The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1959 General Election.

Britain Belongs to You:

The Labour Party’s Policy for Consideration by the British People

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We welcome this Election; it gives us, at last, the chance to end eight years of Tory rule. In a television chat with President Eisenhower, Mr. Macmillan told us that the old division of Britain into the two nations, the Haves and the Have Nots, has disappeared. Tory prosperity, he suggested, is shared by all. In fact, the contrast between the extremes of wealth and poverty is sharper today than eight years ago. The business man with a tax-free expense account, the speculator with tax-free capital gains, and the retiring company director with a tax-free redundancy payment due to a take-over bid-these people have indeed ‘never had it so good’.

It is not so good for the widowed mother with children, the chronic sick, the 400,000 unemployed, and the millions of old age pensioners who have no adequate superannuation. While many of those at work have been able to maintain and even improve their standard of living by collective bargaining, the sick, the disabled and the old have continually seen the value of state benefits and small savings whittled away by rising prices. Instead of recognising this problem as the greatest social challenge of our time, the Prime Minister blandly denies it exists.

THE DANGER OF COMPLACENCY

One of the dangers we face as a nation is the mood of complacency and self-deception engendered by the vast Tory propaganda machine. The Tory Manifesto claims that the Government has ‘now stabilised the cost of living while maintaining full employment’ and that it is ‘succeeding in creating one nation at home’.

These claims are largely without foundation. The cost of living has not been stabilised.

Full employment has not been maintained. There are many millions of ‘have nots’ in Britain.

The best way to ensure you do not reach your goal is to pretend that you are there already.

This is what the Tories have been doing.

We do not say that the task of combining an expanding economy with full employment and steady prices is an easy one. Indeed it will remain impossible until we have a Government which is prepared to use all measures, including the Budget, in order to expand production and simultaneously to ensure that welfare is developed and prosperity fairly shared. Labour’s five-year programme of action has been carefully worked out to achieve these aims.

THE TRUTH ABOUT PRODUCTION

Rising living standards depend upon a steady expansion of production. The Tory record, whether measured against that of the Labour Government or of other countries, is deplorable. Far from leading in the race for higher productivity, Britain in these last years has been outpaced by almost every other industrial nation.

After the Thorneycroft crisis of 1957, the Government deliberately created unemployment in an attempt to halt inflation. Unemployment is still heavy in some areas. Throughout the country it has led to broken apprenticeships; and many school-leavers this autumn are having difficulty in finding jobs.

ENDING POVERTY IN OLD AGE

The living standards of more than half our old-age pensioners are a national disgrace. About a million are driven by poverty to seek National Assistance, and another 500,000 would be entitled to receive it but are too proud to do so. True, the small minority who draw a really good superannuation pension are comfortably off, but they are the exception.

Our emergency plan for tackling this problem is to raise the basic pension and other social security benefits at once from £2 10s. to £3 a week; and their purchasing power will be maintained by an automatic increase to cover any rise in prices that may have taken place in the previous year.

The Government have turned down both the basic £3 pension and the guarantee of its value. All they have done is to improve slightly the scales of National Assistance, from which no one can benefit without a means test.

The contrast between our long-term scheme and that of the Tories is equally striking. Our plan for National Superannuation will not affect those already covered by good superannuation schemes. But every other employed and self-employed person will be brought into National Superannuation and enjoy all the advantages of the best kind of private scheme. The scheme will be financed by graded contributions, 5 per cent from employer and 3 per cent from employee, and an Exchequer grant equivalent to 2 per cent of average national earnings. In five years it will be providing a useful addition to the basic pension. When it is in full operation, it will provide half-pay on retirement for the average wage-earner, and up to two-thirds for the lower paid workers, both men and women.

The Tories have put on the Statute Book a bogus imitation of National Superannuation, due to come into force in 1961. This does not give an immediate increase to existing pensioners; it does not raise pensions if prices rise; it does not cover those earning less than £9 a week; and, though the contributions are heavy, it does not provide anything approaching half-pay on retirement. Indeed, only a third of the graded contribution comes back in graded benefit to the contributor. The rest is taken by the Chancellor for other purposes.

The Tory scheme is really a financial device for shifting most of the burden of paying for pensions from the better-off taxpayers to workers earning between £9 and £15 a week.

WIDOWS

Among widows – especially widowed mothers with growing children – there is a great deal of hardship and want. We shall review all widows’ pensions, paying particular attention to the earnings rule, and increase to £1 the basic pension of the ’10s. widow’.

EDUCATION

Money spent on education is an investment for the future. We propose, therefore, a great drive to abolish slum schools, to reduce the size of classes to 30 in primary and secondary schools, and to expand facilities for technical and other higher education.

One of the greatest barriers to equality of opportunity in our schools is the segregation of our children into grammar and other types of school at the age of 11. This is why we shall get rid of the 11-plus examination. The Tories say this means abolishing the grammar schools. On the contrary, it means that grammar-school education will be open to all who can benefit by it. In our system of comprehensive education we do not intend to impose one uniform pattern of school. Local authorities will have the right to decide how best to apply the comprehensive principle.

At present, children whose parents cannot pay fees often suffer from an unfair disadvantage in secondary education. By improving the system of maintenance grants, we shall make sure that no child is deprived of secondary schooling by the parents’ lack of money. In the same way we shall ensure that any student accepted by a university will receive a really adequate State scholarship.

HOUSING

Labour’s policy has two aims: to help people buy their own homes and to ensure an adequate supply of decent houses to let at a fair rent.

As a first step we shall repeal the Rent Act, restore security of tenure to decontrolled houses, stop further decontrol, and ensure fair rents by giving a right of appeal to rent tribunals.

The return of a Tory Government would mean further rent increases and the decontrol of many more houses. We say this despite the official Tory assurance that there will be no decontrol during the life of the next Parliament-for we remember what happened last time.

During the 1955 Election Mr. Bevan prophesied that rents of controlled houses would be increased if the Conservatives came back to power. Two days later the Conservative Central Office denied this, and said there was no truth in his statement. In 1957 the Conservative Government introduced the Rent Act.

Under the Tories, home purchasers have been subject to unpredictable and burden-some increases of interest rates. Labour will bring interest rates down. We shall also reform leasehold law to enable leaseholders with long leases to buy their own homes.

Council building of rented houses has been slashed under the Tories chiefly as a result of higher interest rates and the abolition of the general housing subsidy. We shall reverse their policy by restoring the subsidy and providing cheaper money for housing purposes. We shall encourage councils to press on with slum clearance.

At the last count there were seven million households in Britain with no bath, and over three million sharing or entirely without a w.c. The Tories have tried to induce private land lords to improve their property by means of public grants, with very small success. Labour’s plan is that, with reasonable exceptions, local councils shall take over houses which were rent-controlled before 1 January, 1956, and are still tenanted. They will repair and modernise these houses and let them at fair rents. This is a big job which will take time and its speed will vary according to local conditions.

Every tenant, however, will have a chance first to buy from the Council the house he lives in; and all Council tenants in future will enjoy the same security of tenure as rent-restricted tenants.

HEALTH

The creation of the National Health Service was opposed by the Tories. Since they took office they have starved the Service of money.

Although the period of post-war scarcity is long since over, the Tories have completed only one new hospital. As a minimum we shall spend £50 million a year on hospital development, and we shall also restore the free Health Service by abolishing all charges, starting with the prescription charge.

One gap in the Service is that at present no provision is made for health care at work. We shall close that gap by creating an occupational health service.

The family doctor will, however, remain the basis of health care. We shall help him by reducing the permitted maximum number of patients, without loss of income, and encourage

group practice by a substantial increase in the group practice loans fund. We shall safeguard the health, welfare and safety of people employed in shops and offices by carrying out the recommendations of the Gowers Committee.

We shall also establish a free chiropody service for old people.

LEISURE

As our plan for expansion develops, people will be increasingly able to choose between more money and more leisure. How the balance is struck is largely a matter for the trade unions in negotiation with the employers. How leisure is spent is a matter for the individual. Governments should not interfere in either. The individual, however, can only have real freedom to use his leisure as he wants to if proper facilities are available to all and not merely to a privileged few; and this is where both the Government and the local authorities can help.

We shall make much better provision for the enjoyment of sport, the arts and the countryside. A Sports Council will be set up with a grant of £5 million. The Arts Council grant will be increased by £4 million annually. The National Theatre will be established. In order to ensure that the countryside is open for the enjoyment of all, the powers of the National Parks Commission will be increased.

We shall get rid of out-of-date restrictions on personal liberty. Anomalies in the betting laws will be removed; an enquiry will be held into the Sunday observance laws; and a Royal Commission will be set up to review and recommend changes in the licensing laws. But, as these are all matters of conscience, there will be free votes on them for Labour M.P.s.

We do not propose to end commercial television, but evasions of the Television Act must stop. When it is technically possible we shall welcome a third choice of television programme. There is a strong case for granting this neither to the B.B.C. nor to the I.T.A. but to a new public corporation. But a decision will be deferred until the views of an in dependent committee have been obtained.

Labour will end the Cinema Entertainments Duty.

YOUTH

The Youth Service, which should provide recreation for boys and girls leaving school, has, year after year, been starved of funds. Many youth club premises are dingy and unattractive, trained leaders are too few, and facilities for sports and games are quite in adequate.

Over the next five years we have got to cater for a million more teenagers leaving school. Our new Sports Council will go some way to meet their needs. But we shall also require (1) a sustained drive to re-equip the whole youth service, (2) a rapid increase of apprenticeships and other forms of training, and (3) economic expansion sufficient to provide a million new jobs.

We are also convinced that the affairs of the community will benefit from more active participation by young people. Among the many proposals which Labour will consider is the lowering of the voting age. As this would be a major change in our electoral law and social practice, we shall in the next Parliament initiate discussions on it with the other parties.

TAXATION – AND PLANNED EXPANSION

Tory propagandists allege that a Labour Government would have to put up taxes in order to pay for these improved social services. This is quite untrue. The finance required would be raised in two ways. The chief way of raising it will be through planned expansion. For four years under the Tories industrial production scarcely rose. In 1958 alone this cost the country £1,700 million, of which the Exchequer would have received £450 million. With this increased revenue we could have paid for great improvements in the welfare services, and we could have reduced taxation and extended the repayment of postwar credits. So, too, the steadily expanding national income will enable us to pay for our five-year programme with out increasing the present rates of taxation.

Secondly, we shall change the tax system to deal with the tax-dodgers and limit tax- free benefits. These benefits are now so extensive and lavish that the ordinary wage or salary earner who has no access to them pays more than his fair share of taxation.

In particular:

(1) We shall deal with the business man’s expense account racket and the tax-free compensation paid to directors on loss of office;

(2) We shall tax the huge capital gains made on the Stock Exchange and elsewhere;

(3) We shall block other loopholes in the tax law including those which lead to the avoidance of death duties and surtax.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

The nationalised industries have played a great part in Britain’s postwar development. Pits have been modernised, atomic power stations built, a massive modernisation of the rail ways started. But one crying need is to clear up the present muddle by an overall national fuel policy.

The work of our nationalised industries has been made much more difficult by the Tories. Big business and the Tory Party itself have invested huge sums in propaganda campaigns, designed to discredit the idea of public ownership. Many of the Government’s policies have, indeed, been activated by prejudice-for example, their transference of work from publicly owned railway workshops to private firms and the favouritism they have shown to private airlines. Under a Labour Government, the nationalised industries will be given an opportunity once again to forge ahead.

As part of our planned expansion, it will be necessary to extend the area of public ownership. The private steel monopoly will be restored to public ownership, in order to ensure its expansion and give the taxpayer value for the large sums of public money still in vested in it. Commercial long-distance road haulage will be renationalised and built into an integrated transport system.

With half a million new cars coming on the roads each year, the Government’s road programme is entirely inadequate. But, to solve the problem, road-building must be related to a national plan which covers all the transport needs of an expanding economy. It must also deal with the appalling problem of road casualties.

We have no other plans for further nationalisation. But where an industry is shown, after thorough enquiry, to be failing the nation we reserve the right to take all or any part of it into public ownership if this is necessary. We shall also ensure that the community enjoys some of the profits and capital gains now going to private industry by arranging for the purchase of shares by public investment agencies such as the Superannuation Fund Trustees.

THE COST OF LIVING

To achieve planned economic expansion and full employment without raising prices requires a buoyant demand to stimulate British industry; a high rate of investment as the basis of raising productivity; an energetic application of science in all phases of our economic life; a favourable balance of payments including the development of Commonwealth trade; and a strong pound.

Under the Tories the cost of living has risen by a third. Eventually the Government were forced to take action and apply the traditional Tory remedy: they cut production and deliberately created unemployment.

This use of unemployment to halt rising prices is as obsolete as it is cruel. But it is unavoidable under a Government with a doctrinaire prejudice against controls-a Government, moreover, which antagonises the unions. Every wage-earner realises the futility of wages chasing prices and wants to see a stable cost of living combined with full employment. But the unions can only co-operate if the Government, too, plays its part. If we want lasting prosperity it must be prosperity which is fairly shared.

Only a Labour Government is ready to use the necessary controls and able to win full co-operation from the unions by such measures as a fair-shares Budget policy and the ex tension of the Welfare State.

CONSUMER PROTECTION

We shall begin a vigorous campaign of consumer protection. Buyers will be protected against hire-purchase ramps and shoddy goods. A tough anti-monopoly policy will lower prices and we shall make it compulsory to show clearly the net weight or quantity of pack- aged goods. Existing consumer protection organisations will be encouraged and we shall examine the need for further consumer protection-a task in which the Co-operative Movement will obviously have a great part to play.

PRIVATE INDUSTRY

Our policy for planned expansion without inflation requires the full co-operation of the private sector of industry. Our tax policy will be directed towards helping industry to mechanise, modernise and expand and make a maximum contribution to exports. As for the industrial giants which dominate our economic life, we shall ensure that these firms plan their operations in accordance with our national objectives of full employment and maximum efficiency.

With employers and trade unions we shall work out a Code of Conduct. This will include a Workers’ Charter, designed to raise the status of the wage-earner and extend privileges, such as sickness pay, already provided for most salaried employees.

LOCAL UNEMPLOYMENT

One of our first tasks will be to help industries at present suffering depression and contraction. Despite the Government’s ‘scrap and shut down’ policy, we shall at once put into effect our own Plan for Cotton and guarantee to what survives of the industry a much more hopeful future. Shipbuilding and ship-repairing is another hard-hit industry, where vigorous action must be taken if full employment is to be restored.

