL POLICY

A National Minimum Standard of Living—Effective Personal Freedom—Socialization of Land and Industry—A Revolution in Public Finance—The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good—International Co-operation—No Protective Tariffs—Freedom of International Trade.

To appreciate the Labour Party’s industrial policy, it is necessary to know, at least in outline, the general policy of which the former is a part. As the basis of all social reform it is contended that “the individualistic system of capitalist production based on the private ownership and competitive administration of land and capital, with its reckless profiteering and wage slavery, its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life, and its hypocritical pretence of the survival of the fittest, must go.” With it must be eradicated the “monstrous inequality of circumstances which it produces, and the degradation and brutalization, both moral and spiritual, resulting from it”—“along with it must disappear the present political system, enshrining the ideas in which the capitalistic system naturally finds expression.” The Labour Party advances a new basis of social reorganization; it proposes to reconstruct society on four pillars resting upon the common foundation of “the democratic control of society in all its activities.” These four pillars are: “(1) Universal enforcement of the national minimum; (2) the democratic control of industry; (3) a revolution in national finance; and (4) the surplus wealth for the common good.”

A National Minimum Standard of Living

The principle of the national minimum, it is claimed, contrasts sharply with the principle of the capitalistic system, expressed either by Liberal or Conservative policy. By the national minimum is meant the assurance for every member of the community of a standard of life conferring a reasonable minimum of health, education, leisure and subsistence. One chief element is a legal minimum wage, to be revised according to the level of current prices. As part of this national minimum, the ambiguous principle of “equal pay for equal work” is postulated in all occupations in which both sexes are engaged. The Party also demands that the Government shall prevent unemployment, and should it fail to secure for every willing worker a suitable situation at the standard rate of wages, it shall provide such a worker with maintenance in the form of out-of-work benefit paid through his Trade Union. The National Unemployment Insurance Scheme should, it is insisted, be extended, on a non-contributory basis, to every occupation. What is affirmed as a fundamental is that “in one way or another remunerative employment or honourable maintenance must be found for every willing worker by hand or by brain in bad times as well as in good.” Complete provision against involuntary destitution in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, must be assured for every member of the community.

Effective Personal Freedom

Democracy, the Labour Party asserts, implies effective personal freedom, and involves the complete removal of all war-time restrictions on liberty of speech, publication, press, travel, choice of residence, kind of employment, and especially of any obligation for military service. These sentiments, strange to say, come from the Party which denies the right of the non-Union operative to work; and which claims for Trade Unions the right to picket and the other privileges afforded by the Trade Disputes Act, 1906. On the same principle, complete political rights are demanded for every adult irrespective of sex, and for every minority, the right to full proportionate representation in Parliament. The abolition of the House of Lords is demanded, with the elimination from any new second Chamber of any qualification based on heredity. Separate statutory legislative assemblies are claimed for Scotland, Wales and England, with autonomous administration in local matters; Parliament at Westminster to be merely a Federal Assembly for Great Britain, controlling the Ministers responsible for departments of central government; these Ministers, with others representing the Dominions and India, to form a Cabinet for federal affairs of the British Commonwealth.

Socialization of Land and Industry

The Labour Party stands for the removal from industry of the private employer and the capitalist, the introduction of a new “scientific re-organization of the national industries,” purged from the degradation of individual profiteering, and regenerated on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production; the equitable sharing of the output among all who assist in any capacity in production; and the adoption of “democratic control of industry.”

Accordingly the Labour Party would immediately establish the common ownership of land, the common ownership and administration of railways and canals, and their consolidation with harbours, roads, posts, telegraphs, and the ocean-going steamer lines into a national service of Communication and Transport, to be worked “unhampered by capitalist, private or purely local interests, and with a steadily increasing participation of the organized workers in the management, both central and local, exclusively for the common good.” So also it would erect a score of national central electrical generating stations, with which all municipal electrical plants would be connected for distribution purposes. For similar reasons, the Party demands the immediate nationalization of coal-mines, with steadily increasing participation in the management, both central and local, of the various grades of persons employed; and insists that the retail distribution of household coal should be undertaken by the municipal authorities or county councils, the purpose to be achieved being the distribution in every local district of household coal of standard quality at a fixed and uniform price “as unalterable as the penny postage stamp.” The State expropriation of profit-making industrial insurance companies is urged, also the assumption by Government of the whole business of life insurance. Much stress is laid upon the alleged necessity that Government should take the manufacture and retailing of intoxicants out of the hands of persons who find profit in promoting the utmost possible consumption of them, and that each local authority should deal with “the trade” within its district on the basis of local veto or limitation of licences or other system of regulation.