The Labour Party’s manifesto for the 1997 General Election.

New Labour because Britain deserves better

Britain will be better with new Labour

‘Our case is simple: that Britain can and must be better”The vision is one of national renewal, a country with drive, purpose and energy’

‘In each area of policy a new and distinctive approach has been mapped out, one that differs from the old left and the Conservative right. This is why new Labour is new’

‘New Labour is a party of ideas and ideals but not of outdated ideology. What counts is what works. The objectives are radical. The means will be modern’

‘ This is our contract with the people’

I believe in Britain. It is a great country with a great history. The British people are a great people. But I believe Britain can and must be better: better schools, better hospitals, better ways of tackling crime, of building a modern welfare state, of equipping ourselves for a new world economy.

I want a Britain that is one nation, with shared values and purpose, where merit comes before privilege, run for the many not the few, strong and sure of itself at home and abroad.

I want a Britain that does not shuffle into the new millennium afraid of the future, but strides into it with confidence.

I want to renew our country’s faith in the ability of its government and politics to deliver this new Britain. I want to do it by making a limited set of important promises and achieving them. This is the purpose of the bond of trust I set out at the end of this introduction, in which ten specific commitments are put before you. Hold us to them. They are our covenant with you.

I want to renew faith in politics by being honest about the last 18 years. Some things the Conservatives got right. We will not change them. It is where they got things wrong that we will make change. We have no intention or desire to replace one set of dogmas by another.

I want to renew faith in politics through a government that will govern in the interest of the many, the broad majority of people who work hard, play by the rules, pay their dues and feel let down by a political system that gives the breaks to the few, to an elite at the top increasingly out of touch with the rest of us.

And I want, above all, to govern in a way that brings our country together, that unites our nation in facing the tough and dangerous challenges of the new economy and changed society in which we must live. I want a Britain which we all feel part of, in whose future we all have a stake, in which what I want for my own children I want for yours.

A new politics

The reason for having created new Labour is to meet the challenges of a different world. The millennium symbolises a new era opening up for Britain. I am confident about our future prosperity, even optimistic, if we have the courage to change and use it to build a better Britain.

To accomplish this means more than just a change of government. Our aim is no less than to set British political life on a new course for the future.

People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises. That is hardly surprising. There have been few more gross breaches of faith than when the Conservatives under Mr Major promised, before the election of 1992, that they would not raise taxes, but would cut them every year; and then went on to raise them by the largest amount in peacetime history starting in the first Budget after the election. The Exchange Rate Mechanism as the cornerstone of economic policy, Europe, health, crime, schools, sleaze – the broken promises are strewn across the country’s memory.

The Conservatives’ broken promises taint all politics. That is why we have made it our guiding rule not to promise what we cannot deliver; and to deliver what we promise. What follows is not the politics of a 100 days that dazzles for a time, then fizzles out. It is not the politics of a revolution, but of a fresh start, the patient rebuilding and renewing of this country – renewal that can take root and build over time.

That is one way in which politics in Britain will gain a new lease of life. But there is another. We aim to put behind us the bitter political struggles of left and right that have torn our country apart for too many decades. Many of these conflicts have no relevance whatsoever to the modern world – public versus private, bosses versus workers, middle class versus working class. It is time for this country to move on and move forward. We are proud of our history, proud of what we have achieved – but we must learn from our history, not be chained to it.

New Labour

The purpose of new Labour is to give Britain a different political choice: the choice between a failed Conservative government, exhausted and divided in everything other than its desire to cling on to power, and a new and revitalised Labour Party that has been resolute in transforming itself into a party of the future. We have rewritten our constitution, the new Clause IV, to put a commitment to enterprise alongside the commitment to justice. We have changed the way we make policy, and put our relations with the trade unions on a modern footing where they accept they can get fairness but no favours from a Labour government. Our MPs are all now selected by ordinary party members, not small committees or pressure groups. The membership itself has doubled, to over 400,000, with half the members having joined since the last election.

We submitted our draft manifesto, new Labour new life for Britain, to a ballot of all our members, 95 per cent of whom gave it their express endorsement.

We are a national party, supported today by people from all walks of life, from the successful businessman or woman to the pensioner on a council estate. Young people have flooded in to join us in what is the fastest growing youth section of any political party in the western world.

The vision

We are a broad-based movement for progress and justice. New Labour is the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole. Our values are the same: the equal worth of all, with no one cast aside; fairness and justice within strong communities.

But we have liberated these values from outdated dogma or doctrine, and we have applied these values to the modern world.

I want a country in which people get on, do well, make a success of their lives. I have no time for the politics of envy. We need more successful entrepreneurs, not fewer of them. But these life-chances should be for all the people. And I want a society in which ambition and compassion are seen as partners not opposites – where we value public service as well as material wealth.

New Labour believes in a society where we do not simply pursue our own individual aims but where we hold many aims in common and work together to achieve them. How we build the industry and employment opportunities of the future; how we tackle the division and inequality in our society; how we care for and enhance our environment and quality of life; how we develop modern education and health services; how we create communities that are safe, where mutual respect and tolerance are the order of the day. These are things we must achieve together as a country.

The vision is one of national renewal, a country with drive, purpose and energy. A Britain equipped to prosper in a global economy of technological change; with a modern welfare state; its politics more accountable; and confident of its place in the world.

Programme: a new centre and centre-left politics

In each area of policy a new and distinctive approach has been mapped out, one that differs both from the solutions of the old left and those of the Conservative right. This is why new Labour is new. We believe in the strength of our values, but we recognise also that the policies of 1997 cannot be those of 1947 or 1967. More detailed policy has been produced by us than by any opposition in history. Our direction and destination are clear.

The old left would have sought state control of industry. The Conservative right is content to leave all to the market. We reject both approaches. Government and industry must work together to achieve key objectives aimed at enhancing the dynamism of the market, not undermining it.

In industrial relations, we make it clear that there will be no return to flying pickets, secondary action, strikes with no ballots or the trade union law of the 1970s. There will instead be basic minimum rights for the individual at the workplace, where our aim is partnership not conflict between employers and employees.

In economic management, we accept the global economy as a reality and reject the isolationism and ‘go-it-alone’ policies of the extremes of right or left.

In education, we reject both the idea of a return to the 11-plus and the monolithic comprehensive schools that take no account of children’s differing abilities. Instead we favour all-in schooling which identifies the distinct abilities of individual pupils and organises them in classes to maximise their progress in individual subjects. In this way we modernise the comprehensive principle, learning from the experience of its 30 years of application.

In health policy, we will safeguard the basic principles of the NHS, which we founded, but will not return to the top-down management of the 1970s. So we will keep the planning and provision of healthcare separate, but put planning on a longer-term, decentralised and more co-operative basis. The key is to root out unnecessary administrative cost, and to spend money on the right things – frontline care.

On crime, we believe in personal responsibility and in punishing crime, but also tackling its underlying causes – so, tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, different from the Labour approach of the past and the Tory policy of today.

Over-centralisation of government and lack of accountability was a problem in governments of both left and right. Labour is committed to the democratic renewal of our country through decentralisation and the elimination of excessive government secrecy.

In addition, we will face up to the new issues that confront us. We will be the party of welfare reform. In consultation and partnership with the people, we will design a modern welfare state based on rights and duties going together, fit for the modern world.

We will stand up for Britain’s interests in Europe after the shambles of the last six years, but, more than that, we will lead a campaign for reform in Europe. Europe isn’t working in the way this country and Europe need. But to lead means to be involved, to be constructive, to be capable of getting our own way.

We will put concern for the environment at the heart of policy-making, so that it is not an add-on extra, but informs the whole of government, from housing and energy policy through to global warming and international agreements.

We will search out at every turn new ways and new ideas to tackle the new issues: how to encourage more flexible working hours and practices to suit employees and employers alike; how to harness the huge potential of the new information technology; how to simplify the processes of the government machine; how to put public and private sector together in partnership to give us the infrastructure and transport system we need.

We will be a radical government. But the definition of radicalism will not be that of doctrine, whether of left or right, but of achievement. New Labour is a party of ideas and ideals but not of outdated ideology. What counts is what works. The objectives are radical. The means will be modern.

So the party is transformed. The vision is clear. And from that vision stems a modern programme of change and renewal for Britain. We understand that after 18 years of one-party rule, people want change, believe that it is necessary for the country and for democracy, but require faith to make the change.

We therefore set out in the manifesto that follows ten commitments, commitments that form our bond of trust with the people. They are specific. They are real. Judge us on them. Have trust in us and we will repay that trust.

Our mission in politics is to rebuild this bond of trust between government and the people. That is the only way democracy can flourish. I pledge to Britain a government which shares their hopes, which understands their fears, and which will work as partners with and for all our people, not just the privileged few. This is our contract with the people.

Over the five years of a Labour government:

1 Education will be our number one priority, and we will increase the share of national income spent on education as we decrease it on the bills of economic and social failure

2 There will be no increase in the basic or top rates of income tax

3 We will provide stable economic growth with low inflation, and promote dynamic and competitive business and industry at home and abroad

4 We will get 250,000 young unemployed off benefit and into work

5 We will rebuild the NHS, reducing spending on administration and increasing spending on patient care

6 We will be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, and halve the time it takes persistent juvenile offenders to come to court

7 We will help build strong families and strong communities, and lay the foundations of a modern welfare state in pensions and community care

8 We will safeguard our environment, and develop an integrated transport policy to fight congestion and pollution

9 We will clean up politics, decentralise political power throughout the United Kingdom and put the funding of political parties on a proper and accountable basis

10 We will give Britain the leadership in Europe which Britain and Europe need

We have modernised the Labour Party and we will modernise Britain. This means knowing where we want to go; being clear-headed about the country’s future; telling the truth; making tough choices; insisting that all parts of the public sector live within their means; taking on vested interests that hold people back; standing up to unreasonable demands from any quarter; and being prepared to give a moral lead where government has responsibilities it should not avoid.

Britain does deserve better. And new Labour will be better for Britain.

Tony Blair

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We will make education our number one priority

• Cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7 year-olds
• Nursery places for all four year-olds
• Attack low standards in schools
• Access to computer technology
• Lifelong learning through a new University for Industry
• More spending on education as the cost of unemployment falls

Education has been the Tories’ biggest failure. It is Labour’s number one priority.

It is not just good for the individual. It is an economic necessity for the nation. We will compete successfully on the basis of quality or not at all. And quality comes from developing the potential of all our people. It is the people who are our greatest natural asset. We will ensure they can fulfil their potential.

Nearly half of 11 year-olds in England and Wales fail to reach expected standards in English and maths. Britain has a smaller share of 17 and 18 year-olds in full-time education than any major industrial nation. Nearly two thirds of the British workforce lack vocational qualifications.

There are excellent schools in Britain’s state education system. But far too many children are denied the opportunity to succeed. Our task is to raise the standards of every school.

We will put behind us the old arguments that have bedevilled education in this country. We reject the Tories’ obsession with school structures: all parents should be offered real choice through good quality schools, each with its own strengths and individual ethos. There should be no return to the 11-plus. It divides children into successes and failures at far too early an age.

We must modernise comprehensive schools. Children are not all of the same ability, nor do they learn at the same speed. That means ‘setting’ children in classes to maximise progress, for the benefit of high-fliers and slower learners alike. The focus must be on levelling up, not levelling down.

With Labour, the Department for Education and Employment will become a leading office of state. It will give a strong and consistent lead to help raise standards in every school. Standards, more than structures, are the key to success. Labour will never put dogma before children’s education. Our approach will be to intervene where there are problems, not where schools are succeeding.

Labour will never force the abolition of good schools whether in the private or state sector. Any changes in the admissions policies of grammar schools will be decided by local parents. Church schools will retain their distinctive religious ethos.

We wish to build bridges wherever we can across education divides. The educational apartheid created by the public/private divide diminishes the whole education system.

Zero tolerance of underperformance

Every school has the capacity to succeed. All Local Education Authorities (LEAs) must demonstrate that every school is improving. For those failing schools unable to improve, ministers will order a ‘fresh start’ – close the school and start afresh on the same site. Where good schools and bad schools coexist side by side we will authorise LEAs to allow one school to take over the other to set the underperforming school on a new path.

Quality nursery education guaranteed for all four year-olds

Nursery vouchers have been proven not to work. They are costly and do not generate more quality nursery places. We will use the money saved by scrapping nursery vouchers to guarantee places for four year-olds. We will invite selected local authorities to pilot early excellence centres combining education and care for the under-fives. We will set targets for universal provision for three year-olds whose parents want it.

New focus on standards in primary schools

Primary schools are the key to mastering the basics and developing in every child an eagerness to learn.

Every school needs baseline assessment of pupils when they enter the school, and a year-on-year target for improvement.

We will reduce class sizes for five, six and seven year-olds to 30 or under, by phasing out the assisted places scheme, the cost of which is set to rise to £180 million per year.

We must recognise the three ‘r’s for what they are – building blocks of all learning that must be taught better. We will achieve this by improving the skills of the teaching force; ensuring a stronger focus on literacy in the curriculum; and piloting literacy summer schools to meet our new target that within a decade every child leaves primary school with a reading age of at least 11 (barely half do today).

Our numeracy taskforce will develop equally ambitious targets. We will encourage the use of the most effective teaching methods, including phonics for reading and whole class interactive teaching for maths.

Attacking educational disadvantage

No matter where a school is, Labour will not tolerate under-achievement.

Public/private partnerships will improve the condition of school buildings.

There will be education action zones to attack low standards by recruiting the best teachers and head teachers to under-achieving schools; by supporting voluntary mentoring schemes to provide one-to-one support for disadvantaged pupils; and by creating new opportunities for children, after the age of 14, to enhance their studies by acquiring knowledge and experience within industry and commerce.

To attack under-achievement in urban areas, we have developed a new scheme with the Premier League. In partnerships between central government, local government and football clubs, study support centres will be set up at Premier League grounds for the benefit of local children. The scheme will be launched on a pilot basis during the 1997/8 season.

We support the greatest possible integration into mainstream education of pupils with special educational needs, while recognising that specialist facilities are essential to meet particular needs.

Realising the potential of new technology

Labour is the pioneer of new thinking. We have agreed with British Telecom and the cable companies that they will wire up schools, libraries, colleges and hospitals to the information superhighway free of charge. We have also secured agreement to make access charges as low as possible.

For the Internet we plan a National Grid for Learning, franchised as a public/private partnership, which will bring to teachers up-to-date materials to enhance their skills, and to children high-quality educational materials. We will use lottery money to improve the skills of existing teachers in information technology.

In opposition, Labour set up the independent Stevenson Commission to promote access for children to new technology. Its recent report is a challenging programme for the future. We are urgently examining how to implement its plans, in particular the development of educational software through a grading system which will provide schools with guarantees of product quality; and the provision for every child of an individual email address. An independent standing committee will continue to advise us on the implementation of our plans in government.

The role of parents

We will increase the powers and responsibilities of parents.

There will be more parent governors and, for the first time, parent representatives on LEAs.

A major objective is to promote a culture of responsibility for learning within the family, through contracts between all schools and parents, defining the responsibilities of each. National guidelines will establish minimum periods for homework for primary and secondary school pupils.

Teachers will be entitled to positive support from parents to promote good attendance and sound discipline. Schools suffer from unruly and disruptive pupils. Exclusion or suspension may sometimes be necessary. We will, however, pilot new pupil referral units so that schools are protected but these pupils are not lost to education or the country.

New job description for LEAs

The judge and jury of LEA performance will be their contribution to raising standards.

LEAs are closer to schools than central government, and have the authority of being locally elected. But they will be required to devolve power, and more of their budgets, to heads and governors. LEA performance will be inspected by Ofsted and the Audit Commission. Where authorities are deemed to be failing, the secretary of state may suspend the relevant powers of the LEA and send in an improvement team.

Grant maintained schools

Schools that are now grant maintained will prosper with Labour’s proposals, as will every school.

Tory claims that Labour will close these schools are false. The system of funding will not discriminate unfairly either between schools or between pupils. LEAs will be represented on governing bodies, but will not control them. We support guidelines for open and fair admissions, along the lines of those introduced in 1993; but we will also provide a right of appeal to an independent panel in disputed cases.

Teachers: pressure and support

Schools are critically dependent on the quality of all staff. The majority of teachers are skilful and dedicated, but some fall short. We will improve teacher training, and ensure that all teachers have an induction year when they first qualify, to ensure their suitability for teaching.

There will be a general teaching council to speak for and raise standards in the profession. We will create a new grade of teachers to recognise the best. There will, however, be speedy, but fair, procedures to remove teachers who cannot do the job.

The strength of a school is critically dependent on the quality of its head. We will establish mandatory qualifications for the post. A head teacher will be appointed to a position only when fully trained to accept the responsibility.

Higher education

The improvement and expansion needed cannot be funded out of general taxation. Our proposals for funding have been made to the Dearing Committee, in line with successful policies abroad.

The costs of student maintenance should be repaid by graduates on an income-related basis, from the career success to which higher education has contributed. The current system is badly administered and payback periods are too short. We will provide efficient administration, with fairness ensured by longer payback periods where required.

Lifelong learning

We must learn throughout life, to retain employment through new and improved skills. We will promote adult learning both at work and in the critical sector of further education.

In schools and colleges, we support broader A-levels and upgraded vocational qualifications, underpinned by rigorous standards and key skills.

Employers have the primary responsibility for training their workforces in job-related skills. But individuals should be given the power to invest in training. We will invest public money for training in Individual Learning Accounts which individuals – for example women returning to the labour force – can then use to gain the skills they want. We will kickstart the programme for up to a million people, using £150 million of TEC money which could be better used and which would provide a contribution of £150, alongside individuals making small investments of their own. Employers will be encouraged to make voluntary contributions to these funds. We will also promote the extension of the Investors in People initiative into many more small firms.

Our new University for Industry, collaborating with the Open University, will bring new opportunities to adults seeking to develop their potential. This will bring government, industry and education together to create a new resource whose remit will be to use new technology to enhance skills and education. The University for Industry will be a public/private partnership, commissioning software and developing the links to extend lifelong learning.

Government spending on education

The Conservatives have cut government spending on education as a share of national income by the equivalent of more than £3 billion as spending on the bills of economic and social failure has risen. We are committed to reversing this trend of spending. Over the course of a five-year Parliament, as we cut the costs of economic and social failure we will raise the proportion of national income spent on education.

We will promote personal prosperity for all

• Economic stability to promote investment
• Tough inflation target, mortgage rates as low as possible
• Stick for two years within existing spending limits
• Five-year pledge: no increase in income tax rates
• Long-term objective of ten pence starting rate of income tax
• Early Budget to get people off welfare and into work

The Conservatives have in 18 years created the two longest, deepest recessions this century.

We have experienced the slowest average growth rate of any similar period since the second world war. There has been a fundamental failure to tackle the underlying causes of inflation, of low growth and of unemployment. These are:

• too much economic instability, with wild swings from boom to bust
• too little investment in education and skills, and in the application of new technologies
• too few opportunities to find jobs, start new businesses or become self-employed
• too narrow an industrial base and too little sense of common purpose in the workplace or across the nation.

Britain can do better. We must build on the British qualities of inventiveness, creativity and adaptability. New Labour’s objective is to improve living standards for the many, not just the few. Business can and must succeed in raising productivity. This requires a combination of a skilled and educated workforce with investment in the latest technological innovations, as the route to higher wages and employment.

An explicit objective of a Labour government will be to raise the trend rate of growth by strengthening our wealth-creating base. We will nurture investment in industry, skills, infrastructure and new technologies. And we will attack long-term unemployment, especially among young people. Our goal will be educational and employment opportunities for all.

Economic stability is the essential platform for sustained growth. In a global economy the route to growth is stability not inflation. The priority must be stable, low-inflation conditions for long-term growth. The root causes of inflation and low growth are the same – an economic and industrial base that remains weak. Government cannot solve all economic problems or end the economic cycle. But by spending wisely and taxing fairly, government can help tackle the problems. Our goals are low inflation, rising living standards and high and stable levels of employment.

Spending and tax: new Labour’s approach

The myth that the solution to every problem is increased spending has been comprehensively dispelled under the Conservatives. Spending has risen. But more spending has brought neither greater fairness nor less poverty. Quite the reverse – our society is more divided than it has been for generations. The level of public spending is no longer the best measure of the effectiveness of government action in the public interest. It is what money is actually spent on that counts more than how much money is spent.

The national debt has doubled under John Major. The public finances remain weak. A new Labour government will give immediate high priority to seeing how public money can be better used.

New Labour will be wise spenders, not big spenders. We will work in partnership with the private sector to achieve our goals. We will ask about public spending the first question that a manager in any company would ask – can existing resources be used more effectively to meet our priorities? And because efficiency and value for money are central, ministers will be required to save before they spend.

Save to invest is our approach, not tax and spend.

The increase in taxes under the Conservatives is the most dramatic evidence of economic failure. Since 1992 the typical family has paid more than £2,000 in extra taxes – the biggest tax hike in peacetime history, breaking every promise made by John Major at the last election. The tragedy is that those hardest hit are least able to pay. That is why we strongly opposed the imposition of VAT on fuel: it was Labour that stopped the government from increasing VAT on fuel to 17. 5 per cent.

Taxation is not neutral in the way it raises revenue. How and what governments tax sends clear signals about the economic activities they believe should be encouraged or discouraged, and the values they wish to entrench in society. Just as, for example, work should be encouraged through the tax system, environmental pollution should be discouraged.

New Labour will establish a new trust on tax with the British people. The promises we make we will keep. The principles that will underpin our tax policy are clear:

• to encourage employment opportunities and work incentives for all
• to promote savings and investment
• and to be fair and be seen to be fair.

New Labour is not about high taxes on ordinary families. It is about social justice and a fair deal.

New Labour therefore makes the following economic pledges.

Fair taxes

There will be no return to the penal tax rates that existed under both Labour and Conservative governments in the 1970s.

To encourage work and reward effort, we are pledged not to raise the basic or top rates of income tax throughout the next Parliament.

Our long-term objective is a lower starting rate of income tax of ten pence in the pound. Reducing the high marginal rates at the bottom end of the earning scale – often 70 or 80 per cent – is not only fair but desirable to encourage employment.

This goal will benefit the many, not the few. It is in sharp contrast to the Tory goal of abolishing capital gains and inheritance tax, at least half the benefit of which will go to the richest 5,000 families in the country.

We will cut VAT on fuel to five per cent, the lowest level allowed.

We renew our pledge not to extend VAT to food, children’s clothes, books and newspapers and public transport fares.

We will also examine the interaction of the tax and benefits systems so that they can be streamlined and modernised, so as to fulfil our objectives of promoting work incentives, reducing poverty and welfare dependency, and strengthening community and family life.

No risks with inflation

We will match the current target for low and stable inflation of 2. 5 per cent or less. We will reform the Bank of England to ensure that decision-making on monetary policy is more effective, open, accountable and free from short-term political manipulation.

Strict rules for government borrowing

We will enforce the ‘golden rule’ of public spending – over the economic cycle, we will only borrow to invest and not to fund current expenditure.

We will ensure that – over the economic cycle – public debt as a proportion of national income is at a stable and prudent level.

Stick to planned public spending allocations for the first two years of office

Our decisions have not been taken lightly. They are a recognition of Conservative mismanagement of the public finances. For the next two years Labour will work within the departmental ceilings for spending already announced. We will resist unreasonable demands on the public purse, including any unreasonable public sector pay demands.

Switch spending from economic failure to investment

We will conduct a central spending review and departmental reviews to assess how to use resources better, while rooting out waste and inefficiency in public spending.

Labour priorities in public spending are different from Tory priorities.