Wherever there is a danger of local unemployment arising, we shall use the full powers of the Distribution of Industry Act. The activities of the industrial estates companies will be greatly expanded. The Government will build ‘advance’ factories to encourage firms to move to places where they are needed. Additional areas with high unemployment will be scheduled for development purposes. From 1945 to 1951 it was Labour’s policy to bring the work to the workers. We pledge ourselves to do this again

Unemployment pay will be raised to £3 a week. By discontinuing Section 62 of the National Insurance Act, the Tories have ended long-term unemployment benefit. We shall restore it.

THE COUNTRYSIDE

The Labour Government gave the farmer reasonable security for the first time in this century; but since 1951 this security has been whittled away. It must be restored. Protection will be given against unfair foreign competition. The tenant farmer will obtain real security of tenure and an effective rent arbitration system such as existed until the Tories recent wrecking measure. A special credit organisation will be set up to provide loans at reasonable and stable rates of interest. Agricultural co-operation will be encouraged. We shall introduce measures to improve agricultural and horticultural marketing.

The farm worker is leaving the land. If he is to stay there he needs a better life. We shall:

(1) enable the Wages Board to introduce a ‘payment during sickness’ scheme;

(2) end the evils of the tied cottage; and

(3) through National Superannuation provide security in old age for workers in an industry in which there are virtually no private occupational schemes.

Labour will also improve rural amenities. Slum schools will be abolished, education in the countryside brought up to the town level. The publicly-owned industries have already done much: thanks to nationalisation, 110,000 more farms than in 1948 now have electricity.

We shall carry out the long overdue reorganisation of water supplies under public ownership. This will not only help the countryside, but industry as well.

SCOTLAND, WALES AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Each of the various nations that make up the United Kingdom has its special problems.

Labour has recognised this by issuing the policy statements Let Scotland Prosper and Forward with Labour-Labour’s Policy For Wales. The Northern Ireland Labour Party has issued its own policy statement on the problems of Ulster, to which Labour’s National Executive has given general approval.

Labour’s plans for expansion, restoring full employment and increasing welfare will benefit all these areas. In particular we will take vigorous measures to increase and diversify industry and to stimulate agriculture. Improvements in communications will include such major enterprises as the building of road bridges over the Severn and the Tay.

The time has now come for the special identity of Wales to be recognised by the appointment of a Secretary of State.

WHO GOES TO THE SUMMIT?

All our hopes of building a decent, happy society at home are vain without peace abroad. Our very existence depends on ending the nuclear arms race.

This summer a new opportunity has come for breaking the East-West deadlock. There is now every chance of the Summit Conference for which Labour has pressed for two long years.

It seems to us that there are three tests to which anyone who claims to represent Britain at the Summit should be prepared to submit himself.

(1) Has he proved beyond doubt that he believes in promoting the rule of law in inter national relations, and that he rejects as obsolete the resort to violence in order to achieve his ends?

(2) Can he show by his past actions that he will make Britain the leader in securing a disarmament agreement?

(3) Has he faced, in a way that will gain the confidence of Asia and Africa, the problem of a world divided between rich and poor nations, subject and free peoples?

THE RULE OF LAW AND THE UNITED NATIONS

The Tories pay lip-service to the rule of law but ignore it whenever it seems to conflict with their interests. That is the lesson of Suez. Ignoring an overwhelming vote by the United Nations Assembly, they put Britain into a hopeless military venture which split the Commonwealth and all but destroyed the Anglo-American alliance. The Suez gamble was not only a crime, it was also an act of folly, hopelessly misconceived, bungled in execution and covered with a tissue of lies told by the leading Ministers concerned, including the present Premier and Foreign Secretary. By refusing to express any compunction or regret about Suez, Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd have shown the world how little respect they really feel for the rule of law.

The Labour Party, on the other hand, upheld the decision of the United Nations on Suez. Since then our proposals for disengagement in Central Europe, the Middle East and the China Sea have all been designed to substitute the rule of law and negotiated settlements for the power politics of conflicting blocs. We have also insisted that the West should not violate the spirit of the Charter by preventing the admission of Communist China to the United Nations.

We have always realised, however, that power is required to make the rule of law effective. That is why during the period of the East-West deadlock we have stood resolutely by our defensive alliances and contributed our share to Western defence through N.A.T.O. It is our view that any weakening of the alliance would contribute to a worsening of international relations.

For this reason we have repeatedly exposed the blunders in planning and expenditure committed by no fewer than seven Tory Defence Ministers in eight years. We have vigorously opposed the Government’s dangerously one-sided reliance on nuclear weapons; and we urged that highly trained, well-paid regular forces should be substituted for conscripts.

THE ARMS RACE

In the field of disarmament Labour has set the pace. We led the demand for an end to all nuclear tests; after years of delay the tests are now temporarily suspended, and we declare that, even if other countries break the truce, we would not start our tests again but would immediately convene a new conference. This year we have taken the lead on another urgent problem-the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. We have put forward the only concrete proposals designed to stop this dangerous development and so to leave the way open to world-wide disarmament, which is our paramount objective. We have pro posed a comprehensive disarmament treaty which would reduce arms, manpower and military expenditure, destroy all stocks of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, abolish all chemical and biological weapons, and provide new safeguards against surprise attack.

In contrast, the Tory record has been negative and, sometimes, obstructive. They opposed a disarmament agreement unless it was tied to the settlement of political problems. They opposed a nuclear test agreement unless it was part of a general disarmament agreement. They opposed the suspension of tests when Russia offered to stop her own. They opposed Labour’s proposals for disengagement in Europe. They opposed a Summit Conference. Only with a change of American policy and in time for a General Election in Britain has Mr. Macmillan emerged as a sponsor of a Summit Conference.

TWO WORLDS

Two worlds, one white, well-fed and free, the other coloured, hungry and struggling for equality, cannot live side by side in friendship. In their attitudes to the Colonial and ex Colonial peoples of Asia and Africa the Labour and Tory records stand in sharp contrast.

No action of the Attlee Government evoked greater enthusiasm than the freeing of nearly 500 million people in India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon. The transformation of the old British Empire into the first inter-racial Commonwealth of free nations was the supreme achievement of the Labour Government.

What of the Tory record? In Cyprus foolish words and a stubborn refusal to face facts led to disturbance and bloodshed-and, in the end, the Government had to agree to a settlement that could have been obtained years earlier. An opportunity to integrate Malta into the United Kingdom was thrown away. In Kenya eleven African prisoners were beaten to death. Above all, the Tories ignored Labour’s solemn warnings that nine-tenths of the peoples of Nyasaland and Northern and Southern Rhodesia opposed the Federation which the Tories were forcing on them. The Government’s own Devlin Commission exposed the tragic folly of Tory policy. Mr. Macmillan rejected its findings. After this, how can the peoples of Africa and Asia trust a Tory Government?

Today the future of Africa is poised as perilously as that of India in 1945. The only British Government which can regain the confidence of Africans is a Government whole heartedly committed to three principles of the Labour Party’s Colonial policy: first, that the peoples still under Colonial rule have as much right as we have to be governed by consent; secondly, that ‘one man, one vote’ applies in all parts of the world; thirdly, that racial discrimination must be abolished.

WAR AGAINST WANT

Labour has always recognised that even if the East-West differences were ended the West is still presented with an immense challenge-the poverty of two-thirds of the world’s people. This is a challenge the Tories have never really faced. We believe in extending the Socialist concept of the Welfare State to all the peoples of the world. This is why we have solemnly pledged ourselves to devote an average of 1 per cent of our national income each year to helping the underdeveloped areas.

OUR SOCIALIST ETHIC

Like our other social and economic policies, this pledge is based on the Socialist belief in the equal value of every human being. This is the belief which inspired the pioneers of Socialism, and still inspires the Labour Party, in the struggle for social justice and human rights.

In Britain, despite the bitter resistance of those who saw their profits and privileges threatened, great gains were won in the first half of the twentieth century. We still have to consolidate and extend these gains: none of us, however lucky or well-off we may happen to be, ought to feel comfortable in a society in which the old and sick are not decently cared for.

The same principle applies when we face this vast problem of the hungry two-thirds of the world. To solve this problem is the biggest task of the second half of the century. We know that it can be solved-if the fear of war is removed, and with it the crippling burden of arms expenditure.

At this historic moment a British Government with a clear policy based on the ethical principles of Socialism can exercise a decisive influence for peace. Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world still look to Britain for moral leadership and eagerly await the result of this General Election. We are confident that their hopes will be fulfilled, and that Britain will be represented at the Summit by a Labour Prime Minister.

The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1964 General Election.

“THE NEW BRITAIN”

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The world wants it and would welcome it. The British people want it, deserve it and urgently need it. And now, at last, the general election presents us with the exciting prospect of achieving it. The dying months of a frustrating 1964 can be transformed into the launching platform for the New Britain of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A New Britain – mobilising the resources of technology under a national plan; harnessing our national wealth in brains, our genius for scientific invention and medical discovery; reversing the decline of the thirteen wasted years; affording a new opportunity to equal, and if possible surpass, the roaring progress of other western powers while Tory Britain has moved sideways, backwards but seldom forward.

The country needs fresh and virile leadership. Labour is ready. Poised to swing its plans into instant operation. Impatient to apply the “new thinking” that will end the chaos and sterility. Here is Labour’s Manifesto for the 1964 election, restless with positive remedies for the problems the Tories have criminally neglected.

Here is the case for planning, and the details of how a Labour Cabinet will formulate the national economic plan with both sides of industry operating in partnership with the Government. And here, in this manifesto, is the answer to the Tory jibe that planning could involve a loss of individual liberty. Labour has resolved to humanise the whole administration of the state and to set up the new office of Parliamentary Commissioner with the right and duty to investigate and expose any misuse of government power as it affects the citizen.

Much of the manifesto deals with the vital social services that affect the personal lives and happiness of us all, the welfare of our families and the immediate future of our children. It announces, unequivocally, Labour’s decisions on the nagging problems the Tories stupidly (in some cases callously) brushed aside:

The imperative need for a revolution in our education system which will ensure the education of all our citizens in the responsibilities of this scientific age;

The soaring prices in houses, flats and land;

Social security benefits which have fallen below the minimum levels of human need;

The burden of prescription charges in the Health Service.

Labour is concerned, too, with the problems of leisure in the age of automation and here again Labour firmly puts the freedom of the individual first.

“It is not the job of the Government to tell people how leisure should be used”, the manifesto declares. But, in a society where facilities are not provided when they are not profitable and where the trend towards monopoly is growing, it is the job of the Government to ensure that leisure facilities are provided and that a reasonable range of choice is maintained.

The pages that follow set out the manifesto in full. Please study it.

WHY THE TORIES FAILED

This is an age of unparalleled advance in human knowledge and of unrivalled opportunity for good or ill. In ever-widening areas of the world the scientific revolution is now making it physically possible for the first time in human history to provide the whole people with the high living standards, the economic security, and the cultural values which in previous generations have been enjoyed by only a small wealthy minority.

Until 60 years ago when the Labour Party was founded, the ending of economic privilege, the abolition of poverty in the midst of plenty, and the creation of real equality of opportunity were inspiring but remote ideals. They have now become immediate targets of political action. Britain can achieve them provided that it resolutely wills three things: the mobilisation of its resources within a national plan; the maintenance of a wise balance between community and individual expenditure; and the education of all its citizens in the responsibilities of this scientific age, not merely a small section of them.

Since 1951, however, these opportunities of the scientific revolution have been disastrously wasted largely because of the Conservative determination since they took office to end the purposive planning of the post-war Labour Government and replace it with an economic free-for-all.

As a result, successive Conservative Chancellors have been unable to get the economy moving steadily forward. Every jerk of expansion has ground to a full stop as the Government jams on the brake in a desperate attempt to combat inflation and rising prices. This is why, while other countries have made giant strides forward, our progress in the past 12 years has been so fitful. So sharp has the contrast become that only 18 months ago a Tory Government, driven by economic failure, lost its nerve and prepared to accept humiliating terms for entry into the European Common Market in the vain hope that closer contact with a dynamic Europe would give a new boost to our wilting economy. Since the French veto our affairs have not improved.

Once again an election year boom is heading for a post-election “stop” -just as happened after the 1959 and 1955 general elections. Indeed, by hanging on to power to the last possible moment in the hope of gaining some temporary electoral advantage, the Government has made the task of its successor immeasurably’ more difficult.

This chapter in our affairs must be brought to a close. Tinkering with policies that have clearly failed and half-hearted conversion to principles previously rejected will not suffice. Only a major change of attitude to the scientific revolution, including an acceptance of the need for purposive planning, will enable us to mobilise the new resources technology is creating and harness them to human needs. Only a major change in economic and fiscal policy can break the defeatist stop-go cycle and prevent another bout of stagnant production, rising unemployment and declining national strength.

Only with a new Government, with a sense of national purpose, can we start to create a dynamic, just and go-ahead Britain with the strength to stand on her own feet and to play a proper part in world affairs. We believe that such a New Britain is what the British people want and what the world wants. It is a goal that lies well within our power to achieve.

The Lessons of 13 Years

But first, what lessons must we learn from the past? Thirteen years ago, when the Tories came to power, they claimed to have the remedies for our national problems. The medicines they offered were first, the restoration of a “free” market economy in Britain; second, cuts in community expenditure in the interests of low taxation.

The direct and crippling consequences of their free market policies are now well known. First, it has slowed up Britain’s rate of industrial expansion. Not even the Tories’ stop-go policies have been able to prevent some increase in production and in living standards but our record is now among the worst in the western world. If we had only kept up with the rest of Western Europe since 1951, our national income in 1964 would be one-third more than it is – and we should have available an extra £8,000m. of goods and services to meet Britain’s problems and to raise living standards.

The Tories still peddle their boast – “You’ve never had it so good.” The truth is that Britain could and should have had it a whole lot better, and in the process have shown a greater concern for the needs of others.

Second, it has necessitated a stop-go economic policy, resulting in intermittent bouts of high unemployment. A continuing excess of imports over exports, with consequential balance of payments and currency crises has forced the Government again and again to halt expansion and to squeeze and freeze the economy.

Third, it has led to growing stagnation, unemployment and under employment in large parts of the North, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, combined with a drift of work and people to the overcrowded London and Midland regions.

