"LABOUR AND THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER "SUBMITTED BY THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY AT THE 17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, NOTTINGHAM, JANUARY 23-25, 1918 "A DRAFT REPORT ON RECONSTRUCTION "It behoves the Labour Party, in formulating its own programme for Reconstruction after the war, and in criticising the various preparations and plans that are being made by the present Government, to look at the problem as a whole. We have to make it clear what it is that we wish to construct. It is important to emphasize the fact that, whatever may be the case with regard to other political parties, our detailed practical proposals proceed from definitely held principles. "THE END OF A CIVILIZATION "We need to beware of patchwork. The view of the Labour Party is that what has to be reconstructed after the war is not this or that Government Department, or this or that piece of social machinery; but, so far as Britain is concerned, society itself. The individual worker, or for that matter the individual statesman, immersed in daily routine like the individual soldier in a battle easily fails to understand the magnitude and farreaching importance of what is taking place around him. How does it fit together as a whole? How does it look from a distance? Count Okuma, one of the oldest, most experienced and ablest of the statesmen of Japan, watching the present conflict from the other side of the globe, declares it to be nothing less than the death of European civilization. Just as in the past the civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and the great Roman Empire have been successively destroyed, so, in the judgment of this detached observer, the civilization of all Europe is even now receiving its death-blow. We of the Labour Party can so far agree in this estimate as to recognize, in the present world catastrophe, if not the death, in Europe, of civilization itself, at any rate the culmination and collapse of a distinctive industrial civilization, which the workers will not seek to reconstruct. At such times of crisis it is easier to slip into ruin than to progress into higher forms of organization. That is the problem as it presents itself to the Labour Party today. "What this war is consuming is not merely the security, the homes, the livelihood and the lives of millions of innocent families, and an enormous proportion of all the accumulated wealth of the world, but also the very basis of the peculiar social order in which it has arisen. The individualist system of capitalist production, based on the private ownership and competitive administration of land and capital, with its reckless' profiteering and wage-slavery; with its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life and its hypocritical pretence of the 'survival of the fittest'; with the monstrous inequality of circumstances which it produces and the degradation and brutalisation, both moral and spiritual, resulting therefrom, may, we hope, indeed have received a death-blow. With it must go the political system and ideas in which it naturally found expression. We of the Labour Party, whether in opposition or in due time called upon to form an Administration, will certainly lend no hand to its revival. On the contrary, we shall do our utmost to see that it is buried with the millions whom it has done to death. If we in Britain are to escape from the decay of civilisation itself, which the Japanese statesman foresecs, we must ensure that what is presently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting, but on fraternity not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately planned co-operation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by brain — not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a systematic approach towards a healthy equality of material circumstances for every person born into the world — not on an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject Colonies, subject classes or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest possible participation in power, both economic and political, which is characteristic of Democracy. We do not, of course pretend that it is possible, even after the drastic clearing away that is now going on, to build society anew in a year or two of feverish Reconstruction.' What the Labour Party intends to satisfy itself about is that each brick that it helps to lay shall go to erect the structure that it intends, and no other. "THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE "We need not here recapitulate, one by one, the different items in the Labour Party's programme, which successive Party Conferences have adopted. These proposals, some of them in various publications worked out in practical detail, are often carelessly derided as impracticable, even by the politicions who steal them piecemeal from us! The members of the Labour Party, themselves actually working by hand or by brain, in close contact with the facts, have perhaps at all times a more accurate appreciation of what is practicable, in industry as in politics, than those who depend solely on academic instruction or are biased by great possessions. But today no man dares to say that anything is impracticable. The war, which has scared the old Political Parties right out of their dogmas, has taught every statesman and every Government official, to his enduring surprise, how very much more can be done along the lines that we have laid down than he had ever before thought possible. What we now promulgate as our policy, whether for opposition or for office, is not merely this or that specific reform, but