Tax reform to promote saving and investment

We will introduce a new individual savings account and extend the principle of TESSAs and PEPs to promote long-term saving. We will review the corporate and capital gains tax regimes to see how the tax system can promote greater long-term investment.

Labour’s welfare-to-work Budget

We will introduce a Budget within two months after the election to begin the task of equipping the British economy and reforming the welfare state to get young people and the long-term unemployed back to work. This welfare-to-work programme will be funded by a windfall levy on the excess profits of the privatised utilities, introduced in this Budget after we have consulted the regulators.

We will help create successful and profitable businesses

• Backing business: skills, infrastructure, new markets
• Gains for consumers with tough competition law
• New measures to help small businesses
• National minimum wage to tackle low pay
• Boost local economic growth with Regional Development Agencies
• A strong and effective voice in Europe

New Labour offers business a new deal for the future. We will leave intact the main changes of the 1980s in industrial relations and enterprise. We see healthy profits as an essential motor of a dynamic market economy, and believe they depend on quality products, innovative entrepreneurs and skilled employees. We will build a new partnership with business to improve the competitiveness of British industry for the 21st century, leading to faster growth.

Many of the fundamentals of the British economy are still weak. Low pay and low skills go together: insecurity is the consequence of economic instability; the absence of quality jobs is a product of the weakness of our industrial base; we suffer from both high unemployment and skills shortages. There is no future for Britain as a low wage economy: we cannot compete on wages with countries paying a tenth or a hundredth of British wages.

We need to win on higher quality, skill, innovation and reliability. With Labour, British and inward investors will find this country an attractive and profitable place to do business.

New Labour believes in a flexible labour market that serves employers and employees alike. But flexibility alone is not enough. We need ‘flexibility plus’:

• plus higher skills and higher standards in our schools and colleges
• plus policies to ensure economic stability
• plus partnership with business to raise investment in infrastructure, science and research and to back small firms
• plus new leadership from Britain to reform Europe, in place of the current policy of drift and disengagement from our largest market
• plus guaranteeing Britain’s membership of the single market – indeed opening up further markets inside and outside the EU – helping make Britain an attractive place to do business
• plus minimum standards of fair treatment, including a national minimum wage
• plus an imaginative welfare-to-work programme to put the long-term unemployed back to work and to cut social security costs.

A reformed and tougher competition law

Competitiveness abroad must begin with competition at home. Effective competition can bring value and quality to consumers. As an early priority we will reform Britain’s competition law. We will adopt a tough ‘prohibitive’ approach to deter anti-competitive practices and abuses of market power.

In the utility industries we will promote competition wherever possible. Where competition is not an effective discipline, for example in the water industry which has a poor environmental record and has in most cases been a tax-free zone, we will pursue tough, efficient regulation in the interests of customers, and, in the case of water, in the interests of the environment as well. We recognise the need for open and predictable regulation which is fair both to consumers and to shareholders and at the same time provides incentives for managers to innovate and improve efficiency.

Reinvigorate the Private Finance Initiative

Britain’s infrastructure is dangerously run down: parts of our road and rail network are seriously neglected, and all too often our urban environment has been allowed to deteriorate.

Labour pioneered the idea of public/private partnerships. It is Labour local authorities which have done most to create these partnerships at local level.

A Labour government will overcome the problems that have plagued the PFI at a national level. We will set priorities between projects, saving time and expense; we will seek a realistic allocation of risk between the partners to a project; and we will ensure that best practice is spread throughout government. We will aim to simplify and speed up the planning process for major infrastructure projects of vital national interest.

We will ensure that self-financing commercial organisations within the public sector – the Post Office is a prime example – are given greater commercial freedom to make the most of new opportunities.

Backing small business

The number of small employers has declined by half a million since 1990. Support for small businesses will have a major role in our plans for economic growth. We will cut unnecessary red tape; provide for statutory interest on late payment of debts; improve support for high-tech start-ups; improve the quality and relevance of advice and training through a reformed Business Links network and the University for Industry; and assist firms to enter overseas markets more effectively.

Local economic growth

Prosperity needs to be built from the bottom up. We will establish one-stop regional development agencies to co-ordinate regional economic development, help small business and encourage inward investment. Many regions are already taking informal steps to this end and they will be supported.

Strengthen our capability in science, technology and design

The UK must be positively committed to the global pursuit of new knowledge, with a strong science base in our universities and centres of excellence leading the world. The Dearing Committee represents a significant opportunity to promote high-quality standards in science teaching and research throughout UK higher education. We support a collaborative approach between researchers and business, spreading the use of new technology and good design, and exploiting our own inventions to boost business in the UK.

Promoting new green technologies and businesses

There is huge potential to develop Britain’s environmental technology industries to create jobs, win exports and protect the environment.

Effective environmental management is an increasingly important component of modern business practice. We support a major push to promote energy conservation – particularly by the promotion of home energy efficiency schemes, linked to our environment taskforce for the under-25s. We are committed to an energy policy designed to promote cleaner, more efficient energy use and production, including a new and strong drive to develop renewable energy sources such as solar and wind energy, and combined heat and power. We see no economic case for the building of any new nuclear power stations.

Key elements of the 1980s trade union reforms to stay

There must be minimum standards for the individual at work, including a minimum wage, within a flexible labour market. We need a sensible balance in industrial relations law – rights and duties go together.

The key elements of the trade union legislation of the 1980s will stay – on ballots, picketing and industrial action. People should be free to join or not to join a union. Where they do decide to join, and where a majority of the relevant workforce vote in a ballot for the union to represent them, the union should be recognised. This promotes stable and orderly industrial relations. There will be full consultation on the most effective means of implementing this proposal.

Partnership at work

The best companies recognise their employees as partners in the enterprise. Employees whose conditions are good are more committed to their companies and are more productive. Many unions and employers are embracing partnership in place of conflict. Government should welcome this.

We are keen to encourage a variety of forms of partnership and enterprise, spreading ownership and encouraging more employees to become owners through Employee Share Ownership Plans and co-operatives. We support too the Social Chapter of the EU, but will deploy our influence in Europe to ensure that it develops so as to promote employability and competitiveness, not inflexibility.

A sensibly set national minimum wage

There should be a statutory level beneath which pay should not fall – with the minimum wage decided not on the basis of a rigid formula but according to the economic circumstances of the time and with the advice of an independent low pay commission, whose membership will include representatives of employers, including small business, and employees.

Every modern industrial country has a minimum wage, including the US and Japan. Britain used to have minimum wages through the Wages Councils. Introduced sensibly, the minimum wage will remove the worst excesses of low pay (and be of particular benefit to women), while cutting some of the massive £4 billion benefits bill by which the taxpayer subsidises companies that pay very low wages.

We will get the unemployed from welfare to work

• Stop the growth of an ‘underclass’ in Britain
• 250,000 young unemployed off benefit and into work
• Tax cuts for employers who create new jobs for the long-term unemployed
• Effective help for lone parents

There are over one million fewer jobs in Britain than in 1990. One in five families has no one working. One million single mothers are trapped on benefits. There is a wider gap between rich and poor than for generations.

We are determined not to continue down the road of a permanent have-not class, unemployed and disaffected from society. Our long-term objective is high and stable levels of employment. This is the true meaning of a stakeholder economy – where everyone has a stake in society and owes responsibilities to it.

The best way to tackle poverty is to help people into jobs – real jobs. The unemployed have a responsibility to take up the opportunity of training places or work, but these must be real opportunities. The government’s workfare proposals – with a success rate of one in ten – fail this test.

Labour’s welfare-to-work programme will attack unemployment and break the spiral of escalating spending on social security. A one-off windfall levy on the excess profits of the privatised utilities will fund our ambitious programme.

Every young person unemployed for more than six months in a job or training

We will give 250,000 under-25s opportunities for work, education and training. Four options will be on offer, each involving day-release education or training leading to a qualification: private-sector job: employers will be offered a 60 pound-a-week rebate for six months work with a non-profit voluntary sector employer, paying a weekly wage, equivalent to benefit plus a fixed sum for six months full-time study for young people without qualifications on an approved course a job with the environment taskforce, linked to Labour’s citizens’ service programme. Rights and responsibilities must go hand in hand, without a fifth option of life on full benefit.

Every 16 and 17 year-old on the road to a proper qualification by the year 2000

Nearly a third of young people do not achieve an NVQ level two qualification by age 19. All young people will be offered part-time or full-time education after the age of 16. Any under-18 year-old in a job will have the right to study on an approved course for qualifications at college. We will replace the failed Youth Training scheme with our new Target 2000 programme, offering young people high-quality education and training.

Action on long-term unemployment

New partnerships between government and business, fully involving local authorities and the voluntary sector, will attack long-term joblessness. We will encourage employers to take on those who have suffered unemployment for more than two years with a 75 pound-a-week tax rebate paid for six months, financed by the windfall levy. Our programme for the phased release of past receipts from council house sales will provide new jobs in the construction industry.

Lone parents into work

Today the main connection between unemployed lone parents and the state is their benefits. Most lone parents want to work, but are given no help to find it. New Labour has a positive policy. Once the youngest child is in the second term of full-time school, lone parents will be offered advice by a proactive Employment Service to develop a package of job search, training and after-school care to help them off benefit.

Customised, personalised services

We favour initiatives with new combinations of available benefits to suit individual circumstances. In new and innovative ‘Employment Zones’, personal job accounts will combine money currently available for benefits and training, to offer the unemployed new options – leading to work and independence. We will co-ordinate benefits, employment and career services, and utilise new technology to improve their quality and efficiency.

Fraud

Just as we owe it to the taxpayer to crack down on tax avoidance, so we must crack down on dishonesty in the benefit system. We will start with a clampdown on Housing Benefit fraud, estimated to cost £2 billion a year, and will maintain action against benefit fraud of all kinds.

We will save the NHS

• 100,000 people off waiting lists
• End the Tory internal market
• End waiting for cancer surgery
• Tough quality targets for hospitals
• Independent food standards agency
• New public health drive
• Raise spending in real terms every year – and spend the money on patients not bureaucracy

Labour created the NHS 50 years ago. It is under threat from the Conservatives. We want to save and modernise the NHS.

But if the Conservatives are elected again there may well not be an NHS in five years’ time – neither national nor comprehensive. Labour commits itself anew to the historic principle: that if you are ill or injured there will be a national health service there to help; and access to it will be based on need and need alone – not on your ability to pay, or on who your GP happens to be or on where you live.

In 1990 the Conservatives imposed on the NHS a complex internal market of hospitals competing to win contracts from health authorities and fundholding GPs. The result is an NHS strangled by costly red tape, with every individual transaction the subject of a separate invoice. After six years, bureaucracy swallows an extra £1.5 billion per year; there are 20,000 more managers and 50,000 fewer nurses on the wards; and more than one million people are on waiting lists. The government has consistently failed to meet even its own health targets.

There can be no return to top-down management, but Labour will end the Conservatives’ internal market in healthcare. The planning and provision of care are necessary and distinct functions, and will remain so. But under the Tories, the administrative costs of purchasing care have undermined provision and the market system has distorted clinical priorities. Labour will cut costs by removing the bureaucratic processes of the internal market.

The savings achieved will go on direct care for patients. As a start, the first £100 million saved will treat an extra 100,000 patients. We will end waiting for cancer surgery, thereby helping thousands of women waiting for breast cancer treatment.

Primary care will play a lead role

In recent years, GPs have gained power on behalf of their patients in a changed relationship with consultants, and we support this. But the development of GP fundholding has also brought disadvantages. Decision-making has been fragmented. Administrative costs have grown. And a two-tier service has resulted.

Labour will retain the lead role for primary care but remove the disadvantages that have come from the present system. GPs and nurses will take the lead in combining together locally to plan local health services more efficiently for all the patients in their area. This will enable all GPs in an area to bring their combined strength to bear upon individual hospitals to secure higher standards of patient provision. In making this change, we will build on the existing collaborative schemes which already serve 14 million people.

The current system of year-on-year contracts is costly and unstable. We will introduce three- to five-year agreements between the local primary care teams and hospitals. Hospitals will then be better able to plan work at full capacity and co-operate to enhance patient services.

Higher-quality services for patients

Hospitals will retain their autonomy over day-to-day administrative functions, but, as part of the NHS, they will be required to meet high-quality standards in the provision of care. Management will be held to account for performance levels. Boards will become more representative of the local communities they serve. A new patients’ charter will concentrate on the quality and success of treatment. The Tories’ so-called ‘Efficiency Index’ counts the number of patient ‘episodes’, not the quality or success of treatment. With Labour, the measure will be quality of outcome, itself an incentive for effectiveness. As part of our concern to ensure quality, we will work towards the elimination of mixed-sex wards.

Health authorities will become the guardians of high standards. They will monitor services, spread best practice and ensure rising standards of care.

The Tory attempt to use private money to build hospitals has failed to deliver. Labour will overcome the problems that have plagued the Private Finance Initiative, end the delays, sort out the confusion and develop new forms of public/private partnership that work better and protect the interests of the NHS. Labour is opposed to the privatisation of clinical services which is being actively promoted by the Conservatives.

Labour will promote new developments in telemedicine – bringing expert advice from regional centres of excellence to neighbourhood level using new technology.

Good health

A new minister for public health will attack the root causes of ill health, and so improve lives and save the NHS money. Labour will set new goals for improving the overall health of the nation which recognise the impact that poverty, poor housing, unemployment and a polluted environment have on health.

Smoking is the greatest single cause of preventable illness and premature death in the UK. We will therefore ban tobacco advertising.

Labour will establish an independent food standards agency. The £3.5 billion BSE crisis and the E. coli outbreak which resulted in serious loss of life, have made unanswerable the case for the independent agency we have proposed.

NHS spending

The Conservatives have wasted spending on the NHS. We will do better. We will raise spending on the NHS in real terms every year and put the money towards patient care. And a greater proportion of every pound spent will go on patient care not bureaucracy.

An NHS for the future

The NHS requires continuity as well as change, or the system cannot cope. There must be pilots to ensure that change works. And there must be flexibility, not rigid prescription, if innovation is to flourish.

Our fundamental purpose is simple but hugely important: to restore the NHS as a public service working co-operatively for patients, not a commercial business driven by competition.

We will be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime

• Fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders
• Reform Crown Prosecution Service to convict more criminals
• Police on the beat not pushing paper
• Crackdown on petty crimes and neighbourhood disorder
• Fresh parliamentary vote to ban all handguns

Under the Conservatives, crime has doubled and many more criminals get away with their crimes: the number of people convicted has fallen by a third, with only one crime in 50 leading to a conviction. This is the worst record of any government since the Second World War – and for England and Wales the worst record of any major industrialised country. Last year alone violent crime rose 11 per cent.

We propose a new approach to law and order: tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. We insist on individual responsibility for crime, and will attack the causes of crime by our measures to relieve social deprivation.

The police have our strong support. They are in the front line of the fight against crime and disorder. The Conservatives have broken their 1992 general election pledge to provide an extra 1,000 police officers. We will relieve the police of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens to get more officers back on the beat.

Youth crime

Youth crime and disorder have risen sharply, but very few young offenders end up in court, and when they do half are let off with another warning. Young offenders account for seven million crimes a year.

Far too often young criminals offend again and again while waiting months for a court hearing. We will halve the time it takes to get persistent young offenders from arrest to sentencing; replace widespread repeat cautions with a single final warning; bring together Youth Offender Teams in every area; and streamline the system of youth courts to make it far more effective.

New parental responsibility orders will make parents face up to their responsibility for their children’s misbehaviour.

Conviction and sentencing

The job of the Crown Prosecution Service is to prosecute criminals effectively. There is strong evidence that the CPS is over-centralised, bureaucratic and inefficient, with cases too often dropped, delayed, or downgraded to lesser offences.

Labour will decentralise the CPS, with local crown prosecutors co-operating more effectively with local police forces.

We will implement an effective sentencing system for all the main offences to ensure greater consistency and stricter punishment for serious repeat offenders. The courts will have to spell out what each sentence really means in practice. The Court of Appeal will have a duty to lay down sentencing guidelines for all the main offences. The attorney general’s power to appeal unduly lenient sentences will be extended.

The prison service now faces serious financial problems. We will audit the resources available, take proper ministerial responsibility for the service, and seek to ensure that prison regimes are constructive and require inmates to face up to their offending behaviour.

Disorder

The Conservatives have forgotten the ‘order’ part of ‘law and order’. We will tackle the unacceptable level of anti-social behaviour and crime on our streets. Our ‘zero tolerance’ approach will ensure that petty criminality among young offenders is seriously addressed.

Community safety orders will deal with threatening and disruptive criminal neighbours. Labour has taken the lead in proposing action to tackle the problems of stalking and domestic violence.

Child protection orders will deal with young children suffering neglect by parents because they are left out on their own far too late at night.

Britain is a multiracial and multicultural society. All its members must have the protection of the law. We will create a new offence of racial harassment and a new crime of racially motivated violence to protect ethnic minorities from intimidation.

Drugs

The vicious circle of drugs and crime wrecks lives and threatens communities. Labour will appoint an anti-drugs supremo to co-ordinate our battle against drugs across all government departments. The ‘drug czar’ will be a symbol of our commitment to tackle the modern menace of drugs in our communities.

We will pilot the use of compulsory drug testing and treatment orders for offenders to ensure that the link between drug addiction and crime is broken. This will be paid for by bringing remand delays down to the national targets.

We will attack the drug problem in prisons. In addition to random drug testing of all prisoners we will aim for a voluntary testing unit in every prison for prisoners ready to prove they are drug-free.

Victims

Victims of crime are too often neglected by the criminal justice system. We will ensure that victims are kept fully informed of the progress of their case, and why charges may have been downgraded or dropped.

Greater protection will be provided for victims in rape and serious sexual offence trials and for those subject to intimidation, including witnesses.

Prevention

We will place a new responsibility on local authorities to develop statutory partnerships to help prevent crime. Local councils will then be required to set targets for the reduction of crime and disorder in their area.

Gun control

In the wake of Dunblane and Hungerford, it is clear that only the strictest firearms laws can provide maximum safety. The Conservatives failed to offer the protection required. Labour led the call for an outright ban on all handguns in general civilian use. There will be legislation to allow individual MPs a free vote for a complete ban on handguns.

Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today.

We will strengthen family life

• Help parents balance work and family
• Security in housing and help for homeowners
• Tackle homelessness using receipts from council house sales
• Dignity and security in retirement
• Protect the basic state pension and promote secure second pensions

We will uphold family life as the most secure means of bringing up our children. Families are the core of our society. They should teach right from wrong. They should be the first defence against anti-social behaviour. The breakdown of family life damages the fabric of our society.

Labour does not see families and the state as rival providers for the needs of our citizens. Families should provide the day-to-day support for children to be brought up in a stable and loving environment. But families cannot flourish unless government plays its distinctive role: in education; where necessary, in caring for the young; in making adequate provision for illness and old age; in supporting good parenting; and in protecting families from lawlessness and abuse of power. Society, through government, must assist families to achieve collectively what no family can achieve alone.

Yet families in Britain today are under strain as never before. The security once offered by the health service has been undermined. Streets are not safe. Housing insecurity grows. One in five non-pensioner families has no one working; and British men work the longest hours in Europe.

The clock should not be turned back. As many women who want to work should be able to do so. More equal relationships between men and women have transformed our lives. Equally, our attitudes to race, sex and sexuality have changed fundamentally. Our task is to combine change and social stability.

Work and family

Families without work are without independence. This is why we give so much emphasis to our welfare-to-work policies.

Labour’s national childcare strategy will plan provision to match the requirements of the modern labour market and help parents, especially women, to balance family and working life.

There must be a sound balance between support for family life and the protection of business from undue burdens – a balance which some of the most successful businesses already strike. The current government has shown itself wholly insensitive to the need to help develop family-friendly working practices. While recognising the need for flexibility in implementation and for certain exemptions, we support the right of employees not to be forced to work more than 48 hours a week; to an annual holiday entitlement; and to limited unpaid parental leave. These measures will provide a valuable underpinning to family life.

The rights of part-time workers have been clarified by recent court judgements which we welcome.

We will keep under continuous review all aspects of the tax and benefits systems to ensure that they are supportive of families and children. We are committed to retain universal Child Benefit where it is universal today – from birth to age 16 – and to uprate it at least in line with prices. We are reviewing educational finance and maintenance for those older than 16 to ensure higher staying-on rates at school and college, and that resources are used to support those in most need. This review will continue in government on the guidelines we have already laid down.

Security in housing

Most families want to own their own homes. We will also support efficiently run social and private rented sectors offering quality and choice.

The Conservatives’ failure on housing has been twofold. The two thirds of families who own their homes have suffered a massive increase in insecurity over the last decade, with record mortgage arrears, record negative equity and record repossessions. And the Conservatives’ lack of a housing strategy has led to the virtual abandonment of social housing, the growth of homelessness, and a failure to address fully leaseholder reform. All these are the Tory legacy.

Labour’s housing strategy will address the needs of homeowners and tenants alike.

We will reject the boom and bust policies which caused the collapse of the housing market.

We will work with mortgage providers to encourage greater provision of more flexible mortgages to protect families in a world of increased job insecurity.

Mortgage buyers also require stronger consumer protection, for example by extension of the Financial Services Act, against the sale of disadvantageous mortgage packages.

The problems of gazumping have reappeared. Those who break their bargains should be liable to pay the costs inflicted on others, in particular legal and survey costs. We are consulting on the best way of tackling the problems of gazumping in the interests of responsible home buyers and sellers.

The rented housing sector

We support a three-way partnership between the public, private and housing association sectors to promote good social housing. With Labour, capital receipts from the sale of council houses, received but not spent by local councils, will be re-invested in building new houses and rehabilitating old ones. This will be phased to match the capacity of the building industry and to meet the requirements of prudent economic management.

We also support effective schemes to deploy private finance to improve the public housing stock and to introduce greater diversity and choice. Such schemes should only go ahead with the support of the tenants concerned: we oppose the government’s threat to hand over council housing to private landlords without the consent of tenants and with no guarantees on rents or security of tenure.

We value a revived private rented sector. We will provide protection where most needed: for tenants in houses in multiple occupation. There will be a proper system of licensing by local authorities which will benefit tenants and responsible landlords alike.

We will introduce ‘commonhold’, a new form of tenure enabling people living in flats to own their homes individually and to own the whole property collectively. We will simplify the current rules restricting the purchase of freeholds by leaseholders.

Homelessness

Homelessness has more than doubled under the Conservatives. Today more than 40,000 families in England are in expensive temporary accommodation. The government, in the face of Labour opposition, has removed the duty on local authorities to find permanent housing for homeless families. We will impose a new duty on local authorities to protect those who are homeless through no fault of their own and are in priority need.

There is no more powerful symbol of Tory neglect in our society today than young people without homes living rough on the streets. Young people emerging from care without any family support are particularly vulnerable. We will attack the problem in two principal ways: the phased release of capital receipts from council house sales will increase the stock of housing for rent; and our welfare-to-work programme will lead the young unemployed into work and financial independence.

Older citizens

We value the positive contribution that older people make to our society, through their families, voluntary activities and work. Their skills and experience should be utilised within their communities. That is why, for example, we support the proposal to involve older people as volunteers to help children learn in pre-school and after-school clubs. In work, they should not be discriminated against because of their age.

The provision of adequate pensions in old age is a major challenge for the future. For today’s pensioners Conservative policies have created real poverty, growing inequality and widespread insecurity.

The Conservatives would abolish the state-financed basic retirement pension and replace it with a privatised scheme, with a vague promise of a means-tested state guarantee if pensions fall beneath a minimum level. Their proposals mean there will be no savings on welfare spending for half a century; and taxes will have to rise to make provision for new privately funded pensions. Their plans require an additional £312 billion between now and 2040 through increased taxes or borrowing, against the hope of savings later, with no certainty of security in retirement at the end.