Fourth, it has led to chaos in our transport system. with unused rail and overused road services and an appalling congestion problem in all our cities.

Fifth, it has led to continuing inflation as companies have pushed up prices and bid with each other for scarce labour.

Sixth, it has led to soaring land and house prices which have made it almost impossible for local authorities to replan our towns or for many ordinary families to buy or rent a home.

Seventh, it has led to a pervasive atmosphere of irresponsibility; to a selfish, get-rich-quick mood, in which the public interest is always subordinated to private advantage.

No nation in the history of human endeavour was ever inspired to become great (or greater) with the venal philosophy of “I’m all right, Jack”.

The consequences of their attitude to public expenditure have been no less crippling. While public money has been lavished on wasteful military projects, and while the Government has imposed on itself an ever-increasing burden of interest payments on the national debt, vital community services have been starved of resources.

In social security, we still have austerity National Insurance benefits that impose poverty standards on the retired, the sick and the unemployed and deny them their proper share in rising living standards.

In community services of all kinds we face such critical and neglected needs as the rebuilding of our towns, the creation of a modern road system, the provision of new hospitals and schools, and a desperate need for new housing.

In education we are faced today with a chronic shortage of teachers, with oversize classes, with far too many scandalously out-dated school buildings and with a system of higher and further education far too small for our minimum national needs.

No one can say, after 13 years, that Tory policies have not been put to the test. Not only is their failure now generally recognised, it is even apparent to the Tories themselves. The same party that began its rule with the shibboleths of a free market economy and cuts in public expenditure, now proclaim its conversion to economic planning and to an increased public spending programme of no less than £2,000 m. in the next five years.

A death-bed repentance may ease the Tory conscience, but it is a cynical and utterly unacceptable substitute for the lifelong sincerity and solidarity of the Labour Party on this crucial issue. Tory devices – or Labour Planning?

A Philosophy of the Past

At the root of Tory failure lies an outdated philosophy – their nostalgic belief that it is possible in the second half of the 20th century to hark back to a 19th century free enterprise economy and a 19th century unplanned society. In an age when the economy is no longer self-regulating and when the role of government must inevitably increase, they have tried and failed to turn back the clock.

The same backward-looking approach has prevented them from responding to the major world changes of the last decade.

They have reacted churlishly to the rise of the new nations in Asia and Africa, including many new Commonwealth countries, that have emerged from the end of colonialism.

They have failed to respond to the immense new challenge of world poverty and racial antagonism.

They have failed to understand the revolution in national defence policies that nuclear weapons necessitate.

The effects of their policy at home and abroad are all too plain. They have denied us the rate of expansion we could and should have achieved; they have weakened our military power and they have reduced our political influence in the counsels of the world.

PLANNING THE NEW BRITAIN

We offer no easy solution to our national problems. Time and effort will be required before they can be mastered. But Labour has a philosophy and a practical programme which is relevant to our contemporary needs. The starting point is our belief that the community must equip itself to take charge of its own destiny and no longer be ruled by market forces beyond its control.

Labour does not accept that democracy is a five-yearly visit to the polling booth that changes little but the men at the top. We are working for an active democracy, in which men and women as responsible citizens consciously assist in shaping the surroundings in which they live, and take part in deciding how the community’s wealth is to be shared among all its members.

Two giant tasks now await the nation: first, we must energise and modernise our industries – including their methods of promotion and training – to achieve the sustained economic expansion we need; second, we must ensure that a sufficient part of the new wealth created goes to meet urgent and now neglected human needs.

A. A Modern Economy

The aims are simple enough: we want full employment; a faster rate of industrial expansion: a sensible distribution of industry throughout the country; an end to the present chaos in traffic and transport; a brake on rising prices and a solution to our balance of payments problems.

As the past 13 years have shown, none of these aims will be achieved by leaving the economy to look after itself. They will only be secured by a deliberate and massive effort to modernise the economy; to change its structure and to develop with all possible speed the advanced technology and the new science-based industries with which our future lies. In short, they will only be achieved by socialist planning.

1. A National Plan

Labour will set up a Ministry of Economic Affairs with the duty of formulating, with both sides of industry, a national economic plan. This Ministry will frame the broad strategy for increasing investment, expanding exports and replacing inessential imports.

In the short term Labour will give priority to closing the trade gap-

(a) By using the tax system to encourage industries and firms to export more.

(b) By providing better terms of credit where the business justifies it.

(c) By improving facilities and help for small exporters, particularly on a group basis.

(d) By encouraging British industry to supply those manufactures which swell our import bill in time of expansion. With proper stimulus we can produce many of those things we are now forced to import from abroad.

But in the long run a satisfactory trade balance will depend upon carrying out Labour’s overall plan to revitalise and modernise the whole economy. It will depend upon maintaining a steady and vigorous programme of long-term expansion.

Tax policies will contribute directly to the aims of the national plan. They will be used to encourage the right type of modern industry. Above all the general effect of our tax changes will be to stimulate enterprise, not to penalise it.

2. Plan for Industry

Within the national plan each industry will know both what is expected of it and what help it can expect – in terms of exports, investment, production and employment. Farmers, too, will be given a new certainty with the establishment of commodity commissions to supervise and regulate the main imported foodstuffs and to balance imports with home production.

If production falls short of the plan in key sections of industry, as it has done recently in bricks and in construction generally, then it is up to the Government and the industry to take whatever measures are required.

Public Ownership

The public sector will make a vital contribution to the national plan. We will have a co-ordinated policy for the major fuel industries. Major expansion programmes will be needed in the existing nationalised industries, and they will be encouraged, with the removal of the present restrictions placed upon them, to diversify and move into new fields : for example, the railways’ workshops will be free to seek export markets, and the National Coal Board to manufacture the machinery and equipment it needs. Private monopoly in steel will be replaced by public ownership and control. The water supply industry, most of which is already owned by the community, will be reorganised under full public ownership.

Science and Technology

If we are to get a dynamic and expanding economy, it is essential that new and effective ways are found for injecting modern technology into our industries.

The Government provides over half the money spent on industrial research and development in Britain. Some of this research is already carried forward, in Government establishments like the National Research and Development Corporation set up by the last Labour Government, to the point of commercial development. This has already led to scores of new products and processes of which the Hovercraft and the Atlas Computer are only the most famous.

But to get more rapid application of new scientific discoveries in industry, new measures are urgently required. A Labour Government will

(i) Go beyond research and development and establish new industries, either by public enterprise or in partnership with private industry.

(ii) Directly stimulate new advance by using, in the field of civil production, the research and development contracts which have hitherto been largely confined to military projects.

(iii) Set up a Ministry for Technology to guide and stimulate a major national effort to bring advanced technology and new processes into industry.

Mobility and Training

Skill, talent and brain power are our most important national resources. Yet in Britain under the Conservatives much of the natural ability of the nation is being wasted. In far too many firms, technicians and technologists, designers and production engineers are held back by the social prejudices and anti-scientific bias of the “old boy” network.

In industry, though there are some first-rate training schemes, they are few and far between. Most young people, and particularly girls, are still denied either adequate training at work or release for further education in technical colleges. Older people who wish to change their jobs meet such obstacles as loss of pension rights and the absence of retraining schemes.

Is it any wonder that the British economy has been slow to evolve? Is it any wonder that there is widespread fear of automation or that so many of our skilled young people have sought opportunities abroad?

Labour believes that the national plan will require a faster rate of change in industry. To meet the human needs that will arise it is essential to combine with our education reforms a revolution in training. We must also extend joint consultation in industry, develop new techniques for forecasting future manpower needs and adopt radical new measures to reconcile security with mobility.

To this end we shall implement a charter of rights for all employees. This will include:

(a) The right to compensation for loss of job or disturbance.

(b) The right to half-pay maintenance during any period of sickness and unemployment.

(c) The right to first-rate industrial training with day and block release for the young worker.

(d) The right to retraining for adult workers.

(e) The right to full transferability of pension entitlements.

(f) The right to trade union representation and proper safeguards against arbitrary dismissal.

(g) The right to equal pay for equal work.

We shall also strengthen the factory inspectorate in order to reduce accidents.

3. Plan for the Regions

Within the framework of the national plan, plans must also be worked out for the different regions of the United Kingdom.

In the case of Wales and Scotland, the Labour Party has already made clear what needs to be done by issuing the policy statements, Signposts to the New Wales and Signposts for Scotland. As for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Labour Party has issued its own statement Signposts to the New Ulster, to which the Labour Party national executive has given general approval.

For these three nations, as for the regions of England itself, control over the location of new factories and offices, inducements to firms to move to areas where industry is declining, the establishment of new public enterprises where these prove necessary – all these measures will be required to check the present drift to the south and to build up the declining economies in other parts of our country.

But it will not be enough to plan employment alone on a regional basis. Regional planning is also necessary if we are to solve the problems of slum clearance and overcrowding in our major cities; to carry out a vigorous programme for new town and overspill development, including the proposed new town for Central Wales; to clear up the ugly, scarred face of industrial Britain; to save the countryside from needless despoliation; and to get the co-ordination of higher education, further education and industrial training required to maintain economic expansion.

To bring together the different tasks of regional planning, and the different Ministries concerned, Labour will create regional planning boards, equipped with their own expert staffs, under the general guidance of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. These planning boards will work closely with representatives of the local authorities, both sides of industry and other interests in the region.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland more unified structures of administration already exist. These can be readily adapted for effective regional planning. In Wales, the creation of a Secretary of State, to which we are pledged, will facilitate the new unified administration we need.

4. Plan for Transport

Nowhere is planning more urgently needed than in our transport system. The tragedy of lives lost and maimed; growing discomfort and delays in the journey to work; the summer weekend paralysis on our national highways; the chaos and loss of amenity in our towns and cities – these are only some of the unsolved problems of the new motor age.

Far from easing these problems, the Government’s policy of breaking up road and rail freight co-ordination, of denationalising road haulage and finally of axing rail services under the Beeching Plan, have made things worse.

Labour will draw up a national plan for transport covering the national networks of road, rail and canal communications, properly co-ordinated with air, coastal shipping and port services. The new regional authorities will be asked to draw up transport plans for their own areas. While these are being prepared, major rail closures will be halted.

British Road Services, will be given all necessary powers to extend their fleet of road vehicles and to develop a first-rate national freight service. Reform of the road goods licensing system must now await the report of the Geddes Committee but, in the interests of road safety, we shall act vigorously to stop cut-throat haulage firms from flouting regulations covering vehicle maintenance, loads and driving hours.

Labour believes that public transport, road and rail, must play the dominant part in the journey to work. Every effort will be made to improve and modernise these services. Urgent attention will be given to the proposals in the Buchanan Report and to the development of new roads capable of diverting through traffic from town centres.

Labour will ensure that public transport is able to provide a reasonable service for those who live in rural areas. The studies already mentioned will decide whether these should be provided by public road or rail services.

5. Plan for Stable Prices

The success of the national plan will turn not only on the new partnership between government and industry but on the success of new and more relevant policies to check the persistent rise in prices. Since the Tories came to power the value of the £ has shrunk to 13s. 4d.: it is still shrinking.

The pensioner and the housewife suffer most when prices rise. But the nation, too, is harmed because rising prices both reduce our exports and provoke inflationary increases in incomes.

The Tories first ducked this problem, then tinkered with resale price maintenance. Labour will attack it at its roots: in manufactured goods, monopoly and semi-monopoly price fixing; in agriculture, market chaos with an ever-increasing gap between what the farmer receives and what the housewife pays.

Labour will: (i) Give teeth to the Monopolies Commission, control take-over bids and mergers and take powers to review unjustified price increases.

(ii) Promote more orderly marketing of our major food supplies and encourage, in the interests of price stability, long-term contracts with overseas producers. In addition, Labour will make sure that the consumer gets better value for money by attacking selling rackets of all kinds, by ensuring that goods are independently tested and accurately labelled. It will also publicise good quality standards.

A National Incomes Policy

This is not all. To curb inflation we must have a planned growth of incomes so that they are broadly related to the annual growth of production. To achieve this a Labour Government will enter into urgent consultations with the unions’ and employers’ organisations concerned.

Unlike Selwyn Lloyd’s notorious and negative “pay pause”, Labour’s incomes policy will not be unfairly directed at lower paid workers and public employees; instead, it will apply in an expanding economy to all incomes: to profits, dividends and rents as well as to wages and salaries.

6. Plan for Tax Reform

As essential support to a fair national incomes policy will be a major overhaul of our tax system. Taxation must be fair and must be seen to be fair. The present situation where the largest gains are made, not through hard work but through the untaxed rewards of passive ownership of Stock Exchange speculation, must be ended.

In particular we shall tax capital gains; and block up the notorious avoidance and evasion devices that have made a mockery of so much of our tax system.

We shall also seek to lighten the burden of rates which today falls heavily on those with low incomes. While the reform of the rate system and investigation of alternative forms of local government finance may take some time to accomplish, we shall seek to give early relief to ratepayers by transferring a larger part of the burden of public expenditure from the local authorities to the Exchequer.

Value for taxpayers’ money

Labour will take urgent measures to stop the waste of taxpayers’ money. Millions spent on missile contracts, millions more on doles to private industry, have placed an additional burden on hard pressed taxpayers.

A Labour government will apply tests of the national interest before agreeing to subsidies for private manufacturing industries and will insist, as would any prudent private investor, on a voice in the control, and a share in the profits, where public funds are involved. Waste and profiteering by Government contractors, on defence and the health service, will be vigorously attacked.

B. MODERN SOCIAL SERVICES

Drastic reforms are now needed in our major social services. To make them fit for the 1960s and 1970s will be costly in money, manpower and resources. This will not be achieved all at once: but, as economic expansion increases our national wealth we shall see to it that the needs of the community are increasingly met. For the children, this will mean better education; for the family decent housing at prices that people can afford; for the sick, the care of a modernised health service; for the old people and widows, a guaranteed share in rising national prosperity: for all of us, leisure facilities better geared to the coming age of automation.

Education

Our country’s “investment in people” is still tragically inadequate. The nation needs and Labour will carry through a revolution in our educational system.

(i) Labour will cut down our overcrowded classes in both primary and secondary schools: the aim is to reduce all classes to 30 at the earliest possible moment.

(ii) Labour will get rid of the segregation of children into separate schools caused by 11-plus selection: secondary education will be reorganised on comprehensive lines. Within the new system, grammar school education will be extended: in future no child will he denied the opportunity of benefiting from it through arbitrary selection at the age of 11. This reform will make it possible to provide a worthwhile extra year of education by raising the school-leaving age to 16.

