LABOUR'S POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 127, 3 June 1929, Page 9

LABOUR'S POLICY

OUTLINE BY LEADER

INTERNATIONAL ASPECT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) : LONDON, 3rd May. Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald and the five Socialist victors in by-elections this year addressed 10,000 people at the Albert Hall on Saturday. "We .want to lay down a programme that will recondition our .country," he said, "and in the process we will tackle successfully the problem of unemployment. We. propose to meet that by modifying the structure of government so as to meet the new economic and industrial circumstances. We propose to organise a brain for thinking and acting for an industrial State. » "The time has. come to co-ordinate the spending departments by a committee over which the Prime Minister must preside. The committee will consist of a nucleus of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the President of the Board of Trade, and the Minister of Labour, modelled exactly on the basis of the Committee of Imperial Defence. "It will have experts representing workmen and employers. Markets, currency, everything relating to the active co-ordinated life of the country, will be considered by this committee. "Roads will be built as a system, bridges reconstructed, railways reconditioned, drainage carried on, afforestation advanced, coasts protected, houses built, emigration dealt with, colonial economic expansion planned and carried out. "We have gone beyond the time when we can pass factory laws without consideration of those in other countries. There is no Government in this country that can protect our standard of life except by agreements with foreign nations through the International Labour Office. "The second point in our minds is international peace. Our record in office is our case for the country. I have nothing to withdraw and very little to explain. RELATIONS WITH KTJSSIA. "We want peace in Europe, including diplomatic relations with Russia. European peace, the establishment of the psychology of neighbourliness, mutual confidence, and the capacity to put the cards on the table and keep none up our sleeves, is absolutely impossible with Russia beyond the pale. "I want foreign trade. We must frankly accept conciliation and arbitration in international disputes. We must deal again with that old war-creating problem the freedom of the seas. "The freedom of the seas must be j settled, and on that the naval agreement with America. In these days of proposals for peace and disarmament I would like my own country to be in the forefront, and rat lagging behind so far that it never says anything until somebody else has compelled it to speak. "We shall continue our housing pro- \ gramme until we. have made good the shortage of about 1,000,000 houses. We shall build the houses and cheapen the building of them by direct handling of profiteering. . ; "The Labour Government will not refuse widows a pension because their husbands were born on the thirty-first day of one month instead of the first day of the next. We are prepared to carry on the education policy that was begun by Sir Charles Trevelyan in the Labour Government. "My reply to the question, 'Can we afford it?' is that if the -ealth of the nation now used for its deterioration and for human destruction is tapped the burdens of industry will be lightened and our financial stability and credit improved. "We suffer from economic parasitism. Ihe Chancellor of the Exchequer who taxes that will deserve credit from the country, and a Labour Chancellor will do it. "Everything will be done with due businesslike regard to the capacities and opportunities of the moment. Our opponents may rest assured that their tremor that we shall lay waste the land and call it progress is only a nightmare ot.theirs after a much too heavy sunper." . .. . , j