We believe that all pensioners should share fairly in the increasing prosperity of the nation. Instead of privatisation, we propose a partnership between public and private provision, and a balance between income sourced from tax and invested savings. The basic state pension will be retained as the foundation of pension provision. It will be increased at least in line with prices. We will examine means of delivering more automatic help to the poorest pensioners – one million of whom do not even receive the Income Support which is their present entitlement.

We will encourage saving for retirement, with proper protection for savings. We will reform the Financial Services Act so that the scandal of pension mis-selling – 600,000 pensions mis-sold and only 7,000 people compensated to date – will not happen again.

Too many people in work, particularly those on low and modest incomes and with changing patterns of employment, cannot join good-value second pension schemes. Labour will create a new framework – stakeholder pensions – to meet this need. We will encourage new partnerships between financial service companies, employers and employees to develop these pension schemes. They will be approved to receive people’s savings only if they meet high standards of value for money, flexibility and security.

Labour will promote choice in pension provision. We will support and strengthen the framework for occupational pensions. Personal pensions, appropriately regulated, will remain a good option for many. Labour will retain SERPS as an option for those who wish to remain within it. We will also seek to develop the administrative structure of SERPS so as to create a ‘citizenship pension’ for those who assume responsibility as carers, as a result lose out on the pension entitlements they would otherwise acquire, and currently end up on means-tested benefits.

We overcame government opposition to pension splitting between women and men on divorce. We will implement this in government.

We aim to provide real security for families through a modern system of community care. As people grow older, their need for care increases. The Conservative approach is to promote private insurance and privatisation of care homes. But private insurance will be inaccessible to most people. And their policy for residential homes is dogmatic and will not work. We believe that local authorities should be free to develop a mix of public and private care.

We recognise the immense amount of care provision undertaken by family members, neighbours and friends. It was a Labour MP who piloted the 1995 Carers Act through Parliament. We will establish a Royal Commission to work out a fair system for funding long-term care for the elderly. We will introduce a ‘long-term care charter’ defining the standard of services which people are entitled to expect from health, housing and social services. We are committed to an independent inspection and regulation service for residential homes, and domiciliary care.

Everyone is entitled to dignity in retirement. Under the Tories, the earnings link for state pensions has been ended, VAT on fuel has been imposed, SERPS has been undermined and community care is in tatters. We will set up a review of the central areas of insecurity for elderly people: all aspects of the basic pension and its value, second pensions including SERPS, and community care. The review will ensure that the views of pensioners are heard. Our watchword in developing policy for pensions and long-term care will be to build consensus among all interested parties.

We will help you get more out of life

• Every government department a ‘green’ department
• Efficient and clean transport for all
• New arts and science talent fund for young people
• Reform the lottery
• Improve life in rural areas
• Back World Cup bid

The millennium is the time to reaffirm our responsibility to protect and enhance our environment so that the country we hand on to our children and our grandchildren is a better place in which to live. It also provides a natural opportunity to celebrate and improve the contribution made by the arts, culture and sport to our nation. We need a new and dynamic approach to the ‘creative economy’. The Department of National Heritage will develop a strategic vision that matches the real power and energy of British arts, media and cultural industries.

Protecting the environment

Our generation, and generations yet to come, are dependent on the integrity of the environment. No one can escape unhealthy water, polluted air or adverse climate change. And just as these problems affect us all, so we must act together to tackle them. No responsible government can afford to take risks with the future: the cost is too high. So it is our duty to act now.

The foundation of Labour’s environmental approach is that protection of the environment cannot be the sole responsibility of any one department of state. All departments must promote policies to sustain the environment. And Parliament should have an environmental audit committee to ensure high standards across government.

Throughout this manifesto, there are policies designed to combine environmental sustainability with economic and social progress. They extend from commitments at local level to give communities enhanced control over their environments, to initiatives at international level to ensure that all countries are contributing to the protection of the environment.

A sustainable environment requires above all an effective and integrated transport policy at national, regional and local level that will provide genuine choice to meet people’s transport needs. That is what we will establish and develop.

Railways

The process of rail privatisation is now largely complete. It has made fortunes for a few, but has been a poor deal for the taxpayer. It has fragmented the network and now threatens services. Our task will be to improve the situation as we find it, not as we wish it to be. Our overriding goal must be to win more passengers and freight on to rail. The system must be run in the public interest with higher levels of investment and effective enforcement of train operators’ service commitments. There must be convenient connections, through-ticketing and accurate travel information for the benefit of all passengers.

To achieve these aims, we will establish more effective and accountable regulation by the rail regulator; we will ensure that the public subsidy serves the public interest; and we will establish a new rail authority, combining functions currently carried out by the rail franchiser and the Department of Transport, to provide a clear, coherent and strategic programme for the development of the railways so that passenger expectations are met.

The Conservative plan for the wholesale privatisation of London Underground is not the answer. It would be a poor deal for the taxpayer and passenger alike. Yet again, public assets would be sold off at an under-valued rate. Much-needed investment would be delayed. The core public responsibilities of the Underground would be threatened.

Labour plans a new public/private partnership to improve the Underground, safeguard its commitment to the public interest and guarantee value for money to taxpayers and passengers.

Road transport

A balanced transport system must cater for all the familiar modes of transport: cars – whether owned, leased or shared; taxis; buses; bicycles and motorcycles. All needs must be addressed in transport planning to ensure the best mix of all types of transport, offer quality public transport wherever possible and help to protect the environment.

The key to efficient bus services is proper regulation at local level, with partnerships between local councils and bus operators an essential component. There must be improved provision and enforcement of bus lanes. Better parking facilities for cars must be linked to convenient bus services to town centres.

Road safety is a high priority. Cycling and walking must be made safer, especially around schools.

We remain unpersuaded by the case for heavier, 44-tonne lorries mooted by the Conservatives. Our concern is that they would prove dangerous and damaging to the environment.

Our plans to reduce pollution include working with the automotive industry to develop ‘smart’, efficient and clean cars for the future, with substantially reduced emission levels. The review of vehicle excise duty to promote low-emission vehicles will be continued.

We will conduct an overall strategic review of the roads programme against the criteria of accessibility, safety, economy and environmental impact, using public/private partnerships to improve road maintenance and exploiting new technology to improve journey information.

Shipping and aviation

The Tory years have seen the near-extinction of Britain’s merchant fleet. Labour will work with all concerned in shipping and ports to help develop their economic potential to the full.

The guiding objectives of our aviation strategy will be fair competition, safety and environmental standards. We want all British carriers to be able to compete fairly in the interests of consumers.

Life in our countryside

Labour recognises the special needs of people who live and work in rural areas. The Conservatives do not. Public services and transport services in rural areas must not be allowed to deteriorate. The Conservatives have tried to privatise the Post Office. We opposed that, in favour of a public Post Office providing a comprehensive service. Conservative plans would mean higher charges for letters and put rural post offices under threat.

We favour a moratorium on large-scale sales of Forestry Commission land. We recognise that the countryside is a great natural asset, a part of our heritage which calls for careful stewardship. This must be balanced, however, with the needs of people who live and work in rural areas.

The total failure of the Conservatives to manage the BSE crisis effectively and to secure any raising of the ban on British beef has wreaked havoc on the beef and dairy industries. The cost to the taxpayer so far is £3.5 billion.

Labour aims to reform the Common Agricultural Policy to save money, to support the rural economy and enhance the environment.

Our initiatives to link all schools to the information superhighway will ensure that children in rural areas have access to the best educational resources.

Our policies include greater freedom for people to explore our open countryside. We will not, however, permit any abuse of a right to greater access.

We will ensure greater protection for wildlife. We have advocated new measures to promote animal welfare, including a free vote in Parliament on whether hunting with hounds should be banned by legislation.

Angling is Britain’s most popular sport. Labour’s anglers’ charter affirms our long-standing commitment to angling and to the objective of protecting the aquatic environment.

Arts and culture

The arts, culture and sport are central to the task of recreating the sense of community, identity and civic pride that should define our country. Yet we consistently undervalue the role of the arts and culture in helping to create a civic society – from amateur theatre to our art galleries.

Art, sport and leisure are vital to our quality of life and the renewal of our economy. They are significant earners for Britain. They employ hundreds of thousands of people. They bring millions of tourists to Britain every year, who will also be helped by Labour’s plans for new quality assurance in hotel accommodation.

We propose to set up a National Endowment for Science and the Arts to sponsor young talent. NESTA will be a national trust – for talent rather than buildings – for the 21st century. NESTA will be partly funded by the lottery; and artists who have gained high rewards from their excellence in the arts and wish to support young talent will be encouraged to donate copyright and royalties to NESTA.

Sport

A Labour government will take the lead in extending opportunities for participation in sports; and in identifying sporting excellence and supporting it.

School sports must be the foundation. We will bring the government’s policy of forcing schools to sell off playing fields to an end. We will provide full backing to the bid to host the 2006 football World Cup in England. A Labour government will also work to bring the Olympics and other major international sporting events to Britain.

A people’s lottery

The lottery has been a financial success. But there has been no overall strategy for the allocation of monies; and no co-ordination among the five distributor bodies about the projects deserving to benefit from lottery funding. For example, the multi-million-pound expenditure on the Churchill papers caused national outrage. A Labour government will review the distribution of lottery proceeds to ensure that there is the widest possible access to the benefits of lottery revenues throughout the UK.

Labour has already proposed a new millennium commission to commence after the closure of the Millennium Exhibition, to provide direct support for a range of education, environment and public health projects, including those directed at children’s play, a project currently excluded from lottery benefit.

Because the lottery is a monopoly intended to serve the public interest, it must be administered efficiently and economically. When the current contract runs out, Labour will seek an efficient not-for-profit operator to ensure that the maximum sums go to good causes.

Media and broadcasting

Labour aims for a thriving, diverse media industry, combining commercial success and public service. We will ensure that the BBC continues to be a flagship for British creativity and public service broadcasting, but we believe that the combination of public and private sectors in competition is a key spur to innovation and high standards. The regulatory framework for media and broadcasting should reflect the realities of a far more open and competitive economy, and enormous technological advance, for example with digital television. Labour will balance sensible rules, fair regulation and national and international competition, so maintaining quality and diversity for the benefit of viewers.

Citizens’ service for a new millennium

An independent and creative voluntary sector, committed to voluntary activity as an expression of citizenship, is central to our vision of a stakeholder society. We are committed to developing plans for a national citizens’ service programme, to tap the enthusiasm and commitment of the many young people who want to make voluntary contributions in service of their communities. The millennium should harness the imagination of all those people who have so much to offer for the benefit of the community. We do not believe programmes should be imposed from the top down, but on the contrary wish to encourage a broad range of voluntary initiatives devised and developed by people within their own communities.

We will clean up politics

• End the hereditary principle in the House of Lords
• Reform of party funding to end sleaze
• Devolved power in Scotland and Wales
• Elected mayors for London and other cities
• More independent but accountable local government
• Freedom of information and guaranteed human rights

The Conservatives seem opposed to the very idea of democracy. They support hereditary peers, unaccountable quangos and secretive government. They have debased democracy through their MPs who have taken cash for asking questions in the House of Commons. They are opposed to the development of decentralised government. The party which once opposed universal suffrage and votes for women now says our constitution is so perfect that it cannot be improved.

Our system of government is centralised, inefficient and bureaucratic. Our citizens cannot assert their basic rights in our own courts. The Conservatives are afflicted by sleaze and prosper from secret funds from foreign supporters. There is unquestionably a national crisis of confidence in our political system, to which Labour will respond in a measured and sensible way.

A modern House of Lords

The House of Lords must be reformed. As an initial, self-contained reform, not dependent on further reform in the future, the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords will be ended by statute. This will be the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative. The legislative powers of the House of Lords will remain unaltered.

The system of appointment of life peers to the House of Lords will be reviewed. Our objective will be to ensure that over time party appointees as life peers more accurately reflect the proportion of votes cast at the previous general election. We are committed to maintaining an independent cross-bench presence of life peers. No one political party should seek a majority in the House of Lords.

A committee of both Houses of Parliament will be appointed to undertake a wide-ranging review of possible further change and then to bring forward proposals for reform.

We have no plans to replace the monarchy.

An effective House of Commons

We believe the House of Commons is in need of modernisation and we will ask the House to establish a special Select Committee to review its procedures. Prime Minister’s Questions will be made more effective. Ministerial accountability will be reviewed so as to remove recent abuses. The process for scrutinising European legislation will be overhauled.

The Nolan recommendations will be fully implemented and extended to all public bodies. We will oblige parties to declare the source of all donations above a minimum figure: Labour does this voluntarily and all parties should do so. Foreign funding will be banned. We will ask the Nolan Committee to consider how the funding of political parties should be regulated and reformed.

We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system.

At this election, Labour is proud to be making major strides to rectify the under-representation of women in public life.

Open government

Unnecessary secrecy in government leads to arrogance in government and defective policy decisions. The Scott Report on arms to Iraq revealed Conservative abuses of power. We are pledged to a Freedom of Information Act, leading to more open government, and an independent National Statistical Service.

Devolution: strengthening the Union

The United Kingdom is a partnership enriched by distinct national identities and traditions. Scotland has its own systems of education, law and local government. Wales has its language and cultural traditions. We will meet the demand for decentralisation of power to Scotland and Wales, once established in referendums.

Subsidiarity is as sound a principle in Britain as it is in Europe. Our proposal is for devolution not federation. A sovereign Westminster Parliament will devolve power to Scotland and Wales. The Union will be strengthened and the threat of separatism removed.

As soon as possible after the election, we will enact legislation to allow the people of Scotland and Wales to vote in separate referendums on our proposals, which will be set out in white papers. These referendums will take place not later than the autumn of 1997. A simple majority of those voting in each referendum will be the majority required. Popular endorsement will strengthen the legitimacy of our proposals and speed their passage through Parliament.

For Scotland we propose the creation of a parliament with law-making powers, firmly based on the agreement reached in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, including defined and limited financial powers to vary revenue and elected by an additional member system. In the Scottish referendum we will seek separate endorsement of the proposal to create a parliament, and of the proposal to give it defined and limited financial powers to vary revenue. The Scottish parliament will extend democratic control over the responsibilities currently exercised administratively by the Scottish Office. The responsibilities of the UK Parliament will remain unchanged over UK policy, for example economic, defence and foreign policy.

The Welsh assembly will provide democratic control of the existing Welsh Office functions. It will have secondary legislative powers and will be specifically empowered to reform and democratise the quango state. It will be elected by an additional member system.

Following majorities in the referendums, we will introduce in the first year of the Parliament legislation on the substantive devolution proposals outlined in our white papers.

Good local government

Local decision-making should be less constrained by central government, and also more accountable to local people. We will place on councils a new duty to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of their area. They should work in partnership with local people, local business and local voluntary organisations. They will have the powers necessary to develop these partnerships. To ensure greater accountability, a proportion of councillors in each locality will be elected annually. We will encourage democratic innovations in local government, including pilots of the idea of elected mayors with executive powers in cities.

Although crude and universal council tax capping should go, we will retain reserve powers to control excessive council tax rises.

Local business concerns are critical to good local government. There are sound democratic reasons why, in principle, the business rate should be set locally, not nationally. But we will make no change to the present system for determining the business rate without full consultation with business.

The funnelling of government grant to Conservative-controlled Westminster speaks volumes about the unfairness of the current grant system. Labour is committed to a fair distribution of government grant. The basic framework, not every detail, of local service provision must be for central government. Councils should not be forced to put their services out to tender, but will be required to obtain best value. We reject the dogmatic view that services must be privatised to be of high quality, but equally we see no reason why a service should be delivered directly if other more efficient means are available. Cost counts but so does quality.

Every council will be required to publish a local performance plan with targets for service improvement, and be expected to achieve them. The Audit Commission will be given additional powers to monitor performance and promote efficiency. On its advice, government will where necessary send in a management team with full powers to remedy failure.

Labour councils have been at the forefront of environmental initiatives under Local Agenda 21, the international framework for local action arising from the 1992 Earth Summit. A Labour government will encourage all local authorities to adopt plans to protect and enhance their local environment.

Local government is at the sharp end of the fight against deprivation. Ten years after the Conservatives promised to improve the inner cities, poverty and social division afflict towns and outer estates alike. A Labour government will join with local government in a concerted attack against the multiple causes of social and economic decline – unemployment, bad housing, crime, poor health and a degraded environment.

London

London is the only Western capital without an elected city government. Following a referendum to confirm popular demand, there will be a new deal for London, with a strategic authority and a mayor, each directly elected. Both will speak up for the needs of the city and plan its future. They will not duplicate the work of the boroughs, but take responsibility for London-wide issues – economic regeneration, planning, policing, transport and environmental protection. London-wide responsibility for its own government is urgently required. We will make it happen.

The regions of England

The Conservatives have created a tier of regional government in England through quangos and government regional offices. Meanwhile local authorities have come together to create a more co-ordinated regional voice. Labour will build on these developments through the establishment of regional chambers to co-ordinate transport, planning, economic development, bids for European funding and land use planning.

Demand for directly elected regional government so varies across England that it would be wrong to impose a uniform system. In time we will introduce legislation to allow the people, region by region, to decide in a referendum whether they want directly elected regional government. Only where clear popular consent is established will arrangements be made for elected regional assemblies. This would require a predominantly unitary system of local government, as presently exists in Scotland and Wales, and confirmation by independent auditors that no additional public expenditure overall would be involved. Our plans will not mean adding a new tier of government to the existing English system.

Real rights for citizens

Citizens should have statutory rights to enforce their human rights in the UK courts. We will by statute incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law to bring these rights home and allow our people access to them in their national courts. The incorporation of the European Convention will establish a floor, not a ceiling, for human rights. Parliament will remain free to enhance these rights, for example by a Freedom of Information Act.

We will seek to end unjustifiable discrimination wherever it exists. For example, we support comprehensive, enforceable civil rights for disabled people against discrimination in society or at work, developed in partnership with all interested parties.

Labour will undertake a wide-ranging review both of the reform of the civil justice system and Legal Aid. We will achieve value for money for the taxpayer and the consumer. A community legal service will develop local, regional and national plans for the development of Legal Aid according to the needs and priorities of regions and areas. The key to success will be to promote a partnership between the voluntary sector, the legal profession and the Legal Aid Board.

Every country must have firm control over immigration and Britain is no exception. All applications, however, should be dealt with speedily and fairly. There are, rightly, criteria for those who want to enter this country to join husband or wife. We will ensure that these are properly enforced. We will, however, reform the system in current use to remove the arbitrary and unfair results that can follow from the existing ‘primary purpose’ rule. There will be a streamlined system of appeals for visitors denied a visa.

The system for dealing with asylum seekers is expensive and slow – there are many undecided cases dating back beyond 1993. We will ensure swift and fair decisions on whether someone can stay or go, control unscrupulous immigration advisors and crack down on the fraudulent use of birth certificates.

Northern Ireland

Labour’s approach to the peace process has been bipartisan. We have supported the recent agreements between the two governments – the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Downing Street Declaration and the Framework Document. The government has tabled proposals which include a new devolved legislative body, as well as cross-border co-operation and continued dialogue between the two governments.

There will be as great a priority attached to seeing that process through with Labour as under the Conservatives, in co-operation with the Irish government and the Northern Ireland parties. We will expect the same bipartisan approach from a Conservative opposition.

We will take effective measures to combat the terrorist threat.

There is now general acceptance that the future of Northern Ireland must be determined by the consent of the people as set out in the Downing Street Declaration. Labour recognises that the option of a united Ireland does not command the consent of the Unionist tradition, nor does the existing status of Northern Ireland command the consent of the Nationalist tradition. We are therefore committed to reconciliation between the two traditions and to a new political settlement which can command the support of both. Labour will help build trust and confidence among both Nationalist and Unionist traditions in Northern Ireland by acting to guarantee human rights, strengthen confidence in policing, combat discrimination at work and reduce tensions over parades. Labour will also foster economic progress and competitiveness in Northern Ireland, so as to reduce unemployment.

We will give Britain leadership in Europe

• Referendum on single currency
• Lead reform of the EU
• Retain Trident: strong defence through NATO
• A reformed United Nations
• Helping to tackle global poverty

Britain, though an island nation with limited natural resources, has for centuries been a leader of nations. But under the Conservatives Britain’s influence has waned.

With a new Labour government, Britain will be strong in defence; resolute in standing up for its own interests; an advocate of human rights and democracy the world over; a reliable and powerful ally in the international institutions of which we are a member; and will be a leader in Europe.

Our vision of Europe is of an alliance of independent nations choosing to co-operate to achieve the goals they cannot achieve alone. We oppose a European federal superstate.

There are only three options for Britain in Europe. The first is to come out. The second is to stay in, but on the sidelines. The third is to stay in, but in a leading role.

An increasing number of Conservatives, overtly or covertly, favour the first. But withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain. It would put millions of jobs at risk. It would dry up inward investment. It would destroy our clout in international trade negotiations. It would relegate Britain from the premier division of nations.

The second is exactly where we are today under the Conservatives. The BSE fiasco symbolises their failures in Europe.

The third is the path a new Labour government will take. A fresh start in Europe, with the credibility to achieve reform. We have set out a detailed agenda for reform, leading from the front during the UK presidency in the first half of 1998:

• Rapid completion of the single market: a top priority for the British presidency. We will open up markets to competition; pursue tough action against unfair state aids; and ensure proper enforcement of single market rules. This will strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and open up new opportunities for British firms.
• High priority for enlargement of the European Union to include the countries of central and eastern Europe and Cyprus, and the institutional reforms necessary to make an enlarged Europe work more efficiently.
• Urgent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. It is costly, vulnerable to fraud and not geared to environmental protection. Enlargement and the World Trade talks in 1999 will make reform even more essential. We will seek a thorough overhaul of the Common Fisheries Policy to conserve our fish stocks in the long-term interests of the UK fishing industry.
• Greater openness and democracy in EU institutions with open voting in the Council of Ministers and more effective scrutiny of the Commission by the European Parliament. We have long supported a proportional voting system for election to the European Parliament.
• Retention of the national veto over key matters of national interest, such as taxation, defence and security, immigration, decisions over the budget and treaty changes, while considering the extension of Qualified Majority Voting in limited areas where that is in Britain’s interests.
• Britain to sign the Social Chapter. An ’empty chair’ at the negotiating table is disastrous for Britain. The Social Chapter is a framework under which legislative measures can be agreed. Only two measures have been agreed – consultation for employees of large Europe-wide companies and entitlement to unpaid parental leave. Successful companies already work closely with their workforces. The Social Chapter cannot be used to force the harmonisation of social security or tax legislation and it does not cost jobs. We will use our participation to promote employability and flexibility, not high social costs.

The single currency

Any decision about Britain joining the single currency must be determined by a hard-headed assessment of Britain’s economic interests. Only Labour can be trusted to do this: the Tories are riven by faction. But there are formidable obstacles in the way of Britain being in the first wave of membership, if EMU takes place on 1 January 1999. What is essential for the success of EMU is genuine convergence among the economies that take part, without any fudging of the rules. However, to exclude British membership of EMU forever would be to destroy any influence we have over a process which will affect us whether we are in or out. We must therefore play a full part in the debate to influence it in Britain’s interests.

In any event, there are three pre-conditions which would have to be satisfied before Britain could join during the next Parliament: first, the Cabinet would have to agree; then Parliament; and finally the people would have to say ‘Yes’ in a referendum.

Strong defence through NATO

The post-Cold War world faces a range of new security challenges – proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the growth of ethnic nationalism and extremism, international terrorism, and crime and drug trafficking. A new Labour government will build a strong defence against these threats. Our security will continue to be based on NATO.