(iii) To minimise the effects of the postponement of school leaving on the large family, Labour will replace inadequate maintenance grants with reorganised family allowances, graduated according to the age of the child, with a particularly steep rise for those remaining at school after the statutory leaving age.

(iv) As the first step to part-time education for the first two years after leaving school, Labour will extend compulsory day and block release.

(v) Labour will carry out a programme of massive expansion in higher, further and university education. To stop the “brain drain” Labour will grant to the universities and colleges of advanced technology the funds necessary for maintaining research standards in a period of rapid student expansion.

(vi) Labour will set up an educational trust to advise on the best way of integrating the public schools into the state system of education.

The modernisation of our school system will require time and money and manpower. In order to get the priorities right Labour will work out a phased and costed plan for the whole of education. To assure the funds, Labour will restore the percentage grant and transfer the larger part of the cost of teachers’ salaries from the rates to the Exchequer.

Finally – and most important – since everything depends on teachers, Labour will give to teacher supply a special priority in its first years in office, negotiating a new salary structure including a new superannuation scheme favourable to part-time and elderly teachers, encouraging more entrants to teaching and winning back the thousands of women lost by marriage.

The whole future of our education depends on the success of a crash programme for teacher recruitment which appeals not merely to boys and girls at school but to adults with experience of practical life that will give an edge to their teaching.

Land and Housing

Under the Tories, the relentless pressure of decontrolled rents, Rachmanism, high interest rates and soaring land prices have pushed housing and flats beyond the reach of many ordinary families and have condemned yet another generation to squalid and over-crowded housing.

The first requirement is to end the competitive scramble for building land. Labour will therefore set up a Land Commission to buy, for the community, land on which building or rebuilding is to take place. Instead of paying the inflated market prices that have now reached exorbitant levels, the Crown Land Commission will buy the land at a price based on its existing use value plus an amount sufficient to cover any contingent losses by the owner, and to encourage the willing sale of land. The Crown Land Commission will not, of course, acquire land which continues to be used for agriculture, nor will it purchase the freehold of existing houses and other buildings so long as they remain in their existing use.

As a result of public acquisition, building land can be made available at cheaper prices; although the land will remain in public ownership, new owner-occupied houses built upon it will remain, under the new “Crownhold” system, the absolute property of their owners as long as the house stands.

At the same time, we shall go ahead with a sustained programme to provide more homes at prices that ordinary people can afford.

Labour will:

(i) Introduce a policy of lower interest rates for housing. It is impossible to say now what changes will be required in the general interest rate structure of the market. But because of its great importance to the family housing should be treated as a separate case deserving specially favourable borrowing rates.

This policy of specially favourable rates will apply both to intending owner-occupiers and to local authorities building houses to let. We should like this policy to apply to all owner-occupiers, but unless interest rates generally fall, it would be too expensive. We will, however, review’ the problem and see whether, and in what form, help could be extended to hard pressed existing owner-occupiers.

(ii) Further help the owner-occupiers by providing 100 per cent. mortgages through local councils; by advancing funds to the building societies so that they can reduce the deposits required on old houses; by reducing conveyancing and land registration charges; by insisting on measures to stamp out jerry-building on new houses and by encouraging local authorities to develop advisory and other social services to assist the owner-occupier.

(iii) Repeal the notorious Rent Act, end further decontrol and restore security of tenure to those in already decontrolled rented flats and houses. We shall provide machinery for settling rents on a fair basis.

(iv) Carry out a new programme of modernisation of old houses. If landlords fail to bring their houses up to the new standards required, then such houses will be purchased by the local authority with an option to buy to those sitting tenants who wish to become owner-occupiers.

(v) Accelerate slum clearance and concentrate aid and resources more heavily on those authorities with the biggest housing problems.

(vi) Change leasehold law to enable householders with an original lease of more than 21 years to buy their own houses on fair terms.

Labour will also increase the building of new houses, both for rent and for sale. While we regard 400,000 houses as a reasonable target, we do not intend to have an election auction on housing figures. It is no good having paper plans for houses if – as the present Minister of Housing is now discovering – you haven’t the bricks to build them.

The crucial factor governing the number of new houses that we can build – and indeed the schools, hospitals, factories, offices and roads that can be completed – is the output of the construction and building supply industries.

Here we shall need new machinery to put through a series of long-delayed reforms designed, above all, to increase the number of men – and particularly of trained men – in the industry and to secure the more rapid use of the new techniques of industrialised building.

Social Security

Social security benefits – retirement and widows’ pension, sickness and unemployment pay – have been allowed to fall below minimum levels of human need. Consequently one in four of National Insurance pensioners are today depending upon means-tested National Assistance benefits. Labour will reconstruct our social security system:

(i) Existing National Insurance benefits will be raised and thereafter linked to average earnings so that as earnings rise so too will benefits.

(ii) For those already retired and for widows, an incomes guarantee will be introduced. This will lay down a new national minimum benefit. Those whose incomes fall below the new minimum will receive as of right, and without recourse to National Assistance, an income supplement.

(iii) A new wage-related scheme covering retirement, sickness and unemployment will be grafted on to the existing flat rate National Insurance scheme. The objective is half-pay benefits for the worker on average pay. Those who are married will get more than half pay, as will the lower paid worker. Since benefits will be graded, so too will contributions, which will take the form of a percentage contribution on earnings.

Provision will be made for “contracting out” good private schemes along the lines already laid down in the Government’s graded pension scheme. The relevant conditions will be strengthened in order to enforce provision for widows of contributors, and for deferred retirement. Steps will be taken to ensure transferabilitv of all private pension schemes.

(iv) Widows’ benefits will be reshaped in a new and more generous way and for them the earnings rule abolished. The “ten shilling widow” will have her pension restored to its original purchasing value.

(v) A new national severance pay scheme will be introduced. In a period of rapid industrial change it is only elementary justice to compensate employees who, through no fault of their own, find that their job has disappeared. Directors and senior executives have long received a “golden handshake”: the same principle of compensation for job loss will now be applied to the whole work force.

Labour recognises that the nation cannot have first-rate social security on the cheap. That is why we insist that the new wage-related benefits must be self-supporting and must be financed, in the main by graded contributions from employers and employees. For the same reason we stress again that, with the exception of the early introduction of the income guarantee, the key factor in determining the speed at which new and better levels of benefit can be introduced, will be the rate at which the British economy can advance.

Health

The National Health Service was among the foremost achievements of the 1945-50 Labour Government. Since then it has been starved of resources and has failed to adapt sufficiently to modern needs. Serious shortages of hospital staff mean long delays in obtaining treatment, with waiting lists of nearly 500,000. Shortages of general practitioners mean long waits in overcrowded surgeries. Local services for the handicapped and the elderly are severely handicapped by lack of staff. Every part of the hospital service is impaired by outdated premises. As a result of this neglect the patient has suffered – in spite of the efforts of medical staffs. Labour will put the patient first.

(i) The most serious attack on the Health Service made by Conservative Ministers has been the increasing burden of prescription charges imposed by them on those least able to pay. These charges will be abolished. Labour emphatically rejects recent proposals to introduce new charges for general practitioner services; our aim is to restore as rapidly as possible a completely free Health Service.

(ii) Labour will press ahead with a revised hospital plan. Nearly 20 years after the war the nation ought to have built far more than five general hospitals. The Tories’ so-called “plan” is largely based on guesswork. It seriously underestimates the demand for beds in certain areas and for certain categories of need such as mental illness and old people’s beds. And already this inadequate plan is being bogged down for lack of funds.

Labour will review the whole plan on the basis of a full assessment of local needs and provide the necessary finance to carry the plan through. In particular the plan must ensure that every women who wishes to, or needs to, have her baby in hospital shall be able to do so. We shall take steps to combat queue jumping for hospital beds.

(iii) Labour will greatly increase the number of qualified medical staff. We shall train more doctors and dentists both by increasing the number of students admitted to existing medical schools and by establishing new medical schools. We shall tackle the serious shortages of nurses, radiographers, dieticians and other ancillary staffs by recasting, in consultation with the unions concerned, the salary structure and the negotiating machinery.

(iv) We shall devote more resources to medical research.

(v) The community care services run by the local authorities the most neglected of all the health services in recent years will be given a new impetus.

Labour will: (a) Expand the home help and other domiciliary services which are so vital to the well-being of the old and sick; (b) Lay down proper standards for these services and recast the so-called ten-year health and welfare plan on this basis; (c) Provide high percentage grants where emergency action is required to bring a particular service up to standard, e.g. hostels for the mentally ill.

Leisure Services

Automation, new sources of energy and the growing use of the electronic calculating machine are beginning to transform almost all branches of our economic and social life. As these trends develop, the importance of leisure will steadily increase. It is not the job of the Government to tell people how leisure should be used. But, in a society where so many facilities are not provided because they are not profitable and where the trend towards monopoly, particularly in entertainment, is steadily growing, the Government has a duty to ensure that leisure facilities are provided and that a reasonable range of choice is maintained.

A Labour Government would therefore:

(i) End the present parsimony in the supply of public funds for out-door recreation:

develop the national parks: preserve access to the coast and protect it from pollution and unplanned development: set up a sports council to supply in consultation with local authorities and voluntary bodies the physical equipment, coaching facilities and playing fields that are so badly needed.

(ii) The Youth Service will be developed with grants for youth centres, swimming pools, coffee bars and other facilities without which the present service cannot function.

(iii) Give much more generous support to the Arts Council, the theatre, orchestras, concert halls, museums and art galleries.

(iv) Encourage and support independent film makers both for the cinema and television.

A NEW ROLE FOR BRITAIN

It is not only in the domestic field that the Conservatives have failed the nation. During these 13 years of Conservative power British statesmanship has been tested by three great challenges – the end of the colonial era, thawing of the cold war and the new military role for Britain which these developments require. In each case the Conservatives have shown their inability to keep pace with the dramatic changes in the world scene. They have lost any sense of vision of Britain’s role in the second half of the 20th century.

Through their bankrupt and vacillating leadership the Tory Government have bequeathed to Labour a Britain dragging its feet, side-stepping the challenging issues of our time, forced to linger temporarily in the wings of history.

A. THE END OF COLONIALISM

When World War II unleashed the demand throughout Asia and Africa for the end of colonialism, Britain’s first response was an act of creative statesmanship. The Labour Government, headed by Clem Attlee, granted full and complete independence to India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, and thereby began the process of transforming a white colonial empire into a multi-racial commonwealth. No nobler transformation is recorded in the story of the human race.

So long as they were in Opposition, the Conservatives denounced this policy as socialist scuttle. Faced with responsibility, however, in 1951 they were compelled very largely to accept it. But the leadership they should have given was vitiated by the Suez fiasco and the equivocal attitude to African demands for independence, and the promises which they made-and have been forced to break – to the settlers.

How little they were able to transfer their faith and enthusiasm from the old Empire to the new Commonwealth was shown when Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home both declared there was no future for Britain outside the Common Market and expressed themselves ready to accept terms of entry to the Common Market that would have excluded our Commonwealth partners, broken our special trade links with them, and forced us to treat them as third-class nations.

Though we shall seek to achieve closer links with our European neighbours, the Labour Party is convinced that the first responsibility of a British Government is still to the Commonwealth.

Commonwealth Immigration

As the centre of a great Commonwealth of 700 million people, linked to us by ties of history and common interest, Britain faces the three great problems of poverty, rapidly rising population, and racial conflict.

By herself Britain cannot, of course, solve these problems; but more than any other advanced country of the west, we have the greatest opportunity and the greatest incentive to tackle them. We believe that the Commonwealth has a major part to play in grappling with the terrible inequalities that separate the developed and under developed nations and the white and coloured races.

That is why a Labour Government will legislate against racial discrimination and incitement in public places and give special help to local authorities in areas where immigrants have settled. Labour accepts that the number of immigrants entering the United Kingdom must be limited. Until a satisfactory agreement covering this can be negotiated with the Commonwealth a Labour Government will retain immigration control.

Commonwealth Trade

Under the Tories the Commonwealth share of our trade has been allowed to fall from 44 per cent. to 30 per cent. and the defeatist view that it will decline still further has gained ground.

Worse still, the Commonwealth itself came near to disintegration at the time of the Common Market negotiations. The recent Commonwealth conference showed its sturdy resilience, but what is lacking is any coherent policy at the centre. We shall:

(i) Promote more effective and frequent consultations between Commonwealth leaders, for example by the establishment of a Commonwealth Consultative Assembly.

(ii) Make a new drive for exports through a Commonwealth exports council.

(iii) Build a firmer base for expanding trade by entering into long-term contracts and commodity agreements providing guaranteed markets for Commonwealth primary produce at stable prices.

(iv) Ensure that development and capital investment programmes are geared to Commonwealth needs.

(v) Promote wider educational, cultural, scientific and technical contracts, a more imaginative system of links between British communities and towns and villages in the Commonwealth, and more opportunities for overseas voluntary service.

(vi) Encourage joint Commonwealth activity on developments required throughout the Commonwealth, such as a communications satellite and passenger aircraft designed for Commonwealth routes.

(vii) Work towards the creation of a pensionable career service for experts working in the Commonwealth.

The New War – On Want

But the problem presented by the colonial uprising is not limited to the Commonwealth. Poverty is an ever-present fear for more than half the world’s population. It presents the western industrialised nations with a tremendous challenge which we ignore at our peril: for there is a growing danger that the increasing tensions caused by gross inequalities of circumstances between the rich and poor nations will be sharply accentuated by differences of race and colour.

We believe that the socialist axiom “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is not for home consumption only. Labour will:

(i) Discuss with other countries proposals for expanding the trade of developing nations.

(ii) Increase the share of our national income devoted to essential aid programmes, not only by loans and grants but by mobilising unused industrial capacity to meet overseas needs.

(iii) Revive the concept of a world food board for the disposal of agricultural surpluses.

To give a dynamic lead in this vital field, Labour will create a Ministry of Overseas Development to be responsible not only for our part in Commonwealth development but also for our work in and through the specialist agencies of the United Nations. This new Ministry will help and encourage voluntary action through those organisations that have played such an inspired part in the Freedom from Hunger campaign. We must match their enterprise with Government action to give new hope in the current United Nations Development Decade.