Our armed forces are among the most effective in the world. The country takes pride in their professionalism and courage. We will ensure that they remain strong to defend Britain. But the security of Britain is best served in a secure world, so we should be willing to contribute to wider international peace and security both through the alliances to which we belong, in particular NATO and the Western European Union, and through other international organisations such as the UN and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Labour will conduct a strategic defence and security review to reassess our essential security interests and defence needs. It will consider how the roles, missions and capabilities of our armed forces should be adjusted to meet the new strategic realities. The review we propose will be foreign policy led, first assessing our likely overseas commitments and interests and then establishing how our forces should be deployed to meet them.

Arms control

A new Labour government will retain Trident. We will press for multilateral negotiations towards mutual, balanced and verifiable reductions in nuclear weapons. When satisfied with verified progress towards our goal of the global elimination of nuclear weapons, we will ensure that British nuclear weapons are included in multilateral negotiations.

Labour will work for the effective implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and for a strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention. Labour will ban the import, export, transfer and manufacture of all forms of anti-personnel landmines. We will introduce an immediate moratorium on their use. Labour will not permit the sale of arms to regimes that might use them for internal repression or international aggression. We will increase the transparency and accountability of decisions on export licences for arms. And we will support an EU code of conduct governing arms sales.

We support a strong UK defence industry, which is a strategic part of our industrial base as well as our defence effort. We believe that part of its expertise can be extended to civilian use through a defence diversification agency.

Leadership in the international community

A new Labour government will use Britain’s permanent seat on the Security Council to press for substantial reform of the United Nations, including an early resolution of its funding crisis, and a more effective role in peacekeeping, conflict prevention, the protection of human rights and safeguarding the global environment.

The Commonwealth provides Britain with a unique network of contacts linked by history, language and legal systems. Labour is committed to giving renewed priority to the Commonwealth in our foreign relations. We will seize the opportunity to increase trade and economic co-operation and will also build alliances with our Commonwealth partners to promote reform at the UN and common action on the global environment. Britain has a real opportunity to provide leadership to the Commonwealth when we host the heads of government meeting in Britain at the end of 1997.

Promoting economic and social development

Labour will also attach much higher priority to combating global poverty and underdevelopment. According to the World Bank, there are 1. 3 billion people in the world who live in absolute poverty, subsisting on less than US$1 a day, while 35,000 children die each day from readily preventable diseases.

Labour believes that we have a clear moral responsibility to help combat global poverty. In government we will strengthen and restructure the British aid programme and bring development issues back into the mainstream of government decision-making. A Cabinet minister will lead a new department of international development.

We will shift aid resources towards programmes that help the poorest people in the poorest countries. We reaffirm the UK’s commitment to the 0.7 per cent UN aid target and in government Labour will start to reverse the decline in UK aid spending.

We will work for greater consistency between the aid, trade, agriculture and economic reform policies of the EU. We will use our leadership position in the EU to maintain and enhance the position of the poorest countries during the renegotiation of the Lomo Convention.

We will support further measures to reduce the debt burden borne by the world’s poorest countries and to ensure that developing countries are given a fair deal in international trade. It is our aim to rejoin UNESCO. We will consider how this can be done most effectively and will ensure that the cost is met from savings elsewhere.

Human rights

Labour wants Britain to be respected in the world for the integrity with which it conducts its foreign relations. We will make the protection and promotion of human rights a central part of our foreign policy. We will work for the creation of a permanent international criminal court to investigate genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A new environmental internationalism

Labour believes that the threats to the global climate should push environmental concerns higher up the international agenda. A Labour government will strengthen co-operation in the European Union on environmental issues, including climate change and ozone depletion. We will lead the fight against global warming, through our target of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2010.

Labour believes the international environment should be safeguarded in negotiations over international trade. We will also work for the successful negotiation of a new protocol on climate change to be completed in Japan in 1997.

Leadership, not isolation

There is a sharp division between those who believe the way to cope with global change is for nations to retreat into isolationism and protectionism, and those who believe in internationalism and engagement. Labour has traditionally been the party of internationalism. Britain cannot be strong at home if it is weak abroad. The tragedy of the Conservative years has been the squandering of Britain’s assets and the loss of Britain’s influence.

A new Labour government will use those assets to the full to restore Britain’s pride and influence as a leading force for good in the world. With effective leadership and clear vision, Britain could once again be at the centre of international decision-making instead of at its margins.

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This manifesto contains the detail of our plans. We have promised only what we know we can deliver. Britain deserves better and the following five election pledges will be the first steps towards a better Britain. If you would like to help us build that better Britain, join us by calling 0990 300 900.

• cut class sizes to 30 or under for 5, 6 and 7 year-olds by using money from the assisted places scheme
• fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders by halving the time from arrest to sentencing
• cut NHS waiting lists by treating an extra 100,000 patients as a first step by releasing £100 million saved from NHS red tape
• get 250,000 under-25 year-olds off benefit and into work by using money from a windfall levy on the privatised utilities
• no rise in income tax rates, cut VAT on heating to 5 per cent and inflation and interest rates as low as possible

The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1945 General Election.

Let Us Face the Future: A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation

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VICTORY IN WAR MUST BE FOLLOWED BY A PROSPEROUS PEACE

Victory is assured for us and our allies in the European war. The war in the East goes the same way. The British Labour Party is firmly resolved that Japanese barbarism shall be defeated just as decisively as Nazi aggression and tyranny. The people will have won both struggles. The gallant men and women in the Fighting Services, in the Merchant Navy, Home Guard and Civil Defence, in the factories and in the bombed areas – they deserve and must be assured a happier future than faced so many of them after the last war. Labour regards their welfare as a sacred trust.

So far as Britain’s contribution is concerned, this war will have been won by its people, not by any one man or set of men, though strong and greatly valued leadership has been given to the high resolve of the people in the present struggle. And in this leadership the Labour Ministers have taken their full share of burdens and responsibilities. The record of the Labour Ministers has been one of hard tasks well done since that fateful day in May, 1940, when the initiative of Labour in Parliament brought about the fall of the Chamberlain Government and the formation of the new War Government which has led the country to victory.

The people made tremendous efforts to win the last war also. But when they had won it they lacked a lively interest in the social and economic problems of peace, and accepted the election promises of the leaders of the anti-Labour parties at their face value. So the “hard-faced men who had done well out of the war” were able to get the kind of peace that suited themselves. The people lost that peace. And when we say “peace” we mean not only the Treaty, but the social and economic policy which followed the fighting.

In the years that followed, the “hard-faced men” and their political friends kept control of the Government. They controlled the banks, the mines, the big industries, largely the press and the cinema. They controlled the means by which the people got their living. They controlled the ways by which most of the people learned about the world outside. This happened in all the big industrialised countries.

Great economic blizzards swept the world in those years. The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. These men had only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucratically-run private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic State. They had and they felt no responsibility to the nation.

Similar forces are at work today. The interests have not been able to make the same profits out of this war as they did out of the last. The determined propaganda of the Labour Party, helped by other progressive forces, had its effect in “taking the profit out of war”. The 100% Excess Profits Tax, the controls over industry and transport, the fair rationing of food and control of prices – without which the Labour Party would not have remained in the Government – these all helped to win the war. With these measures the country has come nearer to making “fair shares” the national rule than ever before in its history.

But the war in the East is not yet over. There are grand pickings still to be had. A short boom period after the war, when savings, gratuities and post-war credits are there to be spent, can make a profiteer’s paradise. But Big Business knows that this will happen only if the people vote into power the party which promises to get rid of the controls and so let the profiteers and racketeers have that freedom for which they are pleading eloquently on every Tory platform and in every Tory newspaper.

They accuse the Labour Party of wishing to impose controls for the sake of control. That is not true, and they know it. What is true is that the anti-controllers and anti-planners desire to sweep away public controls, simply in order to give the profiteering interests and the privileged rich an entirely free hand to plunder the rest of the nation as shamelessly as they did in the nineteen-twenties.

Does freedom for the profiteer mean freedom for the ordinary man and woman, whether they be wage-earners or small business or professional men or housewives? Just think back over the depressions of the 20 years between the wars, when there were precious few public controls of any kind and the Big Interests had things all their own way. Never was so much injury done to so many by so few. Freedom is not an abstract thing. To be real it must be won, it must be worked for.

The Labour Party stands for order as against the chaos which would follow the end of all public control. We stand for order, for positive constructive progress as against the chaos of economic do-as-they-please anarchy.

The Labour Party makes no baseless promises. The future will not be easy. But this time the peace must be won. The Labour Party offers the nation a plan which will win the Peace for the People.

WHAT THE ELECTION WILL BE ABOUT

Britain’s coming Election will be the greatest test in our history of the judgement and common sense of our people.

The nation wants food, work and homes. It wants more than that – it wants good food in plenty, useful work for all, and comfortable, labour – saving homes that take full advantage of the resources of modern science and productive industry. It wants a high and rising standard of living, security for all against a rainy day, an educational system that will give every boy and girl a chance to develop the best that is in them.

These are the aims. In themselves they are no more than words. All parties may declare that in principle they agree with them. But the test of a political programme is whether it is sufficiently in earnest about the objectives to adopt the means needed to realise them. It is very easy to set out a list of aims. What matters is whether it is backed up by a genuine workmanlike plan conceived without regard to sectional vested interests and carried through

Point by point these national aims need analysis. Point by point it will be found that if they are to be turned into realities the nation and its post-war Governments will be called upon to put the nation above any sectional interest, above any free enterprise. The problems and pressures of the post-war world threaten our security and progress as surely as – though less dramatically than – the Germans threatened them in 1940. We need the spirit of Dunkirk and of the Blitz sustained over a period of years.

The Labour Party’s programme is a practical expression of that spirit applied to the tasks of peace. It calls for hard work, energy and sound sense.

We must prevent another war, and that means we must have such an international organisation as will give all nations real security against future aggression. But Britain can only play her full part in such an international plan if our spirit as shown in our handling of home affairs is firm, wise and determined. This statement of policy, therefore, begins at home.

And in stating it we give clear notice that we will not tolerate obstruction of the people’s will by the House of Lords.

The Labour Party stands for freedom – for freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the Press. The Labour Party will see to it that we keep and enlarge these freedoms, and that we enjoy again the personal civil liberties we have, of our own free will, sacrificed to win the war. The freedom of the Trade Unions, denied by the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act, 1927, must also be restored. But there are certain so-called freedoms that Labour will not tolerate: freedom to exploit other people; freedom to pay poor wages and to push up prices for selfish profit; freedom to deprive the people of the means of living full, happy, healthy lives.

The nation needs a tremendous overhaul, a great programme of modernisation and re-equipment of its homes, its factories and machinery, its schools, its social services.

All parties say so – the Labour Party means it. For the Labour Party is prepared to achieve it by drastic policies and keeping a firm constructive hand on our whole productive machinery; the Labour Party will put the community first and the sectional interests of private business after. Labour will plan from the ground up – giving an appropriate place to constructive enterprise and private endeavour in the national plan, but dealing decisively with those interests which would use high-sounding talk about economic freedom to cloak their determination to put themselves and their wishes above those of the whole nation.

JOBS FOR ALL

All parties pay lip service to the idea of jobs for all. All parties are ready to promise to achieve that end by keeping up the national purchasing power and controlling changes in the national expenditure through Government action. Where agreement ceases is in the degree of control of private industry that is necessary to achieve the desired end.

In hard fact, the success of a full employment programme will certainly turn upon the firmness and success with which the Government fits into that programme the investment and development policies of private as well as public industry.

Our opponents would be ready to use State action to do the best they can to bolster up private industry whenever it plunges the nation into heavy unemployment. But if the slumps in uncontrolled private industry are too severe to be balanced by public action – as they will certainly prove to be – our opponents are not ready to draw the conclusion that the sphere of public action must be extended.

They say, “Full employment. Yes! If we can get it without interfering too much with private industry.” We say, “Full employment in any case, and if we need to keep 8 firm public hand on industry in order to get jobs for all, very well. No more dole queues, in order to let the Czars of Big Business remain kings in their own castles. The price of so-called ‘economic freedom’ for the few is too high if it is bought at the cost of idleness and misery for millions.”

What will the Labour Party do?

First, the whole of the national resources, in land, material and labour must be fully employed. Production must be raised to the highest level and related to purchasing power. Over-production is not the cause of depression and unemployment; it is under-consumption that is responsible. It is doubtful whether we have ever, except in war, used the whole of our productive capacity. This must be corrected because, upon our ability to produce and organise a fair and generous distribution of the product, the standard of living of our people depends.

Secondly, a high and constant purchasing power can be maintained through good wages, social services and insurance, and taxation which bears less heavily on the lower income groups. But everybody knows that money and savings lose their value if prices rise so rents and the prices of the necessities of life will be controlled.

Thirdly, planned investment in essential industries and on houses, schools, hospitals and civic centres will occupy a large field of capital expenditure. A National Investment Board will determine social priorities and promote better timing in private investment. In suitable cases we would transfer the use of efficient Government factories from war production to meet the needs of peace. The location of new factories will be suitably controlled and where necessary the Government will itself build factories. There must be no depressed areas in the New Britain.

Fourthly, the Bank of England with its financial powers must be brought under public ownership, and the operations of the other banks harmonised with industrial needs.

By these and other means full employment can be achieved. But a policy of Jobs for All must be associated with a policy of general economic expansion and efficiency as set out in the next section of this Declaration. Indeed, it is not enough to ensure that there are jobs for all. If the standard of life is to be high – as it should be – the standard of production must be high. This means that industry must be thoroughly efficient if the needs of the nation are to be met.

INDUSTRY IN THE SERVICE OF THE NATION

By the test of war some industries have shown themselves capable of rising to new heights of efficiency and expansion. Others, including some of our older industries fundamental to our economic structure, have wholly or partly failed.

Today we live alongside economic giants – countries where science and technology take leaping strides year by year. Britain must match those strides – and we must take no chances about it. Britain needs an industry organised to enable it to yield the best that human knowledge and skill can provide. Only so can our people reap the full benefits of this age of discovery and Britain keep her place as a Great Power.

The Labour Party intends to link the skill of British craftsmen and designers to the skill of British scientists in the service of our fellow men. The genius of British scientists and technicians who have produced radio-location, jet propulsion, penicillin. and the Mulberry Harbours in wartime, must be given full rein in peacetime too.

Each industry must have applied to it the test of national service. If it serves the nation, well and good; if it is inefficient and falls down on its job, the nation must see that things are put right.

These propositions seem indisputable, but for years before the war anti-Labour Governments set them aside, so that British industry over a large field fell into a state of depression, muddle and decay. Millions of working and middle class people went through the horrors of unemployment and insecurity. It is not enough to sympathise with these victims: we must develop an acute feeling of national shame – and act.

The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.

But Socialism cannot come overnight, as the product of a week-end revolution. The members of the Labour Party, like the British people, are practical-minded men and women.

There are basic industries ripe and over-ripe for public ownership and management in the direct service of the nation. There are many smaller businesses rendering good service which can be left to go on with their useful work.

There are big industries not yet ripe for public ownership which must nevertheless be required by constructive supervision to further the nation’s needs and not to prejudice national interests by restrictive anti-social monopoly or cartel agreements – caring for their own capital structures and profits at the cost of a lower standard of living for all.

In the light of these considerations, the Labour Party submits to the nation the following industrial programme:

1. Public ownership of the fuel and power industries. For a quarter of a century the coal industry, producing Britain’s most precious national raw material, has been floundering chaotically under the ownership of many hundreds of independent companies. Amalgamation under public ownership will bring great economies in operation and make it possible to modernise production methods and to raise safety standards in every colliery in the country. Public ownership of gas and electricity undertakings will lower charges, prevent competitive waste, open the way for co-ordinated research and development, and lead to the reforming of uneconomic areas of distribution. Other industries will benefit.
2. Public ownership of inland transport. Co-ordination of transport services by rail, road, air and canal cannot be achieved without unification. And unification without public ownership means a steady struggle with sectional interests or the enthronement of a private monopoly, which would be a menace to the rest of industry.
3. Public ownership of iron and steel. Private monopoly has maintained high prices and kept inefficient high-cost plants in existence. Only if public ownership replaces private monopoly can the industry become efficient.
   These socialised industries, taken over on a basis of fair compensation, to be conducted efficiently in the interests of consumers, coupled with proper status and conditions for the workers employed in them.
4. Public supervision of monopolies and cartels with the aim of advancing ;industrial efficiency in the service of the nation. Anti-social restrictive practices will be prohibited.
5. A firm and clear-cut programme for the export trade. We would give State help in any necessary form to get our export trade on its feet and enable it to pay for the food and raw materials without which Britain must decay and die. But State help on conditions – conditions that industry is efficient and go-ahead. Laggards and obstructionists must be led or directed into better ways. Here we dare not fail.
6. The shaping of suitable economic and price controls to secure that first things shall come first in the transition from war to peace and that every citizen (including the demobilised Service men and women) shall get fair play. There must be priorities in the use of raw materials, food prices must be held, homes for the people for all before luxuries for the few. We do not want a short boom followed by collapse as after the last war; we do not want a wild rise in prices and inflation, followed by a smash and widespread unemployment. It is either sound economic controls – or smash.
7. The better organisation of Government departments and the Civil Service for work in relation to these ends. The economic purpose of government must be to spur industry forward and not to choke it with red tape.

AGRICULTURE AND THE PEOPLE’S FOOD

Agriculture is not only a job for the farmers; it is also a way of feeding the people. So we need a prosperous and efficient agricultural industry ensuring a fair return for the farmer and farm worker without excessive prices to the consumer. Our agriculture should be planned to give us the food we can best produce at home, and large enough to give us as much of those foods as possible.

In war time the County War Executive Committees have organised production in that way. They have been the means of increasing efficiency and have given much practical assistance, particularly to the small farmer. The Labour Party intends that, with suitable modifications and safeguards, their work shall continue in peacetime.

Our good farm lands are part of the wealth of the nation and that wealth should not be wasted. The land must be farmed, not starved. If a landlord cannot or will not provide proper facilities for his tenant farmers, the State should take over his land at a fair valuation. The people need food at prices they can afford to pay. This means that our food supplies will have to be planned. Never again should they be left at the mercy of the city financier or speculator. Instead there must be stable markets, to the great gain of both producer and consumer.

The Ministry of Food has done fine work for the housewife in war. The Labour Party intends to keep going as much of the work of the Ministry of Food as will be useful in peace conditions, including the bulk purchase of food from abroad and a well organised system of distribution at home, with no vested interests imposing unnecessary costs.

A Labour Government will keep the new food services, such as the factory canteens and British restaurants, free and cheap milk for mothers and children, fruit juices and food supplements, and will improve and extend these services.

HOUSES AND THE BUILDING PROGRAMME

Everybody says that we must have houses. Only the Labour Party is ready to take the necessary steps – a full programme of land planning and drastic action to ensure an efficient building industry that will neither burden the community with a crippling financial load nor impose bad conditions and heavy unemployment on its workpeople. There must be no restrictive price rings to keep up prices and bleed the taxpayer, the owner-occupier and the tenant alike. Modern methods, modern materials will have to be the order of the day.

There must be a due balance between the housing programme, the building of schools and the urgent requirements of factory modernisation and construction which will enable industry to produce efficiently.

Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of a Government’s real determination to put the nation first. Labour’s pledge is firm and direct – it will proceed with a housing programme with the maximum practical speed until every family in this island has a good standard of accommodation. That may well mean centralising and pooling of building materials and components by the State, together with price control. If that is necessary to get the houses as it was necessary to get the guns and planes, Labour is ready.

And housing ought to be dealt with in relation to good town planning – pleasant surroundings, attractive lay-out, efficient utility services, including the necessary transport facilities.

There should be a Ministry of Housing and Planning combining the housing powers of the Ministry of Health with the planning powers of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning; and there must be a firm and united Government policy to enable the Ministry of Works to function as an efficient instrument in the service of all departments with building needs and of the nation as a whole.

THE LAND

In the interests of agriculture, housing and town and country planning alike, we declare for a radical solution for the crippling problems of land acquisition and use in the service of the national plan.

Labour believes in land nationalisation and will work towards it, but as a first step the State and the local authorities must have wider and speedier powers to acquire land for public purposes wherever the public interest so requires. In this regard and for the purposes of controlling land use under town and country planning, we will provide for fair compensation; but we will also provide for a revenue for public funds from “betterment”.

EDUCATION AND RECREATION

An important step forward has been taken by the passing of the recent Education Act. Labour will put that Act not merely into legal force but into practical effect, including the raising of the school leaving age to 16 at the earliest possible moment, “further” or adult education, and free secondary education for all.

And, above all, let us remember that the great purpose of education is to give us individual citizens capable of thinking for themselves.

National and local authorities should co-operate to enable people to enjoy their leisure to the full, to have opportunities for healthy recreation. By the provision of concert halls, modern libraries, theatres and suitable civic centres, we desire to assure to our people full access to the great heritage of culture in this nation.

HEALTH OF THE NATION AND ITS CHILDREN

By good food and good homes, much avoidable ill-health can be prevented. In addition the best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment.

In the new National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. More research is required into the causes of disease and the ways to prevent and cure it.

Labour will work specially for the care of Britain’s mothers and their children – children’s allowances and school medical and feeding services, better maternity and child welfare services. A healthy family life must be fully ensured and parenthood must not be penalised if the population of Britain is to be prevented from dwindling.

SOCIAL INSURANCE AGAINST THE RAINY DAY

The Labour Party has played a leading part in the long campaign for proper social security for all – social provision against rainy days, coupled with economic policies calculated to reduce rainy days to a minimum. Labour led the fight against the mean and shabby treatment which was the lot of millions while Conservative Governments were in power over long years. A Labour Government will press on rapidly with legislation extending social insurance over the necessary wide field to all.

But great national programmes of education, health and social services are costly things. Only an efficient and prosperous nation can afford them in full measure. If, unhappily, bad times were to come, and our opponents were in power, then, running true to form, they would be likely to cut these social provisions on the plea that the nation could not meet the cost. That was the line they adopted on at least three occasions between the wars.

There is no good reason why Britain should not afford such programmes, but she will need full employment and the highest possible industrial efficiency in order to do so.

A WORLD OF PROGRESS AND PEACE

No domestic policy, however wisely framed and courageously applied, can succeed in a world still threatened by war. Economic strife and political and military insecurity are enemies of peace. We cannot cut ourselves off from the rest of the world – and we ought not to try.

Now that victory has been won, at so great a cost of life and material destruction, we must make sure that Germany and Japan are deprived of all power to make war again. We must consolidate in peace the great war-time association of the British Commonwealth with the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Let it not be forgotten that in the years leading up to the war the Tories were so scared of Russia that they missed the chance to establish a partnership which might well have prevented the war.

We must join with France and China and all others who have contributed to the common victory in forming an International Organisation capable of keeping the peace in years to come. All must work together in true comradeship to achieve continuous social and economic progress.

If peace is to be protected we must plan and act. Peace must not be regarded as a thing of passive inactivity: it must be a thing of life and action and work.

An internationally protected peace should make possible a known expenditure on armaments as our contribution to the protection of peace; an expenditure that should diminish as the world becomes accustomed to the prohibition of war through an effective collective security.

The economic well-being of each nation largely depends on world-wide prosperity. The essentials of prosperity for the world as for individual nations are high production and progressive efficiency, coupled with steady improvement in the standard of life, an increase in effective demand, and fair shares for all who by their effort contribute to the wealth of their community. We should build a new United Nations, allies in a new war on hunger, ignorance and want.

The British, while putting their own house in order, must play the part of brave and constructive leaders in international affairs. The British Labour Movement comes to the tasks of international organisation with one great asset: it has a common bond with the working peoples of all countries, who have achieved a new dignity and influence through their long struggles against Nazi tyranny.

And in all this worth-while work – whether political, military or economic – the Labour Party will seek to promote mutual understanding and cordial co-operation between the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, the advancement of India to responsible self-government, and the planned progress of our Colonial Dependencies.

LABOUR’S CALL TO ALL PROGRESSIVES

Quite a number of political parties will be taking part in the coming Election. But by and large Britain is a country of two parties.

And the effective choice of the people in this Election will be between the Conservative Party, standing for the protection of the rights of private economic interest, and the Labour Party, allied with the great Trade Union and co-operative movements, standing for the wise organisation and use of the economic assets of the nation for the public good. Those are the two main parties; and here is the fundamental issue which has to be settled.

The election will produce a Labour Government, a Conservative Government, or no clear majority for either party: this last might well mean parliamentary instability and confusion, or another Election.

In these circumstances we appeal to all men and women of progressive outlook, and who believe in constructive change, to support the Labour Party. We respect the views of those progressive Liberals and others who would wish to support one or other of the smaller parties of their choice. But by so doing they may help the Conservatives, or they may contribute to a situation in which there is no parliamentary majority for any major issue of policy.

In the interests of the nation and of the world, we earnestly urge all progressives to see to it – as they certainly can – that the next Government is not a Conservative Government but a Labour Government which will act on the principles of policy set out in the present Declaration.

The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1950 General Election.

Let Us Win Through Together:

A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation

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When the Labour Party published Let Us Face the Future in 1945 those five words were more than the title of the Election Manifesto; they were five words which crystallised the minds of our people at that time. By hard work, good sense and self-discipline the people have laid the foundations of a future based on free social democracy. They have helped Parliament and Government to carry into effect all the main proposals in that Manifesto.

Now in 1950 the country is facing another General Election. We ask our fellow citizens to assert in their free exercise of the franchise that by and large the first majority Labour Government has served the country well. The task now is to carry the nation through to complete recovery. And that will mean continued, mighty efforts from us all. The choice for the electors is between the Labour Party – the party of positive action, of constructive progress, the true party of the nation – and the Conservative Party – the party of outdated ideas, of unemployment, of privilege.

THE NEW MORAL ORDER

Socialism is not bread alone. Economic security and freedom from the enslaving material bonds of capitalism are not the final goals. They are means to the greater end – the evolution of a people more kindly, intelligent, free, co-operative, enterprising and rich in culture. They are means to the greater end of the full and free development of every individual person. We in the Labour Party – men and women from all occupations and from every sphere of life – have set out to create a community that relies for its driving power on the release of all the finer constructive impulses of man. We believe that all citizens have obligations to fulfil as well as rights to enjoy.

In contrast, the fainthearted feel that only fear of poverty will drive men to work for the nation. ‘Empty bellies’. one Tory has said, ‘are the one thing that will make Britons work.’ Labour for its part declares that full employment is the corner-stone of the new society.

The Labour Government has ensured full employment and fair shares of the necessities of life. What a contrast with pre-war days! In those days millions of unwanted men eked out their lives in need of the very things they themselves could have made in the factories that were standing idle.

Even when at work each man often feared that the next pay-day would be the last. The wife feared that the housekeeping money would suddenly vanish. Often it did. Her husband was handed his cards, he drew the dole, then she had to make do with a fraction of her previous money – and despite all her sacrifices the children suffered. The queue at the Labour Exchange was repeated in the queue of small traders at the bankruptcy court. Clerks and professional people saw their hopes destroyed and their savings swept away by the slump.

Big Business did not believe in Britain – it believed only in profit. So money went into cinemas, not coal; into luxury flats, not looms for Lancashire; into land speculation, not into agriculture.

Whatever our Party, all of us old enough to remember are in our hearts ashamed of those years. They were unhappy years for our country and our people. They must never come again.

FIRST FIVE YEARS

Full employment is the main, but not the only achievement. Six years of war ate away our wealth – crippled our trade, blitzed our homes and factories, sank our ships, and axed our overseas investments. The world has been desperately short of food since the war. But Britain has accomplished a recovery unsurpassed by any other country. No doubt there have been mistakes. But judge on what basis you will – by the standard of life of the general body of citizens, by employment, by the infrequency of serious industrial disputes, by the stability of the nation, by social security – by any fair comparison, the British people have done an infinitely better job than was done after the first World War.

By explaining to the people what needed to be done, by giving the facts, by appealing to the patriotism of the people, by vigorous, sensible leadership, the Labour Government has led Britain to the first victories of peace. Now let us win through together.

WORK FOR ALL

The supreme aim that we set before the nation is the maintenance of full employment. Here is Labour’s policy.

The nation’s greatest need is to export more, especially to North America, so that we can pay for enough food to eat, and enough raw materials to keep our factories running. Labour will not dodge this problem as Tory Governments did before the war. If mass unemployment came again, people would once more be too poor to buy much food from abroad, and idle factories would not need imported raw materials. If social services were cut, wages slashed and full employment lost we might once again succeed in masking our overseas trade problem – but only at the cost of human misery, queues at the Labour Exchange and a nation divided by industrial bitterness. That was, and still is, the Tory way. It is not ours.

Labour’s way – the way of full employment – is to produce more and to export more, to increase efficiency and to lower costs.

Purchasing power and production must march together. Just as we have aimed at keeping purchasing power within limits in the last few years when there have been too few goods and too much money, so we will be prepared to expand purchasing power if the danger is too little money and too many goods.

Labour will encourage the introduction of equal pay for equal work by women when the nation’s economic circumstances allow it.

Finance must be the servant and not the master of employment policy. Public owner ship of the Bank of England has enabled the Government to control monetary policy. Subject to the will of Parliament, we shall take whatever measures may be required to control financial forces, so as to maintain full employment and promote the welfare of the nation.

Publicly owned industry will be ready to expand its investment when employment policy demands it. The public sector will, by speeding up necessary capital development, help to maintain employment.

Special measures for areas of special need. The rebuilding of the Development Areas, which has transformed the lives of many thousands from destitution to active work, will be vigorously continued. To aid one of the chief industries in these Areas, a Development Council will be established for shipbuilding and ship-repairing. Labour will take all steps necessary to ensure that this great industry is never again neglected as it was between the wars.

RAISE PRODUCTION – LOWER COSTS

Unless we continue to increase production as we have done in the last four years, we cannot improve or even maintain our present standard of life; the social services cannot advance or even survive; and our national freedom and independence cannot continue. This is a lob for every one of us, pulling together. Private enterprise must not shelter behind price rings and rigged markets. Public enterprise must be vigorous, not easy-going. Drive, public spirit and initiative are required throughout, and from us all.

There can be no advance without planning. Exports must be sold in the right markets at the right price, and imports arranged according to our needs. Only by price control and rationing can fair shares of scarce goods be ensured. Only control over capital investment, distribution of industry, industrial building and foreign exchange can enable us to overcome the dollar shortage and build up a permanently thriving national economy. Yet many Tories still cry ‘Scrap controls’. Nothing could be more disastrous.

INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

We have begun to build up a flourishing partnership between Government, management and workers. More has to be done, both in public and private enterprise. Too many managements still pay lip-service to joint consultation and then do little to make it effective. They should consult with workers’ representatives before decisions affecting them are taken, and not after; they should make available to these representatives the accounts and records on which managerial decisions are based. Upon the trade unions lies the responsibility for further equipping and training their members for service to industry and the country.

THE SOCIALISED INDUSTRIES

The long decline and demoralisation of the coal industry has been halted. In 1949 out put was 28 million tons higher than in 1945. Output per manshift – the best measure of efficiency – has gone up steadily and is now above the 1938 level. For the first time British miners are getting a square deal. Justice for the miner has meant fuel and power for the nation. Nationalisation of coal has saved British industry from collapse.

The vital electricity and gas industries are able to plan ahead for expansion on a large scale. Already new generating stations are supplying more electricity for the home, and more horsepower for our factories.

Britain’s public transport system, as road and rail services are increasingly unified, will bring an ever better service to industry and passengers.

And when private monopoly is replaced by public ownership, the steel industry will be responsible to the nation.

Labour will not be content until each public enterprise is a model of efficiency and of social responsibility. The Government must be free to take all necessary steps to that end. The initiative and public spirit of the individual manager must be fostered. New leadership should be given its chance to emerge. The public will be encouraged to make much more use of the Consumers’ Councils which have been created for all nationalised industries: consumers should assume the important place which is theirs by right as the owners of the whole concern.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR ENTERPRISE

Private enterprise must be set free from the stranglehold of restrictive monopolies. Labour’s aim is to give a fair chance to everybody in industry, above all to the small concerns which have been the most ruthlessly exploited by trusts, cartels and rings. The less efficient firms will be helped to raise themselves to the standards of the best.

Development Councils on which management, workers and the public are represented will be set up, compulsorily if need be. The drive to apply the results of scientific research throughout industry will be sustained. Technical education will be extended. The Government will be ready in suitable cases to provide manufacturers with buildings and general purpose equipment for sale or hire, as well as finance for approved capital expenditure.

But where private enterprise fails to meet the public interest, the Government will be empowered to start new competitive public enterprises in appropriate circumstances. For private and public enterprise to compete fairly and squarely in the public interest will be good for both.

The Government will also take practical steps to prevent monopolies from continuing to exploit the public. The Monopolies Commission has been established to expose anti-social restrictive practices. Monopoly concerns which cannot be dealt with in other ways will be socialised.

The private sugar monopoly was buttressed by Conservative legislation which is due to expire early in the next Parliament. We propose that beet sugar manufacture and sugar refining shall be transferred to national ownership for the benefit of the consumer. Fair compensation will be paid in this as in the other cases where it is proposed that an industry should be transferred from private to public ownership.

The cement industry is controlled by a tightly organised private monopoly which allows high profits to be made. Labour will convert this essential industry to public ownership.

One industry which will be carefully examined is the chemical industry. If necessary to assure vital national interests, Labour will transfer to public ownership any appropriate sections of this vital industry.

AGRICULTURE AND THE COUNTRYSIDE

We must grow more food at home. The more we grow the more there will be to eat, and the more we shall save on imports. The nation’s duty to farmers and landworkers is to give them all the help they need; their duty to the nation is to produce as much as they can with the greatest possible efficiency.

Under the Tories agriculture was plunged into a depression from which it was rescued only by war. Today agriculture is thriving. The hard work of farmers and farm workers is taking us towards our immediate target of a 50 per cent increase in production over pre-war by 1952. There are and will be assured markets at guaranteed prices for as much of the main products of our farms as our farmers can produce. Labour will continue the policies which have transformed the life of the countryside.

We have not reached the limit of British agricultural capacity. Production needs to be raised still further. The first method of doing so is by increasing the standard of efficiency. The 1947 Agriculture Act has given ample powers to ensure good husbandry; they will be used to the full.

In the battle for food the nation cannot afford wasted land. There are still in Britain many thousands of acres of marginal land – idle at a time when every productive acre is needed – upon which food can and will, with Government support, be grown. Where the job is too big for individual farmers to tackle, public ownership will be used as the means of bringing into sound cultivation good food-producing land not fully used.

Steps will be taken to promote more efficient marketing and preparation of horticultural produce.

The country’s natural resources must be treated and developed as a whole. Britain’s vital fishing industry will be encouraged so that its efficiency, both in production and distribution, is further improved. Britain’s woodlands will be developed on a large scale and efficiently run by the Forestry Commission and by private and municipal owners. Britain’s minerals are an essential and often neglected part of Britain’s wealth; all suitable minerals will be placed in public ownership.

RURAL AMENITIES

A prosperous agriculture is the foundation of the good life for all our country towns and villages. Labour’s aim is to improve the amenities of the countryside as fast as resources permit. Rural areas will continue to enjoy a special provision in housing. Every year more out of date rural homes will be replaced by good houses designed for the housewife and, wherever possible, grouped together in sociable villages. When the Rent Restrictions Acts are dealt with in the new Parliament, the position of tied cottages will be reconsidered and the Unions consulted about the best means of giving to farmworkers the security in their homes enjoyed by other workers.

Nationalisation is bringing electricity to more homes and farms every year. In the next five years, more rapid progress will be made with rural electrification.

WATER AS A NATIONAL SERVICE

Far too many rural houses, farm buildings and fields are still without piped water. There is plenty of water – in times of flood too much – but not enough in pipes. Great progress has been made in extending piped supplies since 1945. But the work must be speeded up still further and the whole organisation for the purpose improved. Labour therefore proposes that water supply should become a wholly public responsibility so that as soon as possible plentiful water will be brought into every rural area. There will also be an extension of drainage and sewerage for country homes and farms.

COST OF LIVING

In the last five years we have waged a successful defensive battle against inflation. Food subsidies, rationing, price control of essentials, rent control, and the freest possible competition where supplies have been plentiful – these are all helping to keep down the cost of living.

Food subsidies have saved the average family of four about 14s. a week on its food bill. Tory spokesmen clamour for large cuts in the subsidies. A vote for the Tories is thus a vote for dearer food. Labour on the other hand will continue the present policy of subsidies as long as present circumstances continue and the need to keep down the cost of living is paramount.

No trade union movement in the world has such a proud record as the British. With unexampled restraint and loyalty, it has co-operated to hold wages steady through these difficult years. The great Co-operative Movement has also exerted a steadying effect on retail prices. It is a fine example of democratic co-operation to meet the needs of the people.

But many prices are still far too high and a burden to every housewife. Our aim for the future is to bring down excessive prices, by increasing the efficiency of production and distribution. Labour proposes to overhaul distribution in the following ways.

Fruit and Vegetables. More wholesale and retail markets under municipal or other public ownership, together with improved storage facilities, will reduce the present waste in marketing.

Cold Stores. The development of cold storage, an essential service in food distribution, will be effected through public ownership.

Meat Trade. The nation needs larger supplies of better quality meat. Since the Ministry of Food took over the importing and wholesaling of meat ten years ago, the job has been done efficiently and economically. The present system of distribution should be come a permanent public service.

Public Buying. Labour proposes to extend buying by public bodies so that well-made goods can be supplied to the housewife through the ordinary distributors at reasonable prices. This will benefit the public and the retailers, and also maintain the supply of Utility goods.

Retailing. Competition among private retailers will be encouraged. Subject only to the needs of town planning, any citizen should be able to open a shop. Anti-social private agreements to keep prices too high will be dealt with.

Value for Money. An independent Consumer Advice Centre will be set up to test and report on the various consumer goods on the market. Good manufacturers will be protected and unscrupulous advertising exposed.

HELPING EACH OTHER IN TIME OF NEED

Labour has honoured the pledge it made in 1945 to make social security the birthright of every citizen. Today destitution has been banished. The best medical care is available to everybody in the land.

Great Acts of Parliament – the National Insurance, Industrial Injuries, National Assistance and National Health Service Acts – have been placed on the Statute Book. This social legislation has benefited all sections of the community, including members of the middle classes. Hundreds of thousands of middle class and professional families have been relieved of one of their worst anxieties – the fear of the sudden illness, the expensive operation, the doctors’ crippling bills. What is needed now is not so much new legislation as the wise development, through efficient and economical administration, of the services provided by these Acts.

ROLE OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES

In this task local authorities have a vital role. The necessity to transfer some functions has not reduced the importance of local authorities. They are performing essential duties, above all in the expanded services of housing, education, town planning and health. Councils have been given new powers to provide fuller opportunities for citizens’ leisure hours. Local government will continue to be fostered in all possible ways.

The Conservatives say they fought for Social Security. Against whom? Who was resisting? They voted against the second and third readings of the National Health Service Bill. A year after taking office, Labour had begun to pay out family allowances. But the Tory spokesman in the House declaimed against this as a hasty action and said the same about the increase in old-age pensions. When devaluation made economies necessary, they clamoured for more drastic cuts. Can these Conservatives be trusted to safeguard the welfare of the sick, the poor and the old?

We pledge ourselves to go forward on the sure foundations already laid. The rate of progress will be determined by one thing only – the productive effort of the people.

CHILDREN FIRST

Labour has placed the needs of our children in the forefront of national policy. Never before have our babies been so healthy; our youngsters so well fed, clothed and shod. Labour has raised the school leaving age. New schools are being built. The door to higher education is being opened ever wider by the provision of scholarships and grants to Universities. More teachers are being trained so that the size of classes – often still too large – can be reduced. Fees in secondary schools have been abolished.

The policy of putting the children at the head of the queue will be continued. Cheap and free milk and food supplements will go on. Education will in every way be expanded as fast as our straitened means allow. While improving physical standards in the schools, we should never forget we are dealing with people, not statistics, and that the community needs more and more people of individuality who can think for themselves as co-operative members of our democratic community.

THE OLD PEOPLE

Labour has shown its determination to give the old people a square deal. The guiding principle of our policy is that old age should be a time of recreation and useful service, not a burden of loneliness and sorrow. Pensions have been raised for old people – as also for disabled ex-Servicemen. The Poor Law has gone, and National Assistance stands ready to help whenever insurance cannot do the full job. Old people have benefited much from the National Health Service. More labour-saving homes are being built for old people.

These policies will be continued. And in the next Parliament there will be a review of the working of the National Insurance Act in the light of the economic situation at that time. It will be as well not to leave this review to the Tories; old people know too much of Tory meanness for that.

INDUSTRIAL ASSURANCE

Those who supplement their standard of life in old age or protect themselves against any of the hazards of life by voluntary saving through the Industrial Assurance Offices should receive the best possible return for their money. The Labour Party, believing that the interests of policyholders should be paramount, therefore proposes that the Proprietary Companies should be taken out of the realm of private profit and mutually owned by the policyholders themselves instead of by private shareholders. The interests of the staffs will be safeguarded.

A HOME FOR EVERY FAMILY

Since the war more than a million new homes have been provided. Yet in spite of this great achievement, the demand for new homes is pressing. We must move forward until every family has its own separate home, and until every slum is gone. Rent controls and rent tribunals will be continued. The law of leasehold will be reformed so as to do justice to householders, shopkeepers and business men.

Labour intends to see that the countryside is not despoiled, that the fastest possible progress is made with the great adventure of the New Towns and that housing estates are developed into communities where people can enjoy life to the full.

RECREATION AND THE ARTS

The Government has already added greatly to opportunity for the full enjoyment of leisure. We shall continue to do all that can legitimately be done to support the Arts without interfering in any way with the free expression of the artist.

National Parks will be established in the fairest parts of Britain. Footpaths will be preserved and access to the countryside will be secured for all hikers and cyclists. There is also need for more playing fields for the children, and wherever possible these will be provided. A Holidays Council will be established to promote more holiday centres with reasonably priced accommodation for families.

ONE WORLD OF PEACE AND PLENTY

In the days of Munich, when the Tories decided British foreign policy, the prestige of Britain sank to its lowest ebb for a century or more.

The selfish and cowardly bungling of the Conservative Government landed us in a war which collective security could have prevented and for which the Government had not prepared. The Colonies were shamefully neglected and the democratic aspirations of the Indian people met with continuous frustration and delay. During the last five years, under Labour leadership, Britain has regained her moral position in the Western world and has won the confidence of many millions in Africa and Asia. By applying the moral principles of Socialism to our relations with other peoples, the Labour Government has made Britain a symbol of justice and social advance.

We will continue if returned to power, to work realistically for peace. We will stand firm against any attempt to intimidate us or to undermine our position in the world. But we will remain ready at any moment to co-operate fully with Russia, as with any country that is prepared to work with us for peace and friendship.

Labour believes that the purposes of the United Nations are best served by still closer associations between friendly countries within the Charter. The Labour Government has put particular energy into strengthening the associations of the Commonwealth, the Atlantic community, and Western Europe. These associations are, we believe, not only compatible but necessary to each other as bastions of world security.

In Europe great strides have been taken towards the creation of a new economic and political unity. No country has given more leadership to this great movement than Labour Britain. We shall continue this support and leadership in the years to come, always remembering that we are the heart of a great Commonwealth extending far beyond the boundaries of Europe.

UNITY OF THE COMMONWEALTH

By recognising the desire of Commonwealth countries for complete national self-determination, the Labour Government has immensely helped to strengthen the essential unity of the Commonwealth. In April, 1949, all the Commonwealth Prime Ministers welcomed the free choice of India, Pakistan and Ceylon to join the Commonwealth as full and equal members, and accepted India’s decision to be a Republic while recognising The King as head of the Commonwealth. These decisions marked an event of epoch-making importance. They created a bridge of friendship and co-operation between the peoples of East and West which will prove increasingly essential as the movement towards world-wide unity proceeds. These decisions would never have been taken under a Tory Government in Britain.

The natural confidence and mutual affection existing between the peoples of the Commonwealth are one of the world’s greatest assets in its struggle for stability and peace. We will continue to strengthen these powerful bonds of union by practical measures of co-operation. Already we have vastly expanded Commonwealth trade through long-term con tracts and bulk purchase agreements. Moreover, by finding new sources of supply within the Commonwealth we are helping to bridge the dollar gap.

In the Colonial territories our purpose is to help in creating the economic and social basis for democratic self-government. Moreover we believe that world peace and prosperity will not be secure so long as vast areas are suffering from bitter poverty.

The Colonies are now engaged in a great ten-year plan of development and welfare largely financed by Britain. This plan aims to root out poverty, ignorance and disease. Since 1945, there has been a great increase, compared with pre-war, in the volume of capital goods sent to the Colonies to help in raising their production. Trade unionism, co-operation and social welfare are now fostered so that this new investment shall bring freedom instead of exploitation. A new confidence and energy are springing up throughout Britain’s territories overseas.

In the whole of our overseas policy we are proud of the new strength that our country derives from the support of hundreds of millions in all parts of the world who seek a way of life that is neither capitalist nor communist. To these millions Labour Britain is a beacon of inspiration and encouragement.

PUT THE NATION FIRST

We have now set before our fellow citizens the principles and policy upon which the Labour Party will fight the General Election of 1950.

Our appeal is to all those useful men and women who actively contribute to the work of the nation. We appeal to manual workers – skilled, semi-skilled and so-called unskilled; farmers and agricultural workers; active and able managers and administrators in industry and the public services; professional workers, technicians and scientists; and housewives and women workers of all kinds. And just as we in this declaration have put the general public interest first, we ask the electors of all classes to do the same. For if they put sectional interests in front of the general good of the people as a whole, they will tend to damage, not only the nation, but themselves.

The fundamental question for the men and women of the United Kingdom to determine when they vote is this: Shall we continue along the road of ordered progress which the people deliberately chose in 1945, or shall reaction, the protectors of privilege and the apostles of scarcity economics be once more placed in the seats of power, to take us back to the bleak years of poverty and unemployment? Those years must never return.

We are successfully going forward with the great and inspiring adventure of our time. Let us win through together.

The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1951 General Election.

Labour – proud of its record, sure in its policies – confidently asks the electors to renew its mandate.

Four major tasks face our nation: to secure peace; to maintain full employment and increase production; to bring down the cost of living; to build a just society. Only with a Labour Government can the British people achieve these aims.

PEACE

Our first aim is to save the peace of the world. Labour has striven hard since 1945 to bring all the nations together in world-wide co-operation through the United Nations. We have had grievous disappointments, particularly with the Soviet Union, but we shall persevere. We do not for one moment accept the view that a third world war is inevitable. We arm to save the peace.

The Labour Government decided without hesitation that Britain must play her full part in the strengthening of collective defence. Britain must be strong: so must the Commonwealth.

But peace cannot be preserved by arms alone. Peace depends equally on bringing freedom from poverty to lands where hunger and disease are the lot of the masses. Britain’s Labour Government has given a lead in economic assistance to these lands. As our armed strength grows, more attention must be given to the under-developed regions of the world. Only a Labour Government would do this.