B. NEW PROSPECTS FOR PEACE

The second great opportunity for British statesmanship arose as a result of the changes in the communist world that followed Stalin’s death – changes which are gradually transforming the relations between the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China and rapidly changing the whole nature of East-West relationships. In 1945, it was the hope of the whole world that east-west co-operation would prove close enough to permit the United Nations to be transformed step by step into a world government.

When these hopes were blighted by Stalin’s brutal intransigence, it was Labour’s Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, who took the lead in facing the harsh realities of the cold war, and in creating the Nato alliance as the basis of Europe’s military security. But even during the grimmest periods of the Berlin airlift and the Korean War, Labour always regarded the cold war strategies as a second best, forced on us by Russia’s obstinacy and remained faithful to its long-term belief in the establishment of east-west co-operation as the basis for a strengthened United Nations developing towards world government.

The attitude of the Conservatives after 1951 was very different. Viewing the world only in terms of old-fashioned power politics, resentful of the loss of empire, and the increasing influence of the new nations, they have been mainly concerned to build up a so-called independent British nuclear power in the vain belief that this would restore our influence in world affairs. Instead of throwing Britain’s full weight into efforts to relax tensions and to halt the spread of nuclear weapons the Tories were content to play a minor and subordinate role leaving the initiative to others.

Moreover their isolationist nuclear policy has been a direct incitement to other nations to attain nuclear status. All the arguments the Tories have used for Britain have been repeated in France and find dangerous echoes in Germany. The spread of nuclear weapons cannot lead to disarmament or to the thawing of the cold war, only to a proliferation of nuclear arms and the heightening of tensions between East and West.

Relaxing Tensions

A Labour Government will do everything possible to halt this dangerous trend, and to resolve the differences at present dividing east and west.

First and foremost will come our initiative in the field of disarmament. We are convinced that the time is opportune for a new break-through in the disarmament negotiations, releasing scarce resources and manpower desperately needed to raise living standards throughout the world.

We shall appoint a Minister in the Foreign Office with special responsibility for disarmament to take a new initiative in the Disarmament Committee in association with our friends and allies. We have put forward constructive proposals:

(i) To stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

(ii) To establish nuclear free zones in Africa, Latin America and Central Europe.

(iii) To achieve controlled reductions in manpower and arms.

(iv) To stop the private sale of arms.

(v) To establish an international disarmament agency to supervise a disarmament treaty.

In a further effort to relax tension, a Labour Government will work actively to bring Communist China into its proper place in the United Nations: as well as making an all-out effort to develop east-west trade as the soundest economic basis for peaceful co-existence.

Peaceful co-existence, however, can only be achieved if a sincere readiness to negotiate is combined with a firm determination to resist both threats and pressures. In particular in dealing with the still intractable problems dividing Germany, we shall continue to insist on guarantees for the freedom of west Berlin.

A New Lead at the United Nations

But our most important effort will be concerned to revive the morale and increase the powers of the United Nations. Every year that has passed since the Conservatives came to power has seen Britain’s influence in the United Nations decline. At home the Prime Minister and others have voiced their nagging criticisms while in the General Assembly, time and time again Britain is to be found among the ranks of the abstentionists on vital issues of freedom and racial equality.

This has reflected itself in the Government’s equivocal attitude to racial problems in South Africa. Labour will stand by its pledge to end the supply of arms to South Africa. Britain, of all nations, cannot stand by as an inactive observer of this tragic situation.

Labour will reassert British influence in the United Nations. We will seek to strengthen the U.N. by developing its machinery for international conciliation, by making an effective contribution to the creation of an international police force, and by reforming the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council so that they are more representative of the new nations. We believe that the United Nations provides the natural venue for more frequent summit meetings.

For us world government is the final objective – and the United Nations the chosen instrument by which the world can move away from the anarchy of power politics towards the creation of a genuine world community and the rule of law.

C. DEFENCE POLICY

The Labour Party will ensure that Britain is adequately defended. This is manifestly not the position today.

In 13 years, the Conservatives have spent £20,000 m. and our defences are weaker than at almost any time in our history. Flagrant waste on missile and other projects has diverted funds and resources from urgently needed defence projects. This is one reason for their failure to obtain on a voluntary, regular basis the required numbers in the Army, to modernise their obsolescent equipment and to give them the long-range mobility needed for our commitments, particularly to the Commonwealth.

Mr. Macmillan’s decision in 1957 to stake his all on Blue Streak, followed by further costly expenditure on Skybolt and now Polaris, has meant that the Navy too has been run down to a dangerously low level, and is now pathetically inadequate in numbers of ships in commission, in manning and in the most modern types such as nuclear-powered tracker submarines.

Many thousands of millions have been spent on the aircraft industry, but because of lurches in strategic policy, wrong priorities, and grave errors in the choice of aircraft, we are now in a position where obsolete types have not been replaced, and for such urgently needed machines as helicopters (which could make a great contribution to the security and effectiveness of our troops in Malaysia) we are dependent on the United States.

Tory Nuclear Pretence

The Nassau agreement to buy Polaris know-how and Polaris missiles from the U.S.A. will add nothing to the deterrent strength of the western alliance, and it will mean utter dependence on the U.S. for their supply. Nor is it true that all this costly defence expenditure will produce an “independent British deterrent”. It will not be independent and it will not be British and it will not deter. Its possession will impress neither friend nor potential foe.

Moreover, Britain’s insistence on this nuclear pretence carries with it grave dangers of encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons to countries not possessing them, including Germany.

The Government bases its policy on the assumption that Britain must be prepared to go it alone without her allies in an all-out thermo-nuclear war with the Soviet Union, involving the obliteration of our people. By constantly reiterating this appalling assumption the Government is undermining the alliance on which our security now depends.

Labour’s New Approach

A Labour Government’s first concern will be to put our defences on a sound basis and to ensure that the nation gets value for money on its overseas expenditure. In this field, any government has a clear responsibility to ensure the security of its own people and the fulfilment of its obligations to other nations. As a first step, we shall submit the whole area of weapons supply to a searching re-examination in order to ensure that the limited sums available are spent on those weapons best designed to carry out our policies and fulfil our obligations.

We are not prepared any longer to waste the country’s resources on endless duplication of strategic nuclear weapons. We shall propose the re-negotiation of the Nassau agreement. Our stress will be on the strengthening of our conventional regular forces so that we can contribute our share to Nato defence and also fulfil our peacekeeping commitments to the Commonwealth and the United Nations.

We are against the development of national nuclear deterrents and oppose the current American proposal for a new mixed-manned nuclear surface fleet (MLF). We believe in the inter-dependence of the western alliance and will put forward constructive proposals for integrating all Nato’s nuclear weapons under effective political control so that all the partners in the alliance have a proper share in their deployment and control.

We do not delude ourselves that the tasks ahead will be easy to accomplish. Even now we do not know the full extent of the damage we shall have to repair after 13 wasted years of Conservative government. The essential conditions for success are, however, clear.

First, we shall need to make government itself more efficient. As the tasks of government grow more numerous and more complex, the machinery of government must be modernised. New techniques, new kinds of skill and experience are needed if government is to govern effectively. Certainly we shall not permit effective action to be frustrated by the hereditary and non-elective Conservative majority in the House of Lords.

At the same time new ways must be found to ensure that the growth of government activity does not infringe the liberties of the subject. This is why we attach so much importance to humanising the whole administration of the state and that is why we shall set up the new office of Parliamentary Commissioner with the right to investigate the grievances of the citizen and report to a select committee of the House.

Second, we shall seek to establish a true partnership between the people and their parliament. The government itself cannot create a new Britain. National regeneration must mean the release of energy in the whole people in the regions no less than in the capital, so that the drive towards renewal comes from the vitality and self-confidence of the community itself.

Third, we must foster, throughout the nation, a new and more critical spirit. In place of the cosy complacency of the past 13 years, we shall seek to evoke an active and searching frame of mind in which all of us, individuals, enterprises and trade unions are ready to re-examine our methods of work, to innovate and to modernise. Here too, the Government can give a lead by subjecting to continuing and probing review the practices of its own Departments of State, the administration of justice and the social services, the Statute Book with its encrusted laws – and the work of Parliament itself.

Fourth, we must put an end to the dreary commercialism and personal selfishness which have dominated the years of Conservative government. The morality of money and property is a dead and deadening morality. In its place we must again reassert the value of service above private profit and private gain.

The Labour Party is offering Britain a new way of life that will stir our hearts, re-kindle an authentic patriotic faith in our future, and enable our country to re-establish itself as a stable force in the world today for progress, peace, and justice.

It is within the personal power of every man and woman with a vote to guarantee that the British again become the go-ahead people with a sense of national purpose, thriving in an expanding community where social justice is seen to prevail.

The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1966 General Election.

Preface: TIME FOR DECISION

PART I: FACING THE FACTS

1. Britain in Crisis
2. Forward from Crisis
3. Telling the People

PART II: A STRONG ECONOMY

1. Paying our Way
2. Increasing Productivity
3. Helping Industry
4. Agriculture
5. Standard of Living

PART III: BUILDING A NEW BRITAIN

1. Housing
2. Cities and Towns
3. Transport
4. The Countryside

PART IV: THE FAMILY IN THE NEW WELFARE STATE

1. Full Employment Policies
2. Reconstructing Social Security
3. Health and Welfare Services
4. Educational Opportunities for All
5. Fair Rents and Mortgages
6. Fair Taxation

PART V: WIDER DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW BRITAIN

1. Reorganising Whitehall
2. Modernising Parliament
3. Immigration
4. Law Enforcement

PART VI: THE NEW BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

1. Realism in Defence
2. The United Nations
3. Nuclear Weapons
4. Better Relations in Europe
5. Peace-keeping outside Europe
6. The War on Want

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Preface

TIME FOR DECISION

The time has come when the Government must ask the British people to renew and strengthen its mandate. Since we came to power in October, 1964, the nation has had firm government. But without an effective working majority it is difficult – and would become increasingly so – for the Government to continue to exercise influence in the outside world, and to exert its full authority in Whitehall, Westminster and the councils of industry.

Since the collapse of the Macmillan Government three years ago, the authority of successive governments had been eroded by an atmosphere of fevered electoral uncertainty.

The remedy lies in the hands of the electors. The time for decision has come.

The course the Government recommends to the nation is clear. We are asking for a mandate to carry through the radical reconstruction of our national life which we began eighteen months ago. The road of renewal had been mapped in our election manifesto of 1964. Since we took office we have started on the long process of modernising obsolete procedures and institutions, ending the dominance of vested interests, liberating the forces of youth and building a New Britain.

The task we have started, however, cannot be completed by Government acting alone. Its fulfilment will only be possible if the British people understand what the Government is doing, and give us their active support in finishing the job. It is for this active support, represented by a clear Parliamentary majority, that we now ask.

Part 1: Facing the Facts

During the past 18 months, Britain has faced, fought and overcome its toughest crisis since the War. More, it has in the teeth of adversity fashioned the new instruments of policy with which, under the guidance of the National Plan, a new and better Britain can be built.

In this Statement we first make a progress report to the nation. Then we show what next must be done to turn the breathing space won in 1965 into a period of permanent strength and security.

Whatever the future may bring, there can be no turning back to the tired and discredited policies of the long Conservative era. The period of drift and indecision in Government, of backward looking complacency in industry and commerce, of reliance upon individual and group selfishness as the main motive for change – all this is over.

1. Britain in Crisis

No one can deny the magnitude of the crisis the Labour Government inherited in 1964.

With a record – and almost incredible – deficit of over £750 million already incurred; with a rising flood of foreign goods; with the pound sterling imperilled; with prices soaring; with wages and salaries following hard behind – the nation in October, 1964, was plunging towards economic disaster and financial collapse.

Not only did the Tories fail to take preventive measures; throughout the previous year they were busily feeding the pre-Election boom. By Initiating a spate of vote-catching schemes, they had encouraged a massive expansion of private and public expenditure without regard for the consequences that would follow after the Election.

But acute as they were, the dangers we faced in October, 1964, were only symptoms of a more fundamental crisis:

1. Successive Tory Governments had failed to rethink Britain’s role in the modem world. They failed to identify the new problems of the Sixties and realistically appraise national resources. Instead they pursued, from motives of prestige and nostalgia, foreign, military and financial policies which were increasingly irrelevant and increasingly expensive – policies which sapped our economic strength, depleted our reserves and overstrained our resources.

2. At home there was an equally disastrous failure to tackle the fundamental problems of the British economy: instead of ensuring steady economic growth, a strong balance of payments, the rapid modernisation of our industries and a proper balance between public and private expenditure, the economy was left to the push and pull of the market – as though we were still living in an era of laissez faire.

Consequently, for more than a decade, we suffered the disastrous cycle of Stop-Go; inadequate investment in manufacturing industry; the scandalous neglect of such essential community services as houses, schools and hospitals.

3. Throughout our national life there was a stubborn refusal to root out obsolete ideas and modernise obsolescent institutions. Instead of setting an example to the timid and old-fashioned in industry and commerce, Tory Governments funked the radical reorganisation of the whole machinery of the state – local as well as national – which was so desperately required.

4. Finally – and perhaps most serious – easy-going drift, backward-looking incompetence and an acceptance of national decline were accompanied by the erosion of fairness and social justice, by a growing neglect of community responsibility for the old, the sick and the needy – and by an incitement to speculation and the pursuit of sectional advantage.

2. Forward from Crisis

The Labour Government had to take unpopular decisions – and took them regardless of temporary unpopularity. Imports were cut and taxes raised. The TSR2 and other prestige projects were cancelled; firm limits were placed on military and civil expenditure. But in the pursuit of solvency and the defence of the pound, which were our overriding aims, the new Government was determined not to repeat Conservative Stop-Go.

Whatever the pressures, it would not jettison the four central objectives of its policy:

1. To ensure that even in times of economic crisis those in need should be helped by the state. Even in the first crucial six months of office, retirement and widows’ pensions, sickness and unemployment benefits, war and industrial disability pensions were all increased by the greatest amount ever. Prescription charges were abolished and an interim measure was rushed through to stop evictions, unleashed by the Tory Rent Act.

2. To establish a clear system of priorities in public expenditure. While inflated public expenditure generally was cut back, housing, schools and hospitals were specially exempted, as were the regions of high unemployment.

3. To maintain full employment and a high level of investment in productive industry, while damping down the overheated economy.

4. To get on with the longer term reconstruction of Britain, with a National Plan and a range of new economic, fiscal and social policies to carry it through.