The Tory still thinks in terms of Victorian imperialism and colonial exploitation. His reaction in a crisis is to threaten force. His narrow outlook is an obstacle to that world-wide co-operation which alone makes peace secure. He would have denied freedom to India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma.

It is this that makes the election so critical, not only for the people of Britain but for the whole world. Anxious eyes will be watching what we do. If the election were to result in a Tory victory there would be no major power in the councils of the Western nations represented by Labour.

Surely now, even more than ever before, it is vital to the fate of civilisation that the voice of Labour should be heard wherever and whenever the issues of war and peace are discussed between the spokesmen of the Great Powers.

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND PRODUCTION

Full employment through six years of peace is the greatest of all Labour’s achievements. It has never happened before. It has meant a revolution in the lives of our people. To-day, there are half a million unfilled vacancies at the employment exchanges. Under Labour – more jobs than workers. Under the Tories – more workers than jobs.

Largely due to full employment, with everyone contributing to the national product, production in Britain since 1945 has risen twice as fast each year as under the Tories. Our industrial and agricultural output is now 50 per cent above pre-war, but we must do better still to improve our living standards, to fulfil our obligations in collective defence and to play our part in assisting under-developed regions. Almost 20 per cent of the national income is now devoted to new capital equipment for the nation. This is higher than ever in British history.

World shortage of raw materials has steeply raised the prices of our imports and re opened the dollar gap. The difficulties are great. But we can conquer them.

We shall do everything possible to stimulate production at home and to expand our exports. We shall press on with the development of new sources of raw materials, particularly within the Commonwealth.

We shall attack monopolies and combines which restrict production and keep prices and profits too high. We shall prohibit by law the withholding of supplies to traders who bring prices down.

We shall take over concerns which fail the nation and start new public enterprises wherever this will serve the national interest. We shall help industry with scientific and technical aid.

We shall establish Development Councils, by compulsion if necessary, wherever this will help industrial efficiency.

We shall associate the workers more closely with the administration of public industries and services.

The British countryside which was being ruined and depopulated before the war is more prosperous under Labour than ever before. Our farmers and farmworkers have beaten all records in the production of home-grown food. We shall continue the policy of guaranteed prices for the farmer and good conditions of labour for the farmworker.

We shall further extend electricity and water supplies and sewerage in rural areas. We shall encourage agricultural co-operatives. We shall stop the creation of new tied cottages under the cottage certificate system as the first step towards a just and comprehensive solution of the tied cottage problem.

Under the Tories there was never full employment. Year after year millions were with out work. The Tories gave us the distressed areas. They betrayed agriculture; they encouraged monopolies and cartels. They are condemned by their record.

COST OF LIVING

Rising world prices have increased the cost of living, but much less in Britain than in most other countries. Our people have been sheltered against rising prices by Labour’s policy of price control; by rent control; by food subsidies worth 12s. a week to the average family; by utility production and by bulk purchase which has kept down the cost of imports.

Though long overdue improvements in the miners’ wages and working conditions have been made, the price of coal under nationalisation is less than in any other country in Europe, or in the United States.

Our Government has started international discussions for a fairer distribution of raw materials and for lower and more stable prices. Largely through this initiative the prices of textiles and clothing, including children’s clothing, have recently been much reduced. This brings great benefit to the housewife and is a welcome change from the previous upward movement of the cost of living.

We hope to see this fall extend to other prices soon. With this object we shall extend and strengthen price controls. We shall set up new auction markets in provincial towns to reduce the price of fruit and vegetables to the housewife. She will have fresher supplies, and when unnecessary middlemen are cut out the grower will get better and more stable prices. We shall overhaul marketing in other trades with the same object.

Tory policy would cause a catastrophic rise in the cost of living. They are for high profits and against controls. They demand the abandonment of bulk purchase. They want to end the utility scheme. They would allow landlords to raise rents.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Contrast Britain in the inter-war years with Britain to-day. Then we had mass unemployment; mass fear; mass misery. Now we have full employment.

Then millions suffered from insecurity and want. Now we have social security for every man, woman and child.

Then dread of doctors bills was a nightmare in countless homes so that good health cost more than most people could afford to pay. Now we have a national health scheme which is the admiration of the post-war world.

Then we had the workhouse and the Poor Law for the old people. Now we have a national insurance system covering the whole population with greatly improved pensions and a humane National Assistance scheme.

Then only 39 per cent of the nation’s personal incomes after taxation went to the wage earner, and 34 per cent to rent, interest and profit. Now, following Labour’s great reforms in taxation, 48 per cent goes in wages and only 25 per cent in rent, interest and profit.

There has, indeed, been progress, but much more remains to be done in the redistribution of income and of property to ensure that those who create the nation’s wealth receive their just reward. Half of Britain’s wealth is still owned by 1 per cent of the population.

Labour will press forward towards greater social equality and the establishment of equal opportunities for all. We shall extend our policy of giving all young people equal opportunities in education. We shall encourage a spirit of hope and adventure in the young.

As soon as tax reductions become possible we shall still further reduce taxation of wages, salaries, moderate incomes and moderate inheritances. We shall also take steps to abolish the differences between the payment of men and women in the public services. On the other hand, we shall limit dividends by law, increase taxation on the small minority who own great fortunes and large unearned incomes, and take measures to prevent large capital gains.

The Tories are against a more equal society. They stand, as they have always stood, for privilege. In Parliament they proposed cuts in taxation on large incomes and fought the profits tax. They opposed the dividend freeze.

In order to reduce the taxes of the well-to-do they would cut down the social services and penalise the great mass of people. They now suggest ‘some sort of an excess profits tax’. In the interests of the nation Labour would stop all excess profits.

They have voted in Parliament against the National Health Service, and they condemned the Labour Government for being ‘too hasty’ in introducing family allowances and raising old age pensions.

Under Labour more than 1,300,000 new dwellings have been built since the war. We shall maintain the present rate of 200,000 new houses a year and increase it as soon as raw materials and manpower can be spared. Most of these houses will as now be built for rent and not for sale, and for the benefit of those whose housing need is greatest.

We shall give security to householders and shopkeepers by leasehold enfranchisement and by other changes in the law.

FORWARD WITH LABOUR OR BACKWARD WITH THE TORIES

We ask the electors to renew their vote of confidence in the Labour Party. It is a simple choice – Labour or Tory.

Look first at the past records, for we have both made history. But what kind of history? To-day, after six years of Labour rule and in spite of post-war difficulties, the standard of living of the vast majority of our people is higher than ever it was in the days of Tory rule. Never have the old folk been better cared for. Never had we so happy and healthy a young generation as we see in Britain to-day.

Scotland and Wales have a new vitality. The great areas of depression have gone. There has been much devolution of administration from Whitehall and this will be carried further.

Welfare at home, peace abroad, with a constant striving for international co-operation – this is Labour’s aim. The Tories with their dark past, full of bitter memories for so many of our people, promise no light for the future. They would take us backward into poverty and insecurity at home and grave perils abroad.

The manifesto issued by the Labour Party for the 1955 General Election.

Forward With Labour:

Labour’s Policy for the Consideration of the Nation

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As we in Britain prepare to go to the poll, the Hydrogen Bomb looms over all mankind. What can we do to meet that menace? The existence of this terrible weapon on both sides of the Iron Curtain maintains an uneasy balance under the threat of mutual destruction. But deterrents can at best only give us a breathing space. We are faced with the choice between world co-operation and world annihilation. The time is short.

The Labour Party approaches the problem in no party spirit. In April, 1954, we moved a motion in the House of Commons asking for immediate high-level talks. This was carried unanimously. Despite our pressure, those talks have not taken place. Labour believes that the first task of a British Government is to end this delay.

LABOUR’S POLICY FOR PEACE

But to insist on high-level talks is not enough. The Prime Minister who takes part in them must stand for a positive peace policy. Labour’s peace policy is threefold:-

1. Disarmament – Labour will ensure that Britain gives her full support to the United Nations as the world-wide organisation for peace and security. Ultimately the menace of the H-bomb can only be removed by world disarmament, which covers all kinds of weapons. We shall co-operate in any genuine plan for disarmament which provides for effective international control, even though it involves, as it must, sacrifices of national sovereignty. As a first step, we believe that Britain should propose the immediate cessation of H-bomb tests.
2. Relaxing World Tension. – If the great powers are to disarm, the causes of world tension must be attacked. In Europe the chief of them is a divided Germany. Labour believes that the time has now come to make another effort to achieve the reunification of Germany by means of genuinely free elections.
   In the Far East the war crisis centres on Formosa. Labour has constantly urged that this crisis can only be overcome by the evacuation of the off-shore islands, now held by Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces; by the long overdue admission of Communist China to the United Nations; and by the neutralisation of Formosa under the United Nations to enable its inhabitants to make their own choice.
3. The Under-Developed Areas. – There can be no lasting peace until we have met the most profound challenge of our time – the gap between the highly developed industrial nations of the West and the peasant millions of Asia and Africa. The Labour Government responded to this challenge and earned the confidence of the colonial peoples. For this reason alone no one is better fitted to represent Britain at high-level talks than Clement Attlee – the man who freed India, despite Conservative jeers of ‘Socialist scuttle’.

EMPIRE INTO COMMONWEALTH

Labour worked to transform the British Empire into a Commonwealth of free and equal peoples. We helped India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma to achieve their freedom; we encouraged West Africa to move rapidly towards self-government; and we began to tackle backwardness and poverty in South-East Asia through the Colombo Plan.

We shall continue the transformation from Empire to Commonwealth as each Colonial people becomes ready for independence. Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to protect the weaker peoples from being exploited, and to develop communities free from racial and colour discrimination.

DEFENCE

Faced with actual aggression in Korea and the threat of it elsewhere, the Labour Government did not shirk the heavy burden of rearmament. It took the lead in building up the North Atlantic Alliance.

We believe that in the absence of all-round disarmament, the democratic powers must be strong and united, and their defensive power sufficient to deter aggression. But recently, after three years of Tory Government and despite heavy defence expenditure, grave deficiencies have been revealed both in the equipment of the Royal Air Force and in the use of man power in the Services.

A Labour Government will at once submit all problems of defence to a searching inquiry. In particular, it will review the period of National Service.

THE COST OF LIVING

The Tories’ main claim is that the nation is more prosperous as the result of their decision to scrap socialist planning and return to a free-for-all to suit big business. What are the facts? Industrial production – the key to prosperity – has gone up since they took office at only half the rate by which it rose while Labour was in power. Exports have hardly increased at all since 1951. They went up in the last three years of the Labour Government ten times as fast as under the Tories.

Our gold and dollar reserves have been falling for the past nine months, and to-day they are two hundred million pounds less than they were at the time of the last General Election.

Such improvements as there have been in the last three years have been, mostly due to the movement of world prices in our favour which has reduced the cost of our imports. Moreover, the gain has been precarious and most unfairly distributed.

Dividends have gone up faster than wages or salaries. Speculators and investors, whose shares have risen in value 50 per cent. in the last two years, have done best of all. Even the long overdue increase in pensions is being financed by making workers and employers pay a shilling a week more in contributions.

It was the policy of the Labour Government to protect consumers from the full effect of rising world prices; and up to 1951 the cost of living rose far less here than in other countries.

The Tories fought last time on a pledge to bring prices down, and Mr. Butler promised not to cut food subsidies. In less than a year he broke this promise, and thus deliberately drove up the cost of living. Although import prices are down by 3s. in the pound, prices in the shops at home have continued to rise and food in particular costs 4s. in the pound more than in 1951. This, of course, has hit hardest the old age pensioners and others living on small incomes.

Labour’s policy is to keep the cost of living steady

1. by long-term agreements with Commonwealth countries;
2. by firm action against monopolies which, through price-fixing and restrictive practices, exploit the public;
3. by cutting out waste in the present antiquated system of food distribution; and
4. by re-imposing price-controls on essential goods where necessary.

The charge that a Labour Government would re-introduce rationing is a deliberate Tory lie.

A FAIR DEAL FOR THE CONSUMER

Labour will take powers to protect the public against shoddy goods and unscrupulous trade practices, and enforce clean food standards in shops and restaurants.

We will encourage manufacturers to produce better goods by enforcing quality standards and accurate labelling.

We shall establish a Consumers’ Advisory Service.

HELPING THE FAMILY

Labour believes that security should not be a privilege of the few but the right of all, and is determined to assure it to every family – security in the home, security against the burdens of old age and sickness, and an equal chance for every child at school.

(1) Housing. – Labour believes that housing is a social service and will therefore go on subsidising the building of houses to let by local authorities. It will also begin to tackle the vast problem of old, rent-restricted houses in private hands.

The failure of the Tory Rents and Repairs Acts has proved that the landlords will not repair those houses without steeper increases of rent than even a Tory Government would dare to permit. Labour will therefore ask local authorities to submit schemes for gradually taking over and modernising rent-controlled private property, subject to fair compensation. We shall help those who wish to do so to own their own homes. We shall give leaseholders an opportunity of purchasing the freeholds of their houses.

(2) Health and Old Age. – Through the National Health Service and National Insurance, the Labour Government began to abolish the fear of old age, sickness and disablement which haunted working-class life before the war. We shall go forward with the job.

In order to restore a free Health Service, we shall abolish all charges, including those on teeth, spectacles and prescriptions. We shall stop queue-jumping by ensuring that the need for treatment and not ability to pay shall be the test for obtaining a bed in National Health Service hospitals.

Now social security must be carried one stage further. In order to remove the last taint of ‘public assistance’, a Ministry of Social Welfare will be established to take over the work not only of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, but also of the National Assistance Board.

To maintain the real purchasing power of these benefits, pensions and allowances, we shall institute an annual review, and in any year in which there has been an increase in the cost of living, the scale of payments will be increased accordingly.

One of the first acts of the next Labour Government will be to improve the rates of National Assistance fixed last February by the Tory Government, an increase which we regard as quite inadequate. We shall also deal with the anomalies of the National Insurance and Industrial Injuries schemes.

We welcome the growth of superannuation schemes in industry and commerce as valuable additions to National Insurance pensions. We shall consult with the T.U.C. and industry with a view to extending similar schemes on a voluntary basis to all kinds of employment and will seek, wherever possible, to arrange for pensions to be made transfer able.

(3) Education. – Labour is determined on a radical reform of our education service. Our first objectives are:-

• (a) to increase the number of teachers and to improve, especially in rural areas, the standard of our schools; and
• (b) to remove from the primary schools the strain of the 11-plus examination.

This cramps the free and happy life which should stimulate the children’s early years. It penalises the children who develop late and gives an inferior place in our education to the practical skills increasingly essential to our industrial efficiency.

Local Authorities will be asked to submit schemes for abolishing the examination and, to realise the fulfilment of the Education Act, 1944, we shall encourage comprehensive secondary schooling. We shall insist on the inspection of all private schools.

To prevent children being removed from school or denied a University education for lack of means, a national scale of Maintenance Allowances will be established, and every student admitted to a University will be entitled, in case of need, to a State Scholarship.

For those who leave school at the age of 15, we shall begin to carry Out those parts of the 1944 Education Act which make provision for part-time education.

We shall provide more playing fields. We shall abolish the tax on sport and the living theatre.

Television is a growing influence for good or ill. Labour will establish an alternative public television service, free from advertising.

FAIR SHARES

The Tories have reduced taxes on profits and unearned income, and granted tax reliefs which give most help to those who need help least. With their encouragement, higher dividends are being paid at the expense of the re-equipment of industry.

Labour will once again use the Budget as an instrument for the twin purposes of remedying social inequality and increasing production. We shall review the working of the tax system to ensure that it is efficient and just. We shall encourage those who earn their money by hard work and ability; we shall assist National Savings and investment. But we shall deal firmly with tax dodgers, and we shall see to it that a fairer share of the burden will be carried by those who get their money too easily through excessive profits, capital gains and the inheritance of large fortunes.

We shall speed up the repayment of post-war credits which was inevitably delayed in the difficult years immediately after the war.

Labour re-affirms its belief in equal pay for equal work and will immediately extend it to industrial workers in Government service and so give a lead to industry.

PLANNING AND PUBLIC OWNERSHIP

In order to strengthen our Welfare State still further and at the same time to play our part in assisting the under-developed areas of the world, our own production must rise every year. Only a government prepared to plan the nation’s resources can do this.

Labour will ensure that the claims of investment and modernisation come first, and will use taxation policy to help productive investment – thus providing more efficient plant and equipment for the workers.

Even the Tories have had to praise the nationalised industries for their high rate of in vestment and advances in technical efficiency.

Public ownership of the steel and road haulage industries is essential to the nation’s needs and we shall re-nationalise them.

We shall bring sections of the chemical and machine tools industries into public owner ship. Where necessary, we shall start new public enterprises.

The Labour Government brought new hope to the old distressed areas. The Tory Government have scrapped many of the essential controls, and now, once again, some areas face the danger of unemployment. Labour will use the Development Area powers to the full, and where necessary, extend them in order to provide new jobs.

A NEW INDUSTRIAL ERA

Atomic energy and other new inventions can bring dramatic increases in productivity and therefore in wealth and leisure. They will also demand new skills. To meet this demand, Labour will enlist the help of scientists, trade unions and progressive managements, and begin a real drive for better technical education.

We will encourage schemes of industrial democracy and introduce long overdue legislation to improve working conditions in shops and offices.

FULL HARVEST

Labour in power revitalised the countryside. Britain needs a continuously expanding and efficient farming industry. The farmer must be able to produce in the confidence that he will find a market. This was Labour’s policy under the 1947 Agriculture Act – a policy which the Tories are undermining.

The housewife is paying more than she need for food because there are too many middlemen between her and the grower. Yet the grower, too, is threatened with insecurity again.

Labour will return to a system of fixed guaranteed prices for the main commodities so that the farmer can plan ahead, and will abolish the costly system of private auctions and deficiency payments.

We shall encourage the setting-up of producer marketing boards to organise distribution more efficiently in the interests of the consumer as well as the farmer. Advisory services and credit facilities for farmers will be improved.

Labour will cheapen fruit and vegetables by opening more markets and thus bring the produce of our market gardens into the shops more quickly and efficiently.

There will be a square deal for the farm worker and his family, and the injustices of the tied cottage system will be brought to an end. Safety regulations will be applied to farms.

Water supplies, still pitifully inadequate in the countryside, will be greatly extended and brought under public ownership.

Labour’s aim is to revive the best in country life and to bring the benefits of modern living to our hamlets and villages.

SCOTLAND, WALES AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Under the Tories, there had been hunger and misery, idle pits and shipyards and bankrupt farms. Labour in power brought new life to Scotland and Wales. Thriving industry justified triumphantly Labour’s system of controls and priorities.

But unemployment in some parts of these countries remains high. Labour will ensure full employment in Scotland and Wales, and will begin to overtake Tory neglect by bringing new industries to Northern Ireland.

We respect and will safeguard the distinctive national cultures of these countries.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Labour believes in a vigorous local democracy. But at present local authorities do not have adequate revenue to do their job properly. Immediate relief will be provided by the repeal of the de-rating of industrial properties. We shall review local government structure and finance, and consider the possibility of rating of site values.

FORWARD WITH LABOUR

In the dangerous world in which we live we must seek to unite all those who earnestly desire peace and disarmament and who recognise the need for a positive policy to remove the causes of war.

Faith, vision and enthusiasm are needed if civilisation is not to be destroyed by man’s many inventions. A Party that proudly claims for its inspiration the brotherhood of man is best fitted to grasp the opportunity of building a world of peace, freedom and justice.

In Britain our goal is a society in which free and independent men and women work together as equals.

The signposts along our road are Work for All, Abolition of Want, Fair Distribution of Income and Property, Better Education.

The powers we ask for will be used in the interests of the whole nation, fully respecting the rights of human personality. Our aim is to make men more truly free. In 1945, Britain started out along the path of social justice.

Now is the time to go forward with Labour.

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

---

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.

The 1970 Labour Party Manifesto.

NOW BRITAIN’S STRONG – LET’S MAKE IT GREAT TO LIVE IN

The British people took a historic decision in 1964 and 1966. It was not two decisions but one decision.

On Thursday, 18 June, many more of the same people – together with millions who have never had a chance of voting before – can take this decision a big stage further. For it takes more than six years to modernise and humanise an advanced industrial country and move it on towards a new kind of greatness.

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Part 1: The Britain We Want

OUR PURPOSE is to create, on the firm base of a steadily growing economy, a better society for all the people of Britain: a strong, just and compassionate society, one where the handling of complex problems may be a source of pride to ourselves and an example to the world.

Our appeal is to those who have faith in the capacity and humanity of their fellow-men, and to those who are not solely moved by the search for profit or the hope of personal gain.

First, we believe that Britain’s potential for improvement is enormous. Science, technology and the general growth of knowledge present great opportunities for social and economic advance. With foresight, intelligence and effort – with planning – we can harness the new technologies and the powerful economic forces of our time to human ends.

But, without planning, with a return to the Tory free-for-all, people become the victims of economic forces they cannot control.

Second, we believe that the contribution that ordinary people can make to our present welfare and national future is still largely untapped and undeveloped. People want more responsibility. It is this that makes us wish to extend opportunities for everyone to have a bigger say in making decisions, whether in their local community or in their place of work. It is this, too, that makes us place the highest priority on education and educational reform.

These are not the aims of the Tory Party. They have always defended the power and privileges of the few.

Third, we believe that society can now afford and must be ready to meet the basic needs of all its members. There should be decent housing for everyone; slums and overcrowding must be dealt with; immigrant ghettoes must not be allowed to develop. There should be work for those who seek it, in the nation as a whole and in every region.

We must make a rising standard of provision for those who, on account of age, sickness or other circumstances, are unable to provide for themselves. A compassionate society is one that does not grudge help for those in need.

We reject the Tory view that misfortune is a private, not a social, concern, that medical care should depend on what people can pay rather than on what people require and that social expenditure should be ruthlessly pruned.

Fourth, we believe that all people are entitled to be treated as equals: that women should have the same opportunities and rewards as men. We insist, too, that society should not discriminate against minorities on grounds of religion or race or colour: that all should have equal protection under the law and equal opportunity for advancement in and service to the community.

Many of our opponents believe this, too, but today as often in the past the extension of human rights has had to wait for a Labour Government. Fifth, we believe that we have a duty to the future; to ensure that the Britain we leave to the generation that follows is not spoilt by our misuse or neglect of the environment. We are still dealing with the slums, slag-heaps, derelict land and foul rivers of the first industrial revolution. Today we have to manage our own lives in a new industrial society so that we do not spoil our land, our water, our beaches – even the air we breathe – with noise, fumes, filth and waste.

This will only be done by a Party which is not the creature of private profit.

Sixth, we are proud of the contribution that Britain and its people have made and are making to the welfare of mankind. With our resources, our experience and our unique connections, we have a large and continuing part to play in solving world problems.

The Tories still see their role primarily in terms of overseas bases and a costly and out-of-date type of military presence in the Far East. We see our role primarily in helping the poorer countries to develop and in the stand we take on basic issues of colour and race, while maintaining as loyal members of the U.N. a general defence capability based on Europe but ready and trained for international peace-keeping operations elsewhere.

We believe our defence effort should now be concentrated inside Europe, contributing to collective security through NATO and to the constant search for East-West détente and real European security. We shall play our full part in creating a more secure, prosperous and united Europe.

The Britain we want is one we shall have to build together. It will not be easy to achieve; but our deeply rooted democracy, our tradition of tolerance and fairness, our confidence in ourselves, are enormous assets on which we can draw.

But it is a far more attractive society, with a far greater potential for human happiness, than the selfish, cold, ruthlessly competitive model that our opponents want.

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Part 2: Eight Main Tasks

Our jobs, our living standards, and the role of Britain in the World all depend on our ability to earn our living as a nation. That is why Britain has to pay her way in trade and transactions with the outside world.