Inevitably it took time to forge the new instruments of policy, such as control over building and the movement of capital abroad, without which national planning is an empty phrase.

Nevertheless, the achievement in 500 days has been immense. The deficit on our overseas payments has been cut from over £750 million to around £350 million. Overseas confidence in sterling has grown steadily as the world has become convinced that we are winning the battle for solvency.

The victory was a real one; but so was the price the nation paid. In particular the high interest rates required to strengthen sterling forced up mortgage payments and council house rents. But one price the nation did not have to pay – the deliberate creation of unemployment which our predecessors regarded as inevitable. In this crisis year we raised the level of employment; we built a record number of houses; we achieved record figures for investment in new schools and hospitals. Most important to the future, the deficit was halved; exports rose sharply and industrial investment reached an all-time high.

In the past, our predecessors had reacted to overseas deficits by imposing a total Stop. Faced with the far greater crisis they left us in 1964/65, we stopped the inessential, we postponed the less essential and we went right ahead with our priorities.

3. Telling the People

Britain has weathered the storm. But full solvency has yet to be achieved. The debts incurred as a direct consequence of Tory policy will have to be repaid. The reshaping of British industry and the economy have only just begun.

There is no easy road ahead – and only the dishonest would pretend that there is. But we do not believe that the British people want to be lulled with the message that “all is well” and that they have “never had it so good.” Nor do we think that they expected or wanted their Government to present a give-away Budget on the eve of a General Election. We have not done so. And we shall take whatever further steps are necessary even if they are unpopular, in order to achieve the rate of progress that we need.

We are facing the facts – as they should have been faced in the 13 years of Tory rule.

Part 2: A Strong Economy

During the next five years we intend to carry through a massive programme for modernising and strengthening British industry. That is the prime purpose of the National Plan.

We have regulated demand through selective measures with no return to Stop-Go. Now that our new techniques – such as investment grants, licensing of inessential building and the Industrial Re-organisation Corporation – are coming into use, we shall increasingly be able to apply social priorities, giving preference to industrial investment and to a better regional balance.

While implementation of the policy depends on the initiative and ingenuity of industry and commerce, the Government too has its responsibilities abroad as well as at home:

1. Paying our Way

It is our aim to achieve balance in our international payments by the end of this year. To do this, a persistent national effort will be required.

1. Exports. Last year, exports rose by 5 per cent in volume, and by 7 per cent in value. Further progress will be made as the new incentives to exporters – the export rebate scheme, better credit facilities and the favourable interest rates – take effect.

2. Imports. The disastrous increase in imports was checked by the temporary surcharge we imposed in 1964. Intense efforts are now being made to replace those imported products which British industry can produce competitively.

3. Overseas Military Expenditure. This is being cut back by such measures as the Anglo-German agreement on B.A.O.R. support costs and the decision to withdraw from Aden and to reduce establishments in Cyprus and Malta. But we shall still be carrying a heavy burden in maintaining commitments abroad as our contribution to peace-keeping in different areas of the world. The 1966 Defence Review is only the first step in a phased programme which should bring substantial cuts both in commitments and in expenditure by 1969-70.

4. Drain of Capital. The uncontrolled flow of British capital abroad has been an excessive burden on an already weak balance of payments. By amending the taxation of overseas income and by selective control over the export of capital, we have staunched this loss of resources.

There can be no relaxing here at least until we again earn a current surplus.

2. Increasing Productivity

The National Plan, published last September, defined the objectives of the British economy between now and 1970 and then outlined the strategy required to achieve them. Our central aim must be to accelerate industrial expansion without undermining our social priorities.

I. Selective Investment

British industry’s most compelling need is not just more investment but more selective investment. The National Plan in itself helps by giving industrialists a clear picture of national priorities. We are now introducing three new economic weapons to further this policy:

First, the effect of the Corporation Tax will be to reduce taxation of profits, provided they are ploughed back, not distributed as dividends.

Second, the new system of investment incentives will provide direct cash grants to expanding firms. These will differentiate sharply in favour of manufacturing industries, upon which the competitive strength of the economy depends.

Third, the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation will stimulate rationalisation, modernisation and expansion in those fields where British industry at present seems unable to compete with the giant firms of the U.S. and Europe.

ii. Productivity, Prices and Incomes

In order to safeguard the real value of wages, the Labour Government launched the first serious attack on the rising cost of living. The weapon specially fashioned for this attack is the policy for productivity, prices and incomes, which forms an essential part of the National Plan. Without such a policy it is impossible either to keep exports competitive or to check rising prices at home. The alternative, in fact, is a return to the dreary cycle of inflation followed by deflation and unemployment.

Substantial progress has been made in working out, with management and the unions, the objectives and criteria of such a policy. An essential part of the machinery, the Prices and Incomes Board, is now operating. But the policy needs further development.

First, we intend to give a new stress to productivity, and we will attack restrictive practices wherever they exist. A National Conference representative of industry will be called under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister to discuss all matters relating to productivity, including the extension throughout industry of Pay and Productivity Councils, representing management and employees. This will form part of an effort to stimulate industrial democracy.

Second, we shall reconstitute the Prices and Incomes Board and seek such developments in the early warning system as are necessary for the Board to do its job properly. Our purpose is not to dictate prices, wages and salaries – but to give, in selected cases, the opportunity for objective consideration of claims before either prices are fixed or collective bargains struck.

Third, we shall make sure that the policy is not only fair but seen to be fair. In our pursuit of a planned growth of incomes the needs of the lower-paid worker will not be ignored.

iii. Regional Economic Planning

Effective Regional Planning is needed:

• (a) to assist the areas of chronic unemployment, and so bring into production the remaining untapped sources of labour; and
• (b) to stop the drift of work and population to the West Midlands and the South East where congestion adds enormously to business and social costs.

Vigorous action has already been taken in this field. We have used our new office and building controls to relieve congestion in London and Birmingham. We have extended the development areas and guided industry there. We have helped firms ready to set up business in development regions through massive special investment grants. We have further discriminated in favour of these areas by totally exempting them from the cuts imposed last summer on national and local government expenditure.

Industrial Development Certificates are helping to bring new building to the under-employed regions – and reducing it in the congested South East. As a result, employment has grown markedly in these regions.

These, however, are only the first emergency steps towards the development of full-scale regional economic planning, for which the Regional Councils and the Regional Boards have been established.

Scotland and Wales

Labour respects the differences of culture and tradition of Scotland and Wales; nevertheless, we see the economic well-being of Great Britain as indivisible. The Government has therefore set out measures which help both Scotland and Wales, within the context of a true National Plan.

New life has been brought to the Highlands and Islands, and a major Plan prepared for economic and social expansion in Scotland. The task now is to achieve its targets, and keep up the record progress made in 1965.

For the first time there is a Secretary of State for Wales in the Cabinet. The Welsh office is already making an impact on employment, industrial development and opportunities for young people in Wales. The Welsh Economic Development Council is now working out genuinely Welsh solutions to the problems of the rural areas.

3. Helping Industry

Some of our industries present special problems, too serious to be over come from their own resources. In such cases the Government must be ready to help. To this end, we propose, apart from vigorous action by the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation:

• to continue and develop policies introduced by the new Ministry of Technology for providing purposive financial assistance to key industries such as computers and machine tools.
• to use the various publicly financed research councils and the enlarged N.R.D.C. to sponsor and develop new science-based industries.
• to transfer the private steel monopoly into public ownership and to rationalise its structure.
• to rationalise the aircraft industry on the basis of public participation, taking into account the recent Plowden Report.

Private and Public Enterprise

Britain has a mixed economy – and both sectors must play their part in carrying out the National Plan. Both sectors, however, must be encouraged to become more enterprising.

In the private sector, we have already proposed major reforms of Company Law, the purpose of which will be to stimulate, through much greater disclosure of their affairs, improved managerial practices and a better use of their resources. Companies will also be required to publish details of their political subscriptions.

We shall encourage go-ahead firms by changes in the tax laws and, by securing a larger say in the affairs of companies for full-time working directors, encourage technical expertise, knowledge and Initiative.

In the public sector, we shall remove statutory restrictions from publicly owned industries and so encourage greater diversification of their activities. In a rapidly changing economy it is simply absurd to limit by statute these large enterprises to a single sphere of activity.

The great fuel and power industries occupy a major part of the public sector. Here, the Government has laid the basis for a national fuel policy, and gone a long way towards reconstruction of the coal industry’s finances by writing off £415 million of the National Coal Board’s capital debt. Further financial measures will help concentrate production on the most economic pits, and provide up to £30 million to encourage labour mobility.

The best available estimate of the market for coal in 1970 is 170-180 million tons. We stress that this is an estimate, and in no sense a limitation. Everything depends upon efficiency, costs and the resulting prices. If more can be profitably sold, then no barrier will stand in the way of expansion.

We shall further develop co-operation between nationalised industries to cut out waste; we shall set out more precise targets to guide their investment and price policy in the national interest.

4. Agriculture

The selective expansion of agricultural production is a key part of the National Plan. In particular, it will make a significant contribution to the balance of payments by import saving.

The record of our farmers and farm workers in increasing productivity is outstanding. We shall not shake their confidence by substituting for the well-tried deficiency payments the levies on imported foodstuffs advocated by the Conservatives. This would reduce the farmers’ security and push up food prices to new high levels.

The cost to the Exchequer of agricultural support can much better be contained by measures designed to enable the industry to achieve still higher productivity and a higher return on its capital. To this end we have presented a scheme to promote agricultural and horticultural co-operation and develop the resources of the hills and uplands.

We shall continue to improve the conditions of the farm worker, and see that he gets his full share of rising prosperity.

We shall also expand agricultural research, making the results more widely available. Most important of all, we shall Initiate the radical reform required to achieve cheaper marketing of foodstuffs by reducing the gap between what the producer receives and what the consumer pays.

To maintain price stability and orderly marketing, imports of foodstuffs must be integrated with home supplies. Since these imports form so high a proportion of all our imports, and have a profound effect on our balance of payments, our price levels and the stability of our home industry, the Government must retain responsibility for integration.

We shall do our utmost to conclude international commodity arrangements with a view to promoting stability. As the circumstances of each commodity differ, each will have to be treated on its merits.

5. The Standard of Living

In the next five years living standards for the individual and for the whole community will rise by 25 per cent, as we increase our production of goods and services.

However, unless we can check the rising cost of living many groups, particularly those on fixed incomes, will find their living standards undermined – as they were persistently under the Tories. The prices and incomes policy is our main response to this problem. But other policies are also relevant. Labour’s rent control, for example, has secured hundreds of thousands of tenants against rising rents.

In particular, we shall further reduce inflated costs and profit margins in production and distribution by waging a vigorous anti-monopoly policy in fields where market powers are abused. We have already referred a number of cases to the strengthened Monopolies Commission.

We shall also enforce quality standards and protect the consumer from sharp trading practices. Under Labour’s Protection of Consumer Bill, false advertising, misleading labelling of goods, deceptive prices (the “4d.-off racket”) and oral mis-statements by doorstep salesmen, are banned.

This “Shoppers’ Charter” will be administered by Local Authorities, whose Weights and Measures Officers will be able quickly to deal with customers’ complaints of unfair trading.

Part 3: Building a New Britain

The Britain we want has yet to be built. Many of our cities and towns are bursting at the seams with growing populations. Those spawned by the industrial revolution grew without vision or plan. They are utterly inadequate to the needs of today. But whether planned or unplanned, all our towns are choked with traffic, and their population overspill threatens the unspoiled countryside around.

Within them, essential services are in short supply and in urgent need of renewal. Not only houses and roads, but hospitals, schools, universities, offices, civic buildings, facilities for leisure and recreation – even water and sewerage – are strained to breaking point.

At the same time our network of communications – passenger and freight, road, rail and canal, ports and airfields – is increasingly inadequate and chaotic.

In their pre-election boom the Conservatives gave the impression that money, resources and skilled labour were available to meet any and all of these demands simultaneously. It is now plain that the grandiose plans they announced were uncosted and mutually inconsistent. The industries concerned – building and civil engineering – cannot expand without limit when other demands of the economy are taken into account. Although their efficiency is being improved and their output increased, demands will outstrip resources for years ahead and there will be a constant shortage of skilled labour.

Moreover, the resources available are strictly limited. That is why, in this crucial field of physical reconstruction, priorities must be clearly defined and strongly enforced.

1. Housing

Our first priority is houses. Last year, for the first time in a period of general economic restraint, the housing programme not only did not suffer but actually expanded.

• In 1963, the nation built 300,000 houses.
• In 1964, as part of the Tory pre-election boom, the figure reached 374,000 – and greatly strained the building supply industry.
• In 1965, we not only overcame the shortages but increased the total to 383,000 houses.

In the next five years we shall go further. We have announced – and we intend to achieve – a Government target of 500,000 houses by 1969/70. After that we shall go on to higher levels still. It can be done – as other nations have shown. It must be done – for bad and inadequate housing is the greatest social evil in Britain today.

i. Controls

To achieve our target, we need powers to stop less essential building. Office building is now controlled by law, and a strict control of all local authority building is exercised by the Ministers concerned. In this way resources and labour are being made available for the increased housing programme.

ii. Land

We inherited a land famine and rocketing prices, caused by the Tory decision to return to a free market in land. In the Crown Land Commission we are fashioning an instrument to secure a sufficiently orderly supply of land, and bring back to the community a substantial part of the development value created. This has met bitter opposition from Liberals as well as Conservatives.

iii. Houses to Let

The desperate shortage of houses to let at moderate rents in our great conurbations can only be met by a large and speedy increase in council building. To make this financially possible, we have provided councils with the equivalent of 4 per cent interest rates for house building. At present interest rates, the new Subsidy Bill increases the basic subsidy of £24, where the Tories left it, to well over £60 per house. Part of this very substantial increase will be used by councils to ensure that every new house is built to the improved standards laid down by the Government.

In order to combine labour saving and standardisation, which will cut costs, with the improved quality on which we must insist, we are requiring local authorities to rely increasingly on modern system building techniques.

iv. Houses to Buy

In order to secure an adequate flow of finance for private housing we have persuaded the building societies and the builders to work closely with the Ministry of Housing in planning a steady continuous expansion of output up to their share of the programme.

In addition to a mortgage plan (see page 17) we are determined to protect the owner-occupier against the jerry-builder. This can best be achieved if the building societies and the builders agree that mortgages will only be given on houses covered by the National House Building Registration Council certificate. The Government has made it clear, however, that if this voluntary scheme is not working effectively by the end of the year, legislation will be used.

2. Cities and Towns

Britain needs a massive programme of urban renewal. Large parts of our cities are in decay and many of our urban centres are ill-designed and choked with motor traffic.

Here, however, we need the most careful planning if resources are not to be wasted. In the past ten years, far too many ill-thought-out plans have been sanctioned, tearing out at great cost urban centres and renewing them for essentially commercial purposes. Department stores and office blocks have made far too heavy demands on the construction industries. A new strategy of development is required.

• First, and most Important, we must deal with the problem of the journey to work: for it is this, particularly in London and the other great cities, that poses the most intractable problem, presenting our diminishing public transport fleets with a tidal wave of users and jamming the roads with private car commuters.
  We are convinced that the basic solution to this problem must lie with improved public transport, supported by sensible parking regulations and by road building designed to siphon off through-traffic.
  We are already reviewing the absurd closure programme of suburban and urban rail services. We shall maintain public transport services in our towns and cities and aim at higher levels of comfort and frequency. We shall also tackle the problems of central redevelopment and new forms of transport by financing feasibility studies by local authorities; e.g., a monorail for Manchester.
• Second: we shall make a new approach to the problem of central areas in our cities. Slum clearance must of course go on. But there must be quicker and fairer compensation for those displaced. However, we shall not be content simply to demolish. Wherever possible, we shall renew and modernise existing buildings. We shall also ensure that expensive facilities such as swimming pools, playing fields, assembly halls, are made more widely available to the community and not reserved only for the particular groups – schools and colleges – for which they were built.
  The better provision of sporting, arts and other leisure facilities is essential to modern living.
• Third: we shall go ahead with a further programme of New and Expanded Towns.
  It was one of the scandals of the wasted years that from 1951 to 1961 not one New Town was authorised in Britain.
  We are now at work on a second generation of much bigger towns to relieve the strain on London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They will reduce urban pressure by recruiting their citizens mainly from the housing lists and from council houses. Wherever possible we are also expanding the established New Towns.
  We shall fulfil our promise to bring real democratic self-government to those which are fully grown, by the abolition of the New Towns Commission.

3. Transport

Transport planning, both national and regional, is an essential part of community planning. The Tory attempt to solve our transport problems by increasing competition between road and rail, by the adoption of rigid commercial criteria for the railways and other public transport services, and by deliberate fragmentation of transport undertakings, is the most conspicuous and most costly of all their failures.

Restoring sense and balance to our transport system is now an immensely difficult job. But it must be undertaken.

Within the framework of a National Transport Plan Labour will:

1. Carry out an expanding road programme speeding up road construction and cutting costs by new methods of financing highway development.

2. Co-ordinate road and rail in order to use existing resources to best effect. As a first step, we shall create a National Freight Authority to co-ordinate the movement of freight by road and rail, and provide a first-rate publicly owned service.

3. Legislate to annul the evil effects of the 1962 Tory Transport Act.

4. Encourage the formation of regional and area transport authorities, to provide more effective public transport in both the conurbations and rural areas, by integrating road, rail and other forms of transport.

5. In order to speed up the vital flow of exports, reorganise and modernise the nation’s ports on the basis of a strong National Ports Authority and publicly owned Regional Port Authorities. Within the ports, we shall end inefficiencies and delays in cargo handling and help to cure the chaos of the casual system by making each Port Authority ultimately responsible for all Port operations within its area, including stevedoring, and by extending the present valuable experience of joint participation.

6. Remove the statutory restriction on the manufacturing powers of the publicly owned transport industries.

To safeguard road users, Labour will press ahead with legislation to restrict drink while driving, to introduce more frequent testing of heavy goods vehicles and to provide for special driving tests and licences for their drivers.

4. The Countryside

Commons, parks, lakes and coastal areas are of the utmost importance for recreation and leisure. They must not be spoilt by private development, and public access must be assured.

The Government has already taken vigorous steps to preserve our coast line, and safeguard common land.

A new and more powerful Commission to deal with the whole countryside and coastline is now proposed. Its first aim will be the creation of country parks, to provide suitable sites for picnics, for leisure pastimes, and for the motorist.

Long distance walks, access to the open country, the provision of recreation on canals and rivers – all will form part of this new, imaginative policy from which millions of our people will benefit, and by which the important balance between town and country will be maintained.

We shall strengthen the Forestry Commission; promote landscape planting of trees; thoroughly explore the nation’s mineral resources. We shall ensure adequate water supplies by all means, including – where necessary – extensions of public ownership.

Part 4: The Family in the New Welfare State

At its simplest, our aim is to extend to the whole community what the responsible citizen wishes for himself and his family:

• First and foremost, the opportunity to work and to be fairly rewarded for it.
• Second, to make provision against the day when age, sickness, injury or redundancy impairs his capacity to earn.
• Third, to know that during the misfortunes of ill health, the facilities of a modern and well equipped service will be available.
• Fourth, for his children to receive the best possible standard of education and training, developing their abilities to the full.
• Fifth, to have a home for his family, and to be able to buy or rent it at reasonable terms.
• Sixth, to make a just and reasonable contribution to the costs of the essential community services which he demands.

1. Full Employment Policies

The level of economic activity in the community must be sufficient to provide jobs for all Labour has always insisted that this can and will be ensured through intelligent management of the economy.

The problem today and in the future is not the general unemployment of the inter-war years but the redundancy that is due both to decline in demand for the products of an industry and to the development of new labour-saving methods of production.

Coal, cotton, agriculture and the railways are among those industries in which, in the postwar years, employment has sharply contracted. Unlike our predecessors, we have positive policies to meet this problem. We shall:

1. Ensure that new industries, providing new jobs, are available as and when older industries decline. That is the essential aim of our location of industry policy.

2. Modernise training and extend retraining, so that new skills are rapidly acquired. The Government’s decision to make day-release a necessary condition for the new training grants is a major breakthrough in this field.

3. Ease the transition from one job to another. This is the purpose of our Redundancy Payments Act, which brings lump sum compensation, related to service, to those affected by redundancy.

4.Deal with the problem of transferability of occupational pensions.

5.Recognise the right to trade union representation and ensure proper safeguards against arbitrary dismissal.

6. Supplement voluntary collective bargaining by substantially increasing the voluntary industrial arbitration and conciliation machinery, including such successful innovations as the ‘on the spot” investigations instituted by the Labour Government in the motor industry.

Finally, we must move towards greater fairness in the rewards for work. That is why we stand for equal pay for equal work and, to this end, have started negotiations.

We cannot be content with a situation in which important groups – particularly women, but male workers, too, in some occupations – continue to be underpaid.

2. Reconstructing Social Security

The postwar Labour Government created the National Insurance scheme under which flat-rate pensions and other benefits are paid as of right in return for flat-rate contributions.

But, over the years, this system has become increasingly inadequate, as the widening gap between actual earnings and National Insurance benefits makes it impossible to keep up living standards during absence or retirement from work.

Our plans for a far-reaching reconstruction of social security were well-advanced when we took office. But first we had to undertake the rescue operation which we had promised. Within four weeks the Government introduced legislation to provide the largest single increase in retirement pensions and other social benefits since the National Insurance scheme began. The earnings rule for widows was abolished, and prescription charges removed. With this initial relief provided, we could plan the methods and the phases of radical reconstruction.

1. Legislation has already been enacted which before the end of this year will provide earnings-related supplements during the first six months of sickness, unemployment or widowhood.

2. We shall within the lifetime of the next Parliament prepare and bring forward a genuine earnings-related, contributory pension scheme to replace the present Tory swindle. The new graduated scheme will overcome the problems of transferability of pension rights when an employee changes his job. There will be partnership between state and occupational schemes.

3. We shall establish a Ministry of Social Security uniting the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance and the National Assistance Board. It will deal with the whole range of social security questions, and ensure a rational single system of paying benefits. The Ministry will also head a drive to seek out, and alleviate, poverty whether among children or old people.

4. Finally, in the interests of greater equity, we shall seek ways of integrating more fully the two quite different systems of social payment – tax allowances and cash benefits paid under National Insurance.

3. Health and Welfare Services

• (i) Hospitals. The review we have undertaken of the much publicised Conservative Hospital Plan has confirmed our worst suspicions. The money they allocated was utterly inadequate to carry out the Plan, and to provide the new and modernised hospitals we so urgently need. Our aim will be to increase by 1970 the annual spending on hospital building to a figure double the highest sum spent in any year by the Conservatives.
  Already we have provided substantially more money for the running of our hospitals, and the rate of development will continue to increase.
• (ii) The Family Doctor Service. In the space of a year, the Labour Government has produced the blueprint of a completely revitalised family doctor service. We shall ensure that all practical steps are taken to enable the hard-pressed family doctor to give the best possible service to his patients with the greatest satisfaction to himself.
  Many of the problems in general practice stem from the serious shortage of doctors, for which successive Tory Ministers bear a heavy responsibility. We have already made arrangements to increase the number of medical students by well over 10 per cent a year within the next couple of years. This is only a first step: a newly established Royal Commission on Medical Education will help chart future expansion.
• (iii) Community Services. Local health and welfare services, especially for the elderly and the mentally handicapped, have been expanding fast. We shall develop these services rapidly, with special emphasis on those designed to help old people to continue living in their own homes. For those who can no longer do so, much more purpose-built accommodation will be provided to replace large obsolete institutions which can offer neither comfort nor a homely atmosphere.
• (iv) Preventive Health. Far too little attention has been paid to preventive health measures in the past. Screening for cervical cancer, which it is estimated will save the lives of some 2,000 women a year, is being developed rapidly.
  More preventive health campaigns are planned. We shall make a real forward drive in the neglected field of health education, setting up an entirely new body, the Health Education Council, for this purpose.

4. Educational Opportunities for All

Our educational aims are two-fold: to give the highest possible standard of education to all children, and to ensure that those with special abilities have the opportunity to develop them to the full.

These aims have to be achieved against an inheritance of acute teacher shortage, oversized classes, old and inadequate school buildings, and a chronically overstrained system of higher education.

Schools

Our first priority is to reduce the size of classes. We shall intensify our efforts to increase the recruitment of teachers, and improve their status in society.

We must also make the most effective use of teachers, by encouraging the use of audio-visual aids and programmed learning; and by providing the teacher with the ancillary help which he increasingly needs.

We shall carry out the largest school building programme in our history. The National Plan shows that the programme will be increased from £84 million in the last year of Tory rule to £138 million in 1969/70.

Equally important, we shall press ahead with our plans to abolish the 11-plus – that barrier to educational opportunity – and re-organise secondary education on comprehensive lines. We have appointed the Public Schools Commission, to recommend the best ways of integrating the Public Schools into the State sector.

New Deal for the School Leaver

Far too many of our young people still leave school at 15, enter jobs with no training prospects and break off all contact with education. We plan to transform this situation by the early 1970s.

The school leaving age will be raised to 16. The new Schools Council is studying ways of making this extra year at school the greatest success.

Industrial Training Boards will increase the range of training opportunities for school leavers. They are not just concerned with the traditional craft skills. They will deal with the office, the shop, and the farm as well as the factory; with girls as well as boys.

There will be a big increase of day-release and block release courses at local colleges of further education. It will become normal, rather than exceptional, for young workers to have part-time education up to the age of at least 18.

There will also be radical improvements in the Youth Employment Service, and in careers advice at school, in accordance with the Albemarle Report.

Finally, a new Minister is energetically creating, through regional sports councils, a new approach to the provision of facilities for sport.

Higher Education

We shall expand higher education provision in the universities, the colleges of education, and the leading technical colleges.

The universities are being assisted to make a growing contribution in science, technology and social studies.

The colleges of education will benefit from our new plans to liberalise their systems of government, giving more academic freedom. We shall encourage the growth of arrangements between the colleges and the universities, to enable more students to take a B.Ed. degree.

In the leading technical colleges we shall rationalise the provision of higher courses, so that there can be a very large expansion combined with very high quality.

The Open University

We shall establish the University of the Air. By using TV and radio communal facilities, high grade correspondence courses and new teaching techniques, this open University will enormously extend the best teaching facilities and give everyone the opportunity of study for a full degree.

It will mean genuine equality of opportunity for millions of people for the first time. Moreover, even for those who prefer not to take a full course, it will bring the widest and best contribution possible to their general level of knowledge and breadth of interests.

Arts and Amenities

Access for all to the best of Britain’s cultural heritage is a wider part of our educational and social purpose, and is one hallmark of a civilised country. That is why we appointed the first Minister for Arts and Leisure.

The 1965 White Paper, “Policy for the Arts”, has inspired a coherent, generous and imaginative approach to the arts and amenities. Already the situation is being transformed, by substantially increased financial support for the Arts Council, purchasing grants for museums, and five times the support for younger artists. A quite new local authority building fund has been initiated. Next year expenditure on the arts will rise by £2½ million.

5. Fair Rents and Mortgages

A secure home for everyone is the most important contribution a community can make to family life. Building houses is only half the job. People need houses at a cost they can afford; and, once in their homes, they need protection against exploitation or eviction.

(i) The New Rent Act

The 1957 Tory Rent Act inflicted injury on hundreds of thousands of families by decontrolling their homes in a period of intense housing shortage. Labour was pledged to annul this social crime. This we have done. In addition to restoring security of tenure to every decontrolled house, we are appointing rent officers and rent assessment committees for fixing fair rents. The new Act also gives basic protection to almost everyone in his home, including the lodger and the worker in his tied cottage. Today it is a crime not merely to evict without a court order but to harass or to persecute anyone in order to force him out or force his rent up.

(ii) Leasehold Enfranchisement

For years socialists have crusaded to redress the grievance of the leaseholder who loses his home without compensation when a long lease comes to an end.

More than one million house-owners will benefit from the Leasehold Enfranchisement Bill which we shall enact.

(iii) A Fair Deal for the Council House Tenant

The new houses we are pledged to build will not help existing tenants of council houses. Indeed most of them will have to contribute towards paying for them by increased rents. Within limits this is fair. But in cities crippled with slums, the burden was becoming too great. Hence the Government’s decision to give special financial relief to selected authorities so that rent increases can be kept within bounds.

(iv) The new Home Ownership Plan

Those who wish to buy their own homes also need help from the State. Until now this mainly took the form of tax remissions on mortgage instalments. The higher the mortgagee’s income bracket and the more expensive his house, the bigger his tax concession. This system is obviously unfair, particularly since the lower paid get nothing at all.