In the last financial year, 1969/70, our national surplus was £550 million – the largest we have ever had.

Only five years ago, the outgoing Tory Government left the largest deficit ever recorded in our history – running at minus £800m. and this was only the culminating year of a long period of economic decline. So in just five years, Labour has registered an improvement of more than £1,300m.

We have got out of the red in our national accounts. We are now strong and solvent and we intend to remain so.

It is particularly important to have this strength in the dangerous world which confronts us today. No one can look beyond our shores and say with certainty there are no storms ahead; but we can now face them from a much better base than in the years of balance of payments weakness.

1. A Strong Economy

Provided that we continue with measures to strengthen the economy and provided that we do not return to the do-nothing complacency of the Tory years, we have good prospects for maintaining our new competitiveness and of keeping our economy in surplus.

It remains, of course, an essential task of economic management to ensure that a substantial part of our output is available for exports – and is not absorbed by excessive home consumption. It is equally the task of economic management to see to it that the correct balance is struck between private and public spending and the need for investment in industry.

The irresponsible tax bribes that the Tories now promise – and threaten – would wreck the economy. These crude electoral manoeuvres would cause raging inflation; be a recipe for economic disaster – or a signal for savage cuts in essential social services.

Steady Expansion

Our central aim is a steady and sustained increase of output with secure and rising employment – and the avoidance of the violent stop-go cycles that have done so much damage to our economy in past years.

Since the number of people of working age in Britain will not increase for a number of years the rate of economic expansion and the increase in our standard of living will depend on productivity: and getting more output from the same number of people.

The factors which will affect productivity most are the quality of management; the skills and performance of people at work; the quality of the plant and equipment that they use; and the organisation and structure of British industry.

(a) Investment in Industry

Expenditure on new plant and equipment in industry has been higher in every year since 1964 than in the peak year of Tory rule. While we have done well by our own past standards, investment in much of British industry is still insufficient in relation to our main competitors. We shall therefore continue to encourage industrial investment in the years ahead.

In the public sector large but essential investment programmes are being carried out in the railways, the national air-lines, the telecommunications industries, in the rapid exploitation of North Sea gas and in the supply of electricity.

(b) People and Jobs

If Britain is to develop her full potential, we must recognise that men and women are even more important than the machines they use. As our industrial structure changes we must see that workers are not left stranded by technological change. We must help them to acquire the skills they need to man the new industries; offer them a wider choice of job opportunity.

This is why the Labour Government has been reorganising and re-equipping our employment services, moving in swiftly to deal with redundancies, placing workers more quickly in employment with the help of modern techniques.

This is why we have carried out the biggest expansion of industrial training in Britain’s history. Over 1,400,000 people are now being trained, including 500,000 apprentices.

The main responsibility lies with the Industrial Training Boards, of which 28 have now been established, covering 15m.workpeople. But the G.T.C.s have a vital role to play helping to meet urgent shortages of skilled labour and to retrain redundant workers for new jobs, particularly in the development areas.

Labour has increased the number of centres from 26 to 45 with more to come. As part of their economy drive in 1962-3, the Tories actually closed two centres down.

The Government has now set on foot plans to create a National Manpower Service as a modern instrument of manpower intelligence, the forward planning of our manpower needs and the creation of greater job opportunities. The Central Training Council is also being given a more important role in co-ordinating industrial training over the whole field.

(c) Industrial Reorganisation and Planning

Industrial reorganisation, with its emphasis on better management, is crucial to the success – even to the survival – of much of British industry.

We must continue to tackle on an industry basis, and where necessary firm by firm, the more detailed problems of structure which exist in both public and private industry. We shall strengthen the direct relations between the trade unions and Government in industrial policy matters.

Industry – whether private or public – must be accountable for its major decisions. Government investment must carry with it an assurance that a real share of any profit accrues to the nation.

Publicly owned industries are playing a key role in our industrial transformation. The reorganisation of transport is well under way and the coal industry has been given the help it has urgently needed in its task of adjusting to rapid change.

We shall continue to assist the coal industry and we shall carry through further reorganisation measures in both the gas and electricity industries.

The old restrictions on the activities of the nationalised industries are being removed. The new Post Office Corporation with its Giro service and data processing facilities, and the Gas Council with its British Hydrocarbon Company are opening up a new and more competitive concept of public enterprise. With new techniques and resources, there is a growing potential for joint action by these industries.

We also stress the contribution that can be made by co-operative enterprise. This is already a large sector in the economy, and operates on democratic criteria which we would like to see extended. The Labour Party is therefore considering the establishment of a Co-operative Development Agency to give added strength to the rationalisation and development of co-operatives.

In the private sector, particular industries are now undergoing far-reaching structural change, following detailed studies and deliberate Government commitment to reform – e.g. nuclear energy, shipbuilding, machine tools and computers.

The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation has been associated with more than 30 mergers, all geared to better structure and more efficient management – and many of them, such as heavy electrical machinery, motor cars and electronics, are in industries which are crucial to our exports. The Corporation has the power, which it has exercised, to take equity shares in the companies it assists.

In the next Parliament, we shall provide additional finance for the I.R.C. We shall further redeploy and reorganise the Government’s Research and Development resources in the support of civil industry.

It is our purpose to develop a new relationship with both sides of industry, in which the forward plans of both Government and industry can be increasingly harmonised in the interests of economic growth. In the public and private sectors, industrial enterprises are paying increasing attention to medium and long term planning. In a rapidly changing economy, our plans have to be flexible, but it is of the utmost importance that these processes should develop. It is not private industry but Tory Party doctrine that rejects planning. The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation and the powers of the Industrial Expansion Act are valuable and flexible instruments of public enterprise for furthering industrial policies.

We do not regard public initiative in industry as confined either to total private or total public ownership. Partnership ventures are sometimes a better solution – e.g. the Bus plant sited in the North of England, aluminium smelters, and the Scottish Transport Group.

We shall pursue these principles, based on our determination to see progress in all sectors of the economy. The establishment of a Holding and Development Company to exploit these possibilities, with special regard to regional development needs, may well be necessary.

We shall push ahead with the search for and exploitation of gas and oil under the North Sea, and our new measures to facilitate the development of mineral deposits in Britain.

With continued progress in training, investment, industrial reorganisation, import saving, and planning, we should be able to achieve a faster rate of economic expansion than we have had before. But progress will depend to a very marked extent on the policies pursued and the managerial efficiency of the very large firms – who must be accountable to the community.

It is the Government’s intention, therefore, to set up a Commission on Industry and Manpower – merging the N.B.P.I. and the Monopolies Commission – with a special duty to report on costs, prices and efficiency in various industries and to stimulate competition in large and monopolistic firms.

(d) Fighting Inflation

The biggest challenge facing any industrial nation today, is how to expand the economy without pushing up its costs. The answer lies in increasing our productivity.

Only in this way can we keep our lead over our competitors and ensure an improvement in the real standard of life for our people.

Over the last five years, with little help from the Tories, the Labour Government has been hammering this lesson home. The Prices and Incomes Board has done invaluable work in spelling out how wage increases can be paid for by increased productivity and in scrutinising (and, where necessary, rejecting) the case for price increases. Its work will be continued by the Commission on Industry and Manpower.

Devaluation inevitably pushed up prices – as we warned it would do. Even so, as a result of Government vigilance, prices rose much less than they otherwise would have done. If wage increases were now to be linked to increases in production, we should be able to look forward to greater price stability.

The Government has taken a number of steps to encourage this. It has controlled rent increases by law, thus reducing the increases which would otherwise have taken place. It has kept rates down by rate relief for every domestic ratepayer now running at is. 8d. in the pound. The budget was carefully designed to encourage price stability.

The whole Tory economic strategy, by contrast, is based on policies which would push prices up. The Tories would abolish rent control and reduce housing subsidies so rents would rise to astronomical levels; they would abolish Exchequer subsidies to farmers so food prices would rise by an amount which it is impossible to estimate; they would increase taxes on goods and services in order to reduce direct taxes on the better off. Having abolished S.E.T. they would put other, more inflationary taxes in its place. Their whole budget policy would depend upon the deliberate introduction of a value-added tax which would mean a levy of 4s. in the pound on a wide range of essential goods and services so far exempt from tax; children’s clothing, fares, coal, gas, electricity, laundries, theatres, sport and so on.

Food prices have been rising. Rising all over the world. But it is generally acknowledged that our food prices are a long way below those of other western countries. Over the last twelve months, the cost of living has risen at a faster rate than in Britain, in Canada, France, Portugal, Ireland, Turkey, Sweden, the United States, Japan and Norway. Under Tory policies, the British people would face the sort of price increases we have seen in these countries.

Under a Labour Government, people and industry will co-operate in a new effort to keep prices down.

(e) Food and Farming

The importance to the economy of British agriculture is beyond question. Our policies will continue to be devised to the benefit of the farmer as well as the consumer.

We intend, first, to promote an expanding farm industry. This policy is based on the proved system of guaranteed prices and production grants. However, we are continuing to develop arrangements for greater market stability; we have recognised the need for clear long-term objectives; and for the first time have introduced successive long-term programmes for agricultural expansion.

We shall continue all that we are doing to improve life in the rural community.

2. Prosperity in the Regions

We are determined to see that employment, prosperity and opportunity are spread more evenly through the different regions of our country.

The aim of a Labour Government is to keep the country’s resources fully used. Britain no longer suffers from mass, long-term unemployment. In some areas there is an acute shortage of labour. Unemployment today is largely a problem of the development and intermediate areas.

That is why a Labour Government has pursued and will pursue a vigorous policy of regional development.

In the long period of Tory rule up to 1964, prosperity ebbed away from large areas of Britain; economic expansion was heavily concentrated in the Midlands and the South.

The areas where the older basic industries were declining – Scotland, Wales, the North, the North West, and the far South West – suffered continued high unemployment coupled with the loss of many of their young people as they moved to the South in search of work. The areas of expansion in the Midlands and the South East suffered from ever-increasing congestion, with acute shortages of housing and land.

The pace of industrial change has quickened; one industry alone, the coal industry, has lost 300,000 jobs in the past five years. Without a massive development of regional planning, large parts of our country would be economic disaster areas today.

It is here, in the least prosperous regions, that the human impact of technological change is most keenly felt. And it is here that we have tried hardest 40 protect the families and communities from this impact. It is here that we have insisted on the longest possible advance warning of impending change; it is here that we have intervened in shipbuilding to save jobs, as in the coal mines to defer closures. It is here that redundancy payments and earnings-related pensions are of the greatest value. And it is here, too, that we are obliged to bring new work and new opportunity.

But regional planning has been massively developed and for the first time, over the whole of Britain. Through its regional planning machinery, the Government has constructed an increasingly clear and detailed picture of the economic situation in the different areas of Britain. The Government is therefore able to plan ahead to meet the need for new jobs in different parts of the country.

We have defined with increasing accuracy, first the Development Areas, then the Special Development Areas, and, most recently, the New Intermediate Areas. These are all areas that need, in different degrees of urgency, assistance in the supply of new jobs.

Firms wishing to build new factories and offices in areas where work is already plentiful have been stringently controlled through the industrial and office location machinery. At the same time Industrial Development Certificates have been freely issued to firms wishing to expand in areas of high unemployment. But controls, though essential, are not enough. Where serious economic disadvantages arose for firms operating in the development areas, many kinds of special assistance were granted: investment grants at double the national rate; regional employment premium at 30s. a week per man employed; modern factories built for rent by them and in advance of their needs.

The special development areas – those where the coal industry is declining – receive additional aid to help meet running costs and factory rentals.

Public enterprise also plays an important part in regional development and this we mean to extend.

In the intermediate areas, which have important problems of their own, assistance is now being given through freely granted Industrial Development Certificates and also through advanced factories and training grants. These measures are recent and we shall keep a close watch on their effectiveness, with a constant review of their impact and of the areas they cover.

Now the Tories have singled out regional policy for major cuts in public expenditure. They have pledged themselves to end the regional employment premium and they have also committed themselves to scrap investment grants. But without these important financial aids, the supply of industry to the areas of need would be greatly reduced.

We intend to continue with our regional policies so long as they are needed. We shall seek new ways to make them more effective. In particular, we shall try to ensure that office location plays a bigger part in regional development, and stop speculative office building and end the situation where offices in congested areas are left empty, while developers negotiate extortionate rents. We shall be ready to extend assistance to other areas of the country that may be hard hit by industrial change.

3. Better Communications

A modern transport system in which people and goods can move quickly, cheaply and safely throughout the country is an essential national requirement. Under the Tories, road and rail were totally uncoordinated; road building was allowed to fall far behind the growth of road vehicles; our docks and ports were neglected; the development of air services had little purpose beyond the barely concealed desire to weaken the national airlines BEA and BOAC.

The Labour Government is now engaged in a major and planned programme for expanding and modernising our whole transport system.

(i) The Road Programme

Six years ago less than 300 miles of motorway were open and only 130 miles were being built. In March, 1970, 650 miles of motorway were open to traffic and nearly 400 miles under construction. Expenditure on roads generally has been doubled.

The target of 1,000 miles of motorway in England and Wales will be completed by the end of 1972. The road programme will be further extended as we embark upon the recently announced inter-urban road programme which will double the capacity of the trunk road system by the end of the 1980s. Altogether by the end of that period there will be some 6,000 miles of motorway and new and improved roads open to traffic.

(ii) Road Safety

We must cut down on the number of road casualties. In the last five years while the number of vehicles on the road has risen by a quarter, the number of people killed and seriously injured has been substantially reduced. This welcome development follows on a series of measures we have introduced, including much more stringent control over the mechanical safety of road vehicles. But it reflects most of all the controversial – and courageous – Road Safety Act of 1967 which greatly checked the menace of drunken driving by introducing the breathalyser test.

Our efforts to reduce road casualties will continue.

(iii) Rail and Road

To cut out the old and wasteful competition between road and rail we have established the new National Freight Corporation. Through the liner train and container services our aim is to develop a first rate integrated public service for freight and relieve the increasing pressure upon the roads by switching goods on to our under-used rail system.

At the same time, we intend to improve further the speed and comfort of rail passenger services by investing in modernisation of track and in new rolling stock.

(iv) The Ports

In the next Parliament, we shall complete the programme for change in our ports and docks on which we are now advanced. We shall bring the nation’s major ports under a National Port Authority to which new local port authorities will be responsible. We shall give each port authority the power to take over and reorganise the principal dock activities within its port area. We shall give workers’ representatives more say in the way in which ports are run.

Already we have ended the system of casual labour in the docks and we have greatly improved amenities and pay. Further, a large programme for modernising our docks is under way aimed at providing new deep water berths and modern methods of cargo handling. Investment in the ports has risen from £18m. in 1964 to £50m. in 1969.

But we are convinced, given its history, its problems and its special circumstances, that only a major reorganisation under new and responsible public authorities, will make it possible to overcome the deep-seated problems of this industry.

(v) Air Services

It is our aim to develop our national airways so that they can handle the increasing growth of air traffic and compete successfully with other national airlines.

We propose to set up an Airways Board to ensure that the fleets of BOAC and BEA are planned together to get the best overall advantage. We shall also seek to establish a strong regional airline, able to provide regular services between the different parts of the United Kingdom.

4. Education and Social Equality

Britain is now spending more on education than ever before. This has brought improvements in the quality of education – more teachers and better schools – and the rapid enlargement of opportunity in our secondary schools, our colleges of education and in higher education as a whole.

This increased expenditure reflects our belief – that all children can benefit from a broader and deeper education; that the rich variety of talent that exists must be given the widest possible chance to develop; and that it will make a major contribution to the welfare, quality and happiness of our society.

Our first priority has been to end the system under which 80 per cent of our nation’s children were, at the age of eleven, largely denied the opportunity of a broad secondary education with the chance of higher education beyond.

Comprehensive reorganisation has been vigorously pursued. In the past six years 129 of the 163 English and Welsh local education authorities have agreed plans for reorganising their secondary schools.

This progress must not be checked; it must go forward. We shall legislate to require the minority of Tory education authorities who have so far resisted change to abandon eleven plus selection in England and Wales. We have legislated to end fee-paying in Scotland, and we intend to legislate further to ensure that no local authority in Scotland can maintain an area of privilege which destroys the full benefit of comprehensive reorganisation for its children.

School building has proceeded at a record level; 13 new schools a week have been completed in the first five years of the Labour Government, compared with less than 9 in the last five years of Tory rule.

In the next five years, we shall put more resources, both teachers and building, into the primary schools and expand nursery schools provision both in, and outside, the educational priority areas.

We intend to make further progress, now that the supply of teachers has been increased, towards our aim of reducing to 30 the size of all classes in our schools.

We shall introduce for England and Wales a new Education Bill to replace the 1944 and subsequent Acts. One of our aims will be to bring parents and teachers into a closer partnership in the running of our schools.

In 1972 we shall raise the school leaving age to 16. Preparations for this – increasing the supply of teachers, extending the school building programme, and planning a new course for the extra year – are now well advanced.

We shall still further expand higher education. Already since 1964 the number of young people in full time higher education, including the universities, has almost doubled. We are in transition to a new era where higher education, traditionally the preserve of a small educational elite, could become available to a wider section of the community. This expansion will require very careful planning. We shall undertake an early review of the whole field, including universities, polytechnics, higher further education and the colleges of education.

We have never believed that education and educational opportunity should stop at the school leaving age; nor that further education should be confined to full-time students in colleges and universities.

The capacity of people to learn and their desire to learn continues at all ages. It is, therefore, essential that provisions should be made for people, for adults of all ages, to re-enter the education system. To provide such an opportunity for those who have missed higher education, we have created the Open University, which will commence next year, with 25,000 students – almost half the annual intake of all our other universities together.

Social Equality

The widening and extension of education is the best preparation that we can make for our people and our country for the world of tomorrow. Investment in people is also the best way of developing a society based on tolerance, co-operation and greater social equality.

The education system itself must not perpetuate educational and social inequalities; that is one reason why full integration of secondary education is essential.

But progress in the field of education must be accompanied by measures to deal with social and economic inequalities elsewhere.

Until Labour came to power, those living off capital gains or land profits were allowed to substantially escape the net of taxation. We have dealt with this, and similar problems, through the Capital Gains Tax, Land Levy, Expense Accounts, Gaming Levy and by removing some loopholes in covenants and in Estate Duty. We shall continue to close loopholes.

There is much more to do to achieve a fairer distribution of wealth in our community. A Labour Government will continue its work to create a fairer tax system: we shall ensure that tax burdens are progressively eased from those least able to bear them and that there is a greater contribution to the National Revenue from the rich.

5. A Great Place to Live

For far too long Britain has been, side by side, two nations – one, in the better suburbs of our major cities and elsewhere, where good housing, access to the countryside, expensive amenities, clean air and leisure facilities were taken for granted; the other, in our city centres and industrial areas, where slum housing, 19th century schools and hospitals, congested services and general lack of amenities are still widespread.

The ways which we have chosen to deal with these problems of improving life – through community spending and the planned allocation of resources – are anathema to the whole philosophy of Toryism. Even today, when Britain is so obviously becoming a better place to live in, they are committed to slashing housing subsidies, cutting public expenditure, and relaxing laws which govern land use.

Housing

Housing has been and will continue to be a main priority of Labour’s social policy. Rachmanism was dealt with in 1964 by legislation which brought protection from eviction and harassment. The disastrous free-market in rents was abolished by the 1965 Rent Act. A new and more generous system of housing subsidies has made possible a major increase in council building and many families have been helped with house purchasing, especially by favourable mortgage rates under our Option Scheme.

Substantial progress has been made. In our first five years we have built 2,000,000 new homes. In their last five years of office the Tories built 1,600,000. Not only have we increased the number, but we have insisted upon marked improvements in housing standards, in both public and private sectors.

Private landlord rents in unfurnished homes are determined under the ‘fair rents’ machinery and all tenants have been protected. Rent increases in the public sector are limited. Labour introduced legislation; the Tories opposed it.

New and more generous grants have been provided under the 1969 Act both to prevent the decay of older houses through neglect and to give their occupants modern amenities. This will be of particular value in the so-called twilight areas of our large cities.

The scandal of a leaseholder losing his home without compensation has been ended by our Enfranchisement Act. One million leaseholders have been granted this right.

The Next Stage

But although much has been done Britain still has – particularly in the great conurbations – a major housing problem. A high level of building must continue, and while shortages exist, rent control policies must remain. There is no place for saving money on the nation’s housing.

As a direct result of decisions by Tory councils, there has been a fall in the number of houses completed. It is essential that this short-term trend in house-building be reversed, and we shall take whatever steps are necessary, including the provision of credit, to ensure this.

Home ownership will be further encouraged. For the first time in our history, 50 per cent of the nation’s homes are now owner-occupied. We believe that this proportion will rise and should continue to rise.

Exceptionally high rates of interest throughout the world are keeping borrowing rates in Britain high – and although local authority lending has been greatly increased – to £155m. this year – and although with the help of Save As You Earn the flow of money to our building societies is now adequate, high lending rates are a serious obstacle to would-be owner-occupiers.

We shall, therefore, in discussion with the building societies, work out new ways of extending home ownership; in particular we shall seek to reduce the amount that has to be paid in the initial deposit; through local authorities and in consultation with Building Societies we shall extend the system of 100 per cent mortgages, and seek to lighten the burden of repayment in the first few years of occupation. As interest rates generally turn down, we shall expect the building societies to follow suit.

Finally, we shall see to it that the ‘fair rents’ machinery which now operates in unfurnished private dwellings is extended to furnished rented homes.

Urban Priority Areas

The worst of our housing problem exists in the inner areas of our large cities. But, serious as slums and overcrowding are, the problems in these areas are not just confined to housing. It is here, for example, that many of our remaining 7,000 pre-1870 schools are located; it is here that many immigrants settle; by and large it is the oldest urban areas where greatest shortages exist in social resources of all kinds.

The Labour Government has introduced new policies to meet this problem:

1. Housing Priority Areas: All these areas of special need are within housing priority areas which will continue to receive special help in house building.

2. Educational Priority Areas: Over £30m. extra expenditure on school building is being concentrated in areas with the worst slum schools.

3. Urban Programme: £25m. is being spent on an Urban Programme covering about 100 separate local authorities, including the provision of nursery schools and facilities for the under-fives.

Financial aid has also been given to voluntary agencies such as housing associations, which have a valuable role to play, particularly in renewing old houses.

The £25m. allocated to the Urban Programme will be spent by 1972. The Government will then extend the programme and increase the amount. In the years 1972/6 a new programme costing up to a further £40m. will be carried out.

Even with Labour’s new high levels of expenditure on housing and welfare, hospitals, and social services generally, the areas of greatest social need will lag behind for many years to come.

That is why we intend now to develop the programmes mentioned above and to extend the principle of Priority Areas into spending on other services, so that we focus additional resources on areas with the greatest problems. We shall discuss with Local Authorities whether additional machinery – an Urban Renewal Agency, with powers and functions similar to those of a new town corporation – is required. This will be one of the important parts of our campaign against poverty.

New Towns

The development of existing English new towns is continuing in Lancashire, the Midlands, the North East and the Home Counties, and we are forging ahead with new towns in Peterborough, Northampton, Warrington, Milton Keynes and central Lancashire. In Wales progress is being made with expansion at Cwmbran and Newtown, and surveys at Llantrisant. Glasgow overspill problems are being tackled by special projects at Erskine and in Lanarkshire and another New Town at Irvine.

Studies will shortly be completed of the potential of Humberside, Severnside, Deeside and Tayside as major new centres should future population growth require them.

Opportunities for Leisure

Leisure, and the opportunities to pursue a wide range of recreational and cultural activities, must not be limited by lack of facilities.