We have therefore announced a new Home Ownership Plan under which each mortgagee will have this choice: to retain his present right to tax concessions – or qualify for a new Government grant which brings down the interest rate on his mortgage by 2j per cent (subject to a minimum of 4 per cent).

With the help of this grant many more wage-earners, especially those with family responsibilities, will be able to buy their own homes. Everyone who joins the Home Ownership Plan will also benefit from a new Government Guarantee which will substantially reduce any deposit he is required to make.

6. Fair Taxation

In an age when taxation is bound to be substantial, it is essential that the tax system should be fair and intelligible. This has not been true of Britain for many years. Among the worst injustices has been the heavy weight of taxation on the average citizen and the very light burden which) as a result of tax avoidance and other devices, is borne by those best able to shoulder it.

To remedy this we have already introduced:

1. A Capital Gains Tax which at last brings into the tax system those large and previously tax-free gains, realised on the sale of shares and securities.

2. A Measure to deal with Business Expense Accounts, by refusing to accept such expenses – except where related to export earnings – as deductions from company or income tax.

3. A Corporation Tax which has the effect both of increasing the taxation of company profits if dividends are raised) and of decreasing them where profits are retained.

We now intend to reinforce these remedies with two new measures: a general tax on betting and gaming, and a Land Levy. The case for the first need not be argued. The second will deal with the grossest example of speculative gains – the difference between the value of land at its existing use and the price received when it is sold for redevelopment.

Reforming the Rates

The most urgent area for tax reform is the rating system. When our reconstruction of local government has been completed, we shall introduce major reforms in local finance.

Meanwhile the worst features of the rating system are being put right:

1. The new system of rate rebates to help the two million hardest hit families should be in operation this year.

2. A new measure of domestic de-rating will relieve all domestic ratepayers of about half the annual increase.

3. Empty properties, now free from rates, will make a contribution.

Part 5: Wider Democracy in the New Britain

To create the new Britain we require an immense effort by the whole community. That effort can only be effective if the machinery of Government, in all its aspects) is refashioned to meet the needs of a modern society.

In the next five years, it is not the power of Government that we shall seek to extend, but its efficiency and intelligence. The truth is that for many of the tasks that they must perform, our institutions are badly organised and ill-equipped.

In the short time that the Government has been in office) a start has been made in reorganising the structure of Government Departments; in setting up new Commissions to overhaul both the Civil Service and Local Government; in convening a Speaker’s Conference to review the electoral system and in the proposal for a Parliamentary Commissioner (or “Ombudsman”) to investigate complaints by the citizens against the Administration.

Law Commissioners have started to revise, consolidate and modernise our ancient laws, to bring them into line with the needs of a modern society. This is a considerable achievement. But it does not go far enough.

1. Reorganising Whitehall

In the interests of efficiency we shall greatly improve the collection, processing and organisation of Government information and statistical services.

We shall streamline the organisation of many departments – for example, in addition to the new unified Ministry of Social Security, by integrating the Colonial Office in the Commonwealth Relations Office, and bringing into the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Land and relevant parts of the Ministry of Public Building and Works.

2. Modernising Parliament

1. Improvement and modernisation of the work of Parliament is essential to reinforce the democratic element in modern Government. Changes must improve procedure and the work of committees, and reform facilities for research and information.

2. Consideration is being given to the broadcasting of Commons proceedings, in order to bring Parliament closer to the people it represents, and to increase the sense of public participation in policy making.

3. The Labour Party has proposed to the Speaker’s Conference the introduction of Votes at Eighteen, to add a necessary political dimension to the increasingly important economic and social position of young people.

4. Finally, legislation will be introduced to safeguard measures approved by the House of Commons from frustration by delay or defeat in the House of Lords.

3. Immigration

In the field of immigration, we shall continue realistic controls, flexibly administered, combined with an imaginative and determined programme to ensure racial equality. Incitement to racial hatred has been outlawed, and financial support given to the positive work of promoting racial harmony. A special committee is now studying the law relating to the position of aliens and Commonwealth immigrants who are refused entry or threatened with deportation.

4. Law Enforcement

For years Britain has been confronted by a rising crime rate, overcrowded prisons and many seriously undermanned police forces.

Strengthening the Police

The slide in numbers has already been checked. Energetic action will now

be taken to build up police strength in those areas confronted with a severe shortage. We shall ensure not only that police resources are used more efficiently, but that they receive the most modern scientific and technological equipment.

There is also an urgent need for fewer – and larger – police forces. This cannot await the reports of the Royal Commission on Local Government. We shall, therefore, press ahead with a vigorous programme of amalgamations, to provide the police with the form of organisation best suited to the battle against crime.

Proposals for dealing with adult and juvenile offenders have been set out in two White Papers. Detailed legislative proposals will be presented early in the next Parliament.

The problem of our out-of-date, overcrowded prisons and borstals remains. The parole system for adult offenders will ease the pressure on accommodation to some extent. But our prisons can only provide a useful reformative influence when we close the doors on some of the worst survivals of mid-19th-century England and transfer the inmates to more modern surroundings where they can do work of some social value.

Part 6: The New Britain and the World

While great tasks await us at home, we must never forget that Britain is part of a world community; that it is involved in the affairs of mankind; that in many areas it has special responsibility which it alone must bear; that it has, more widely, a key role to play.

But what should our objectives be?

• Britain must be committed to realism in Defence;
• Britain must work to strengthen the United Nations which is the main instrument for peace in a divided world;
• Britain must promote nuclear disarmament and work to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons;
• Britain must work to achieve better relations in Europe;
• Britain must not fail to contribute to peace-keeping outside Europe;
• Britain must take the lead in the war on want and deprivation.

1. Realism in Defence

Britain has a key role to play in promoting peaceful change; but Britain’s position has also changed. Although we are a world power with world responsibilities, this is not the 19th century when Britain ruled one-quarter of mankind. We have to see ourselves realistically in the right proportion, not spreading ourselves beyond our means nor failing in our duty.

Britain’s security and influence in the world depend no less on the strength of her economy than on her military power. Excessive and mis-directed defence expenditure by Conservative Governments has weakened our economy without providing forces sufficient to carry out the tasks imposed on them without dangerous overstrain. Labour has carried out a comprehensive review of Britain’s foreign and defence policies to rectify this situation.

The Defence Review has achieved its three objectives:

• (i) It has brought the runaway growth in our defence expenditure under control, and made sure that we get value for the money we spend.
• (ii) It has decided what military tasks and political commitments it will make sense for Britain to undertake within the limits of her resources.
• (iii) It has made certain that our forces will be able to carry out these tasks, without overstrain, with the full range of weapons needed for the job.

By bringing defence spending down to a stable level of about 6 per cent of our national wealth, Labour will be able to direct new capital and skills to vital industrial modernisation. The country will benefit from this new realism in defence.

2. The United Nations

The United Nations is mankind’s chief instrument for preserving the rule of law, promoting peaceful change and fighting poverty. When Labour came to power, the United Nations was rent by dispute. The Labour Government, by contrast to the habitual Conservative disparagement of the United Nations, appointed a Foreign Office Minister to lead Britain’s delegation, helped to resolve the dispute, helped the United Nations to pay its debts and strengthened it by a pledge to make forces available for peace keeping activities. It was at the Security Council of the United Nations that Britain explained her policy for ending the Rhodesian rebellion and won world support to make sanctions effective. Labour will continue to give full support to the authority and efficiency of the United Nations.

3. Nuclear Weapons

Within N.A.T.O. we have given over-riding priority to stopping the further spread of atomic weapons. For this purpose we believe that Labour’s proposal for an Atlantic Nuclear Force remains the best basis for allied discussions, since it allows for legitimate consultation among the members of N.A.T.O. while providing firm guarantees against new fingers on the nuclear trigger. Labour stands by its pledge to internationalise our strategic nuclear forces.

With the appointment in the Foreign Office of a Minister for Disarmament, Britain has exercised increasing influence in the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The Government had a difficult task; the Conservatives had landed Britain with the political dangers of an “independent nuclear deterrent” without in fact producing a deterrent that was truly independent. Labour’s immediate objectives are agreements to stop all nuclear tests and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons; further, Labour will seek agreements to create nuclear-free zones and make possible agreed and verified inter national disarmament.

4. Better Relations in Europe

In seeking to relax tensions in Europe we need to keep the confidence of our allies and to reach understanding with the East. We must be both ready to reach agreement and determined to resist threats. Labour, there fore, firmly supports N.A.T.O. and has greatly increased Britain’s contact and understanding with the Soviet Union and other countries of Eastern Europe. By the end of this year Labour Ministers will have visited nearly all of those countries. By such contact we shall encourage trade and travel and promote that growth of trust which is essential to progress towards disarmament and assured peace. This progress towards normalisation of our relations with Eastern Europe is an essential part of our whole European policy.

Britain is a member of the European Free Trade Association, which is a thriving organisation beneficial to us and to our partners. The Labour Government has taken the lead in promoting an approach by E.F.T.A. to the countries of the European Economic Community so that Western Europe shall not be sharply divided into two conflicting groups. Labour believes that Britain, in consultation with her E.F.T.A. partners, should be ready to enter the European Economic Community, provided essential British and Commonwealth interests are safeguarded.

The Conservative record on relations between Britain and the “Six” is one of notorious and abject failure. Yet Conservatives now talk as if they could take Britain into the Common Market without any conditions or safeguards.

Labour believes that close contact with Europe – joint industrial ventures, scientific co-operation, political and cultural links – can produce among the “Six” that understanding of Britain’s position which is necessary to a wider European unity.

5. Peace-keeping Outside Europe

But it is the world outside Europe that now presents the greatest challenge and the greatest danger to mankind. The greatest problem in Asia is the future of China; this nation could render immeasurable service to mankind, but at present she is embittered and distrustful of the West and menacing to her neighbours. The Labour Government has worked and will continue to work for the granting to the Chinese Government of her rightful place in the Security Council of the United Nations, believing that there her differences with the rest of the world can best be resolved.

Meanwhile the cruel war in Vietnam continues; Labour has consistently urged negotiations to stop the fighting and a settlement which would enable the peoples of North and South Vietnam to determine their own future and which would ensure that the whole country became neutral, without foreign troops or bases. Labour welcomes the readiness of the United States to negotiate on these lines; we still await an equal readiness from North Vietnam. The Labour Government has, through many channels, urged on North Vietnam the wisdom of making peace and these efforts will be continued.

It is through her membership of the Commonwealth that Britain has the best opportunity for contributing to the advancement and well-being of so many peoples in the developing world on the basis of mutual trust and co-operation. Labour created the modern Commonwealth. We have always attached great importance to it as a unique association of peoples, spanning different races and continents of the world.

The Commonwealth needs further new development, if it is to remain a coherent force in world affairs. During the past year, Labour has taken, with the Commonwealth, a number of important initiatives which will greatly affect its future.

Firstly: We have established a Secretariat which will be concerned with planning the future political, organisational and economic relationships of Commonwealth countries.

Secondly: The Commonwealth, as such, took an unprecedented Initiative for peace in establishing the Peace Mission to try to end the tragic conflict in Vietnam. While this initiative was not successful, it nevertheless points to a further and most important development of the Commonwealth.

Thirdly: Britain has made clear, particularly in the confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia, her willingness to assist the new Commonwealth nations when faced with external aggression.

Labour will continue to foster the development of the Commonwealth by participating fully in schemes for financial, economic and technical co-operation.

In just over a year independence arrangements have been made for a quarter of Britain’s remaining Colonial subjects, and a new status, carrying with it the right to opt for independence, has been offered to six Eastern Caribbean islands. This new status is an exciting adventure in Common wealth relations and may well prove a model for other small communities who wish to free themselves from any Colonial stigma and yet remain in close association with Britain.

Constitutional changes have been made in other Colonies, and Labour’s policy remains:

To give independence to all territories which want it and can sustain it. To help all other small dependencies which are unlikely to be able to stand on their own feet to achieve a new post-Colonial status of dignity in association with Britain.

6. The War on Want

In spite of the tremendous economic difficulties we faced, Labour has increased the flow of external aid to developing nations both inside and outside the Commonwealth. The effectiveness of this aid has been greatly increased by the co-ordination and careful scrutiny of programmes undertaken by the new Ministry of Overseas Development While there is an obvious limit to the volume of capital that Britain can afford to export, very much more can be done and will be done to promote the flow of technical advice and assistance. In particular we shall multiply our efforts to assist overseas development through the export of knowledge. The flow of experts will be stimulated by redoubling the recruitment efforts of the Ministry of Overseas Development and by continued support of recruitment by voluntary bodies, private agencies, foundations and the British Council.

We shall make our aid more effective by helping recipient countries to plan their development and to select worthwhile projects on which to spend our aid. We shall continue to lighten the burden of debt by softening the terms of aid. For we recognise that “aid” can be negated by “trade” unless a concerted world effort is made to enable overseas countries to earn the foreign exchange essential to their development programmes. Labour will play a positive part at next year’s United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. We intend to put our full weight behind constructive inter national proposals for increasing and stabilising the export earnings of primary producing countries through international commodity agreements and arrangements for finance; for reduction of trade barriers; and for increasing liquidity for financing world trade, with particular emphasis on schemes for linking the creation of new credits to the needs of underdeveloped countries.

By such means a Labour Government will mobilise increasing resources – in money, expert advice and voluntary effort – to make war on want.

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Postscript

This postscript is also a preface – an introduction to (we believe) four or five years of Labour Government with the Parliamentary majority needed to carry through our plan for a better Britain.

We have already shown that, even with a tiny majority, Labour Government works. But it would be foolish to pretend that we can do all that we mean to do with such a majority; for, make no mistake about it, some of our projects will be bitterly resisted by those whose privileges and interests are threatened.

Already the pattern and the mood are clear. Even Tories admit, in private, that the conduct of Harold Wilson and his colleagues has been far more firm and decisive than they thought it could be. This is a Government that governs: it does not flop along from crisis to crisis as the Tories did, for so much of their 13 years.

Moreover, the motive and inspiration of Labour remain, and always will remain, to secure the prosperity and welfare of all the people – the workers by hand and by brain who must be the backbone of our economic recovery, the old, the sick and the children.

This is not a selfish motive – but you will be doing yourself and your family a good turn by voting Labour on 31st March. After all, you know Labour Government works.