Labour’s commitment to developing opportunities for leisure has therefore been immense:

1. The Arts: Our aim is to make sure that enjoyment of the arts is not something remote from everyday life or removed from the realities of home and work. Government spending on the arts has been more than doubled. Local arts centres, regional film theatres, municipally owned and aided theatres, national and local museums have been established or modernised. A National Theatre and National Film School, after decades of Tory delay, are now being established.

2. Sport: Labour’s National Sports Council and the nine Regional Sports Councils are developing facilities and identifying recreational needs in sport. The next step is to assist in the establishment of regional sports centres. We shall encourage the design of new schools so that they can also serve as multi-purpose sports centres for the adult community. 200 schools are already being designed for this purpose. We shall seek to cater for the growth sports, golfing, squash, sailing and so on. Angling is one of our most popular sports and we shall give special attention to its two great problems of greater access to fishing waters and to the prevention of pollution.

3. Countryside: The Countryside Commissions have wide powers to encourage and aid the provision of Country Parks and general amenities and facilities. One important development from this legislation has been the opening of eleven long-distance footpath routes – the most famous being the Pennine Way.

4. Tourism: Every year more and more tourists from overseas are finding Britain a vital and interesting place to visit. Our historic cities are a major attraction, and the Labour Government has initiated studies in the conservation of the ancient centres of these cities.

New Local Authorities

We shall carry through in the next Parliament a major reorganisation of local government. Strong units of local government will make possible much more effective town and country planning.

Reform of local government finance will also be necessary. Urgent action has already been taken to deal with the worst features of the rating system. Rate rebates are now helping nearly one million families. We propose to invite, through the publication of a Green Paper, widespread debate of future changes in local taxation.

A Cleaner Britain

These, then, are Labour’s priorities in making Britain a better place to live; Housing, New Towns, Urban Renewal and opportunities for varied

and stimulating leisure pursuits. We must take far better care of our physical environment. This means considerable attention to clean air, waste disposal, industrial effluents, the coastline, dereliction, noise, pesticides and all other problems of pollution – no matter how they arise.

Already we have made progress in clearing derelict land.’ The acreage cleared has risen from 151 in 1964 to 1,324 last year. It is our aim now to raise – the £2m. expenditure programme of last year to £6m. by 1974.

Second, we are tackling the increasing problem of oil pollution. We shall legislate to ratify the new international agreement on discharges at sea and increase penalties against ships that break it.

Third, we shall take further steps to reduce aircraft noise. We have already approved an aircraft noise certification scheme that will cut the permitted noise levels of all new sub-sonic airliners.

Fourth, we shall legislate for effective control over the use of pesticides. Fifth, we shall protect our rivers and our coasts with new measures of control over industrial and human effluence.

There is an immense amount of work that needs to be done if we are to deal effectively with this problem.

The central premise in Labour’s approach to these problems is to accept that community responsibility is essential if the quality of life is to be enhanced. We believe that Tory philosophy – with its emphasis on private interests and its opposition to collective organisation – is quite incapable of dealing with the problems which will increasingly arise.

6. Caring for People

The greatest single achievement of the post-war Labour Government was its creation of the best universal social security system and the first comprehensive health service in the world. The greatest single condemnation of Tory rule was the appalling neglect of this social programme.

They left a desperate need for new investment and a considerable shortage of staff. Hospital building was virtually neglected for the first ten years of Tory Government. They cut the number of doctors in training and they imposed a freeze on nurses’ pay. The flat-rate national insurance contribution imposed a regressive poll-tax on the lower-paid. Worst of all, no fundamental proposals were made to abolish poverty in old age.

Labour’s programme of action has therefore been as follows:

1. A substantial rise in all benefits.
2. More money for buildings and trained staff.
3. Structural reform of the old system.

Since the last full Tory year spending on health and social security is up over 70 per cent; wage-related short-term benefits and redundancy payments have been introduced; a tremendous programme of hospital building is under way, and a far-reaching Plan for National Superannuation has been incorporated in a Bill.

Benefits

Three increases – the last in November 1969 – have substantially raised the real level of retirement pensions. The earnings rule has been relaxed – and for widows abolished. Sickness, unemployment, and other benefits have been increased in line with pensions, and redundancy pay and earnings-related short-term benefits begun.

The old National Assistance Board has been abolished. A more open and humane Supplementary Benefits Commission provides entitlement as a right. Three times the number of old people are now living independent lives in flats of their own, with a warden on call; over 500 more old people’s homes have been built; and meals on wheels doubled.

Benefits for children have had a high priority. For the last eight Tory years, no increases in family allowances were made. Labour has twice raised these allowances – the value is now more than double – and has concentrated the benefit on the poorer family by balancing tax allowances and cash benefits.

Health Services

Expenditure on hospital building has been more than doubled. Five times as many health centres are now open. Local health and welfare expenditure as a whole is now running at three times the level of just ten years ago.

The National Health Service will be developed by continued expansion of training of doctors, nurses and other staff, by our great building programme, and by changes in the administrative structure to bring unified Local Health Authorities.

The Next Steps

1. The New Pensions Plan

The present national insurance scheme, in spite of the improvements which Labour has made, cannot provide an adequate income for retirement. Flat-rate contribution and benefits must inevitably be geared to the ability of the lowest paid to enter into the insurance contract. As a result, those on average and above average pay would always find a steep drop in their means upon retirement.

Labour’s new Pension Plan will, therefore, incorporate radical concepts in social security; earnings-related contributions will mean a reduction for millions of lower paid workers. Benefits will be calculated in such a way as to assist the industrial worker and the below-average earner; there will be partnership with private occupational schemes, through which many will want to add to their state pension; full equality for women; a widow will receive the whole of her husband’s pension; widows’ pensions will be paid at 40; women will receive earnings-related sickness and unemployment benefit.

Labour’s scheme is designed to abolish poverty in old age by enabling every worker to qualify for a pension at a level where supplementary benefit is no longer required. The wealth of the nation is increasing and those least able to care for themselves – the aged, the sick, unemployed and the widow – have a right to share in rising prosperity, and satisfy rising expectation. The Tories were the first to misrepresent the scheme. Now they are pledged to destroy it.

2. Disabled

As part of the new Act, we shall develop a new deal for the long-term sick and disabled. There will be an earnings-related invalidity benefit, and a constant attendance allowance for the very severely disabled, which for the first time covers the non-earner, the wife and children.

3. Family Poverty

There is a continuing problem of poverty in low income families – a many-sided problem of low wage industries, of disability and of special difficulties. On all of these the Labour Government has acted to help, and we will take steps to provide further social support. In the last two budgets we have taken three million on low incomes out of taxation.

We shall review the present system of family allowances and income tax child allowances.

On the special problem of the single-parent family, the Government has set up a comprehensive study under the Finer Committee.

4. Health Service

We need to concentrate more resources m the health service on the needs of the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill and elderly sick. Long stay hospitals, particularly those for the mentally handicapped, have for far too long been subjected to gross under-staffing and overcrowding, many of them in obsolete buildings.

We have already dealt with some of the worst features of this social scandal and have worked out our plans for providing to those long stay patients for whom there is small chance of cure, the care they deserve.

The new unitary structure of the health service and its close co-operation with the new local authorities will help to ensure more effective joint planning of hostels and homes and a better deployment of nurses and other staffs.

7. A More Active Democracy

Strong economic policy and care and compassion in the social field must be accompanied by a new drive both to infuse a democratic element into the increasingly complex institutions which dominate our lives and to give added protection and safeguards to the rights of individuals.

The priorities are clear. We have to make existing democratic institutions more effective and we have to extend the democratic principle, in various forms, into those institutions where democracy itself is still a stranger.

The machinery of government itself must be adapted to meet new demands and democratic procedures must be extended into industry and the social services.

Central Government and Parliament

Labour has begun the process of reform at the very heart of public decision making – central government itself. Archaic House of Commons procedures have been swept away, specialist Select Committees set up, and greatly improved research and information facilities to help M.P.s work more effectively.

The Government has introduced the instrument of the Green Paper to allow wide public debate and consultation on public issues before the crucial decisions are taken.

Under a Labour Government young people have been given full civil rights – including the right to vote at 18.

Following the publication of the Fulton Report, reform of the Civil Service is now going ahead. Our purpose is to achieve a broader base for recruitment, more specialist skills, the abolition of the class structure, and greater mobility between various branches of the service and with outside occupations.

An Ombudsman was appointed in 1968 to investigate the citizens’ complaints against Government Departments. This office has already proved its value, and we now intend to extend the principle to local government and to the health service.

We cannot accept the situation in which the House of Lords can nullify important decisions of the House of Commons and, with its delaying powers, veto measures in the last year before an election. Proposals to secure reform will therefore be brought forward.

Devolution

In 1965 the Labour Government set up for the first time Economic Planning Councils and Planning Boards for Wales, Scotland and the eight new planning regions of England. These have proved to be effective instruments to strengthen the Government’s regional policies, and have given new impetus to proposals for devolution. The Government therefore set up a Commission on the Constitution which is now examining and receiving evidence on these issues.

Wales

In Wales the Labour Government in 1964 set up the Welsh Office with the Secretary of State a member of the Cabinet. The responsibilities of the Welsh Office have recently been substantially increased.

The Government has published proposals for a new local authority structure to provide improved local services. The evidence given by the Labour Party to the Commission on the Constitution includes plans for an elected council for Wales with extended powers. The Labour Party in Wales believes strongly in the integration of the United Kingdom and rejects a policy of separatism or a separate Parliament for Wales as being detrimental to the true interests of the Principality.

The Welsh Language Act 1967 has given a new impetus to the use of Welsh in public affairs. The Government will continue to encourage the growth of Welsh or bilingual schools throughout Wales. Through its financial support for the publication of books in Welsh for adults and through the expanding services of the Welsh Arts Council, the Labour Government will continue its efforts to support Welsh culture.

In its economic life, Wales has benefited significantly from the Government’s policy which has attracted more than 150 new firms to

Wales since 1964, which has secured for Wales the largest ever trunk road programme and the highest number of houses ever built, which has halted depopulation in Mid-Wales, has fostered the tourist industry and has for the first time really tackled the problem of derelict land.

Scotland

The Labour Party in Scotland his welcomed any changes leading to more effective Government which do not destroy the integration of the U.K. or weaken Scotland’s influence at Westminster. They too reject separatism and also any separate legislative assembly.

Since 1964 Labour’s separate legislation for Scotland has been accepted by the U.K. Parliament

• The Highlands and Islands Development Board
• The Countryside Commission
• The General Teaching Council
• The Social Work Act
• The First Stage of Feudal Tenure reform
• Security for Tenant Farmers, etc.

Much of that legislation has led the way for the rest of the country.

We shall now further these aims in our proposals for local government reform based upon Wheatley. We shall complete our work of abolishing and replacing the feudal system of land tenure. And we shall apply Scottish solutions to Scottish problems.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland presents major problems. Fifty years of one-party Tory rule have led to social tensions and lack of opportunities which erupted into major disorders last summer. The Government has helped stabilise the situation and has insisted on reforms being carried out in Northern Ireland based on the practice and principle of nondiscrimination. In particular, it has been agreed that the reform of local government in Ulster shall proceed and that a Central Housing Authority shall be set up. British troops will remain in Northern Ireland so long as they are needed.

The Downing Street Declaration of 19th August, 1969 signed by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, reaffirmed that in all legislation and executive decisions of Government every citizen of Northern Ireland is entitled to the same equality of treatment and freedom from discrimination as obtains in the rest of the United Kingdom, irrespective of political views or religion.

Local Government

We believe that the recent reports on local government present a great opportunity for the transfer of administrative power from Westminster to the localities. Larger and stronger local authorities will mean better planning, more efficiency, stronger councils and improved quality in local democracy and local services.

Legislation will be brought forward in the next Parliament to set up new authorities, to abolish the post of alderman and to give added power to elected representatives. We shall also encourage the setting up of Local Councils to give people a greater say in local problems.

Health Service

Hand in hand with the reform of local government we propose a new administrative structure for the Health Service. We shall bring together the now separate hospital service, the general practitioner service and the local authority health services. The old tripartite structure will go, and be replaced by area Health Authorities which will allow for greater involvement in its administration of local representatives and those who operate the service.

Schools

The Government’s major White Paper on Education will include proposals to involve parents, teachers and the wider community more directly in the management of the education system.

Industrial Democracy

But political democracy is of limited value unless it is underpinned by industrial democracy. If we are to have greater industrial harmony, we must involve the worker through his union more closely in the decisions which affect his working life and eliminate the grievances that are the causes of many strikes.

That is why Labour has produced a charter of good industrial relations on which it intends to legislate.

This will:

• Overhaul negotiating and disputes procedures
• Give safeguards against unfair dismissal
• Make recognition a legal right for trade unions
• Ensure greater disclosure of information to workers’ representatives
• Encourage the rationalisation of trade union structures
• Enable unions and employers to negotiate legally binding agreements where they expressly indicate their desire to do so.

Britain’s publicly owned industries are already experimenting in new worker/manager relationships and new ways of securing workers’ representation on their boards of management. A Labour Government will encourage similar experiments in private industry.

We shall also consider further the structure of the limited liability company with a view to making it more accountable to its employees and the community.

Law and Justice

It is a first duty of government to protect the citizen against violence, intimidation and crime. The Government will vigorously pursue the fight against vandals and law breakers. But the campaign for law and order must be linked to liberty and justice in a civilised society. Nothing could be more cynical than the current attempts by our opponents to exploit for Party political ends the issue of crime and law enforcement.

Crime

The streets of our cities are as safe today as those in any throughout the world. They must remain so. Labour has reorganised the police forces in this country and a record sum is being spent on equipment. The number of police is higher than ever before. The Gaming Act of 1968 purged gambling of its criminal elements, cut excessive profits, and checked the proliferation of gaming machines.

Equally important are our achievements in obtaining penal reform, in transforming our approach to the young offender, in democratising the magistrates’ bench, and in our approach to rehabilitating the prisoner. This is an exceedingly difficult task while so many of our prisons are a century old and are gravely overcrowded; but it must be persisted in patiently, not only for the sake of the prisoner himself, but because his return to a decent way of life and to productive work obviously benefits society as a whole.

Law Reform

Britain’s system of justice is renowned throughout the world, but many of our laws need up-dating and the administration of justice is severely over-stretched. Labour’s Law Commissions will continue with their work for systematic codification of criminal law, repeal of old Acts, simplification of the statute book and reform of the courts. It is also our aim to enable the courts to handle the increasing volume of work.

Access to the Law

We have recently extended the legal aid scheme and it is our intention to ensure that people with modest means can obtain legal advice and be properly represented in the courts of law.

Race Relations

With the rate of immigration under firm control and much lower than in past years, we shall be able still more to concentrate our resources in the major task of securing good race relations. The Urban Programme includes help to areas of high immigrant population, where special social needs exist. The Race Relations Act has outlawed incitement to racial hatred and discrimination in housing, employment and credit facilities. The Community Relations Commission, with the local authorities and other voluntary bodies, is dealing with the longer-term problem of community living.

We now propose to review the law relating to citizenship and to give the Race Relations Board powers of discretion in taking up complaints.

Broadcasting

Broadcasting has a major role to play in an informed democracy.

The greatest danger in communications is the danger of growing concentration of private ownership, and the parallel danger of domination by commercial values. In broadcasting the Government has firmly resisted the commercial lobby’s pleas for private radio. A network of local radio stations has instead been created – responsible to the community and co-ordinated by the B.B.C.

The Government has decided to establish a high-powered Committee of Enquiry to report on the Future of Broadcasting, in time for the basic decisions which have to be taken in 1975.

A Healthy Democracy

When individuals have a satisfying and rewarding job, and when they have then satisfied basic needs for food and shelter and a pleasant environment, we believe that many will wish to devote more time and interest to the collective problems of the community. It is this, in recent years, which has led to calls for greater devolution, participation in decision-making and reform of democratic structures.

The proposals we have set out above will ensure a thorough-going reform of government machinery, together with an increase in democratic decision-taking in the community; the school, the hospital and workplace. We believe that this is the reform people wish – an opportunity to influence decisions on those things which interest and affect them most. It calls for a continuing change in the relationship between government and governed, and we gladly accept the challenge of making sure that the reforms go through.

We also want people to assume greater responsibility themselves. The future of this country depends as much on how people use the power they have as on the action government may take.

8. Britain in the World Community

Labour’s fundamental and historic changes in Britain’s defence and foreign policy have given Britain a more credible and realistic position in world affairs than we ever enjoyed under the last Tory administration. In the last five years Labour has:

• Saved £3,000 million on Tory defence plans
• Planned a further saving of £2,000 million by 1972
• Ended our commitments East of Suez
• Increased our support for the U.N.
• Strengthened the Commonwealth
• Improved Forces pay and conditions
• Given independence to nine former colonies
• Observed the U.N. arms ban on South Africa
• Brought increased support to collective security in Europe and to the search for European détente
• Underlined our desire to play a full part in the future political and economic development of our continent.

Peace and Security

The steady work of Labour’s Ministers of Disarmament has achieved real progress. They played a large part in securing agreement on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which now, signed and ratified by the required number of nations, has come into force. One consequence of this Treaty has been that America and Russia are now engaged in serious discussion on Strategic Arms Limitation; and all men of good will will wish these talks success.

Labour’s Ministers were also active in establishing a Nuclear Free Zone in Latin America. The next tasks – on which Ministers are already at work – are these:

(a) A comprehensive ban on the testing of nuclear weapons

(b) A new international agreement to outlaw biological weapons

(c) An agreement to prevent the depths of the sea from being used for warlike purposes.

In the world as it is today, Britain must maintain her defences and her firm commitment to NATO. It is true – and it is a truly Socialist shift in priorities – that we now spend more on education than on defence, and that in the near future the health and welfare service expenditure will also exceed defence spending. Yet, because of our shrewd and sensible reduction in commitments, with Labour, the armed forces are better paid, better equipped and more effective in NATO than ever before. More than that, in contrast to the hundreds of millions of pounds wasted on costly prestige projects under the Tories, Labour’s defence planning gives the taxpayer value for money.

Labour is determined that NATO shall not be merely a defensive alliance: it must work positively for a relaxation of tension and reduction of forces. Some progress is already being made. Herr Willy Brandt, Socialist Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is engaged in talks with Russia, Poland and East Germany. The British Labour Government fully supports his efforts. Our Government, together with America, France and Russia, is seeking to reduce the occasions for conflict and tension in Berlin.

The Government believes that the members of NATO should work towards a well-prepared conference on European Security, in which balanced reduction of forces and the key problems now creating tension in Europe could be discussed. The Government has just taken a new initiative for multilateral explanatory talks with the Warsaw Pact countries with a view to finding a basis for wide-ranging negotiations on European security and a relaxation of tension.

In two areas – Indo-China and the Middle East – there is bitter conflict, full of danger for the peace of the world. Labour believes that no purely military solution is possible in either of these areas. A lasting settlement in Indo-China must be based on the Geneva agreements and the withdrawal of all foreign troops; a lasting settlement in the Middle East on the British sponsored Security Council resolution of November 1967. It is on these foundations that a Labour Government will work.

The United Nations

Support for the U.N. continues to be the cornerstone of Labour’s foreign policy. Britain is the only one of more than 100 member countries which is represented at the U.N. by a senior Minister, with direct access to the Prime Minister. Further examination will be given to the establishing of a permanent U.N. peace-keeping force and further efforts must be made to guarantee the U.N. a firm financial basis.

The Fight Against World Poverty

The Ministry of Overseas Development, which Labour set up, has meant that aid is better co-ordinated and directed and thus more effective, than ever before. The improved economic climate will enable us to make progress.

In the next five years Labour is to increase our aid programme by about one-third, from £219 millions in 69/70 to £300 millions in 73/74.

Labour will seek to devote 1 per cent of our Gross National Product to aid the developing world by 1975 and to achieve an official flow of aid of 0.7 per cent of GNP during the Second Development Decade – this accepts the target set by the Pearson Commission.

Multilateral agencies will receive a larger proportion of total aid flow and more resources will be devoted to rural and co-operative development and population planning.

Racial Conflict

The division of the world along racial lines presents a major threat to peace during the coming decade. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Southern Africa, where the odious doctrine of Apartheid continues to flourish.

Official Tory Party policy already commits a future Conservative Government to:

(a) Sell arms to South Africa

(b) Negotiate with the Smith regime on Rhodesia

Labour made every effort possible to bring about an honourable settlement in Rhodesia consistent with the six principles. The illegal Rhodesian regime slammed the door by introducing an Apartheid-type republican constitution. Labour will maintain sanctions against the illegal regime and negotiate no settlement that does not guarantee unimpeded progress to majority rule. A Labour Government will continue to comply with the United Nations ban on arms to South Africa.

The Commonwealth

In the building of racial harmony and the fight against poverty the Commonwealth can play a unique and expanding role in building bridges between all races, between rich and poor, and help maintain the co-operation and understanding between nations which makes it a force for peace. The Government will encourage and support an expansion of the technical assistance and co-ordinating functions of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Throughout the sixties Tory journalists and politicians decried the usefulness of the Commonwealth link. With Labour the Commonwealth has been revitalised, with its own secretariat and Secretary General providing a wide range of services and co-ordinating functions for member states.

The World Economy

Today either the scale of initial investment or the size of market required to ensure viability demands international co-operation for new developments such as space communications or aircraft production.

Through the Ministry of Technology, established by Labour in 1964, such co-operation is fostered not only with the U.S.A. and Western Europe but also with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

In the coming decade we shall develop closer technological relations with India and other countries. Trading and technological links may also play a part in helping to bring China into the community of nations. Labour still believes that China should be a member. of the United Nations.

The pressures put on individual national currencies, the problems presented by major international companies crossing frontiers as if they did not exist and transferring know-how and resources with great ease, the need for international action to tackle problems of our environment such as oil pollution, the need to encourage a greater volume of world trade, are all problems which can only be solved by international co-operation.

Some of these problems will require world-wide action by agencies of the United Nations. Others will best be dealt with by ‘regional cooperation. In Europe, Britain already is part of the European Free Trade Association.

We have applied for membership of the European Economic Community and negotiations are due to start in a few weeks’ time. These will be pressed with determination with the purpose of joining an enlarged community provided that British and essential Commonwealth interests can be safeguarded.

This year, unlike 1961-1963, Britain will be negotiating from a position of economic strength. Britain’s strength means that we shall be able to meet the challenges and realise the opportunities of joining an enlarged Community. But it means, too, that if satisfactory terms cannot be secured in the negotiations Britain will be able to stand on her own ‘feet outside the Community.

Unlike the Conservatives, a Labour Government will not be prepared to pay part of the price of entry in advance of entry and irrespective of entry by accepting the policies, on which the Conservative Party are insisting, for levies on food prices, the scrapping of our food subsidies and the introduction of the Value-Added Tax.

A Role in the World

The Tory leaders have, in the last six years, revealed their chronic inability to come to terms with the modern world. They have constantly attacked defence saving (everything from the TSR2 to the Territorials). Their constant disparagement of both the U.N. and the Commonwealth and their wish for closer links with white Southern Africa can leave little doubt that Tory policy would exacerbate the tensions between the rich white and poor black nations in the world.

By contrast Labour offers a more responsible and credible role for Britain in world affairs. A role which ensures that we make our full contribution to the development of Europe and the relaxation of East/West tensions and which at the same time strengthens the U.N. and the Commonwealth and ensures that we play an increasingly important role in the fight against polarisation along racial lines and in the battle to end world poverty.

We never thought, or promised, that the job of ending poverty, at home as well as abroad, would be an easy one. But to do this job is part of our dedication as Socialists.

We have begun to do it, in partnership between people and government. On Thursday, 18 June, the people will be able to give Labour the mandate we need to go forward.