a deliberately thought out, systematic, and comprehensive plan for that immediate social rebuilding which any ministry, whether or not it desires to grapple with the problem, will be driven to undertake. The Four Pillars of the House that we propose to erect, resting upon the common foundation of the Democratic control of society in all its activities, may be termed, respectively: "(a) The Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum; "(b) The Democratic Control of Industry; "(c) The Revolution in National Finance; and "The various detailed proposals of the Labour Party, herein briefly summarised, rest on these four pillars, and can best be appreciated in connection with them. "THE UNIVERSAL ENFORCEMENT OF A NATIONAL MINIMUM "The first principle of the Labour Party in significant contrast with those of the Capitalist System, whether expressed by the Liberal or by the Conservative Party is the securing to every member of the community, in good times and bad alike (and not only to the strong and able, the well-born or the fortu nate), of all the requisites of healthy life and worthy citizenship. This is in no sense a 'class' proposal. Such an amount of social protection of the individual, however poor and lowly, from birth to death is, as the economist now knows, as indispensable to fruitful co-operation as it is to successful combination; and it affords the only complete safeguard against that insidious Degradation of the Standard of Life, which is the worst economic and social calamity to which any community can be subjected. We are members one of another. No man liveth to himself alone. If any, even the humblest is made to suffer, the whole community and every one of us, whether or not we recognise the fact, is thereby injured. Generation after generation this has been the cornerstone of the faith of Labour. It will be the guiding principle of any Labour Government. "THE LEGISLATIVE REGULATION OF EMPLOYMENT "Thus it is that the Labour Party today stands for the universal application of the policy of the National Minimum, to which (as embodied in the successive elaborations of the Factory, Mines, Railways, Shops, Merchant Shipping, and Truck Acts, the Public Health, Housing, and Education Acts and the Minimum Wage Act all of them aiming at the enforcement of at least the prescribed minimum of Leisure, Health, Education, and Subsistence) the spokesmen of Labour have already gained the support of the enlightened statesmen and economists of the world. Ali these laws purporting to protect against extreme degradation of the standard of life need considerable improvement and extension, whilst their administration leaves much to be desired. For instance, the Workmen's Compensation Act fails, shamefully, not merely to secure proper provision for all the victims of accident and industrial disease, but what is much more important, does not succeed in preventing their continual increase. The amendment and consolidation of the Factories and Workshop Acts, with their extension to all employed persons, is long overdue, and it will be the policy of Labour greatly to strengthen the staff of inspectors, especially by the addition of more men and women of actual experience of the workshop and the mine. The Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act must certainly be maintained in force, and suitably amended, so as both to ensure greater uniformity of conditions among the several districts, and to make the District Minimum in all cases an effective reality. The same policy will, in the interests of the agricultural labourers, dictate the perpetuation of the Legal Wage clauses of the new Corn Law just passed for a term of five years, and the prompt amendment of any defects that may be revealed in their working. And, in view of the fact that many millions of wage-earners, notably women and the lessskilled workmen in various occupations, are unable by combination to obtain wages adequate for decent maintenance in health, the Labour Party intends to see that the Trade Boards Act is suitably amended and made to apply to all industrial employments in which any considerable number of those employed obtain less than 30s. per week. This minimum of not less than 30s. per week (which will need revision according to the level of prices) ought to be the very lowest statutory base line for the least skilled adult workers, men or women, in any occupation, in all parts of the United Kingdom. "THE ORGANISATION OF DEMOBILISATION But the coming industrial dislocation, which will inevitably follow the discharge from war service of half of all the working population, imposes new obligations upon the community. The demobilisation and discharge of the eight million wage-earners now being paid from public funds, either for service with the colours or in munition work and other war trades, will bring to the whole wage-earning class grave peril of unemployment, reduction of wages, and a lasting degredation of the standard of life, which can be prevented only by deliberate National Organisation. The Labour Party has repeatedly called upon the present Government to formulate its plan, and to make in advance all arrangements necessary for coping with so unparalleled a dislocation. The policy to which the Labour Party commits itself is unhesitating and uncompromising. It is plain that regard should be had, in stopping Government orders, reducing the staff of the national factories and demobilising the army, to the actual state of employment in particular industries and in different districts, so as both to release first the kinds of labour most urgently required for the revival of peace production, and to prevent any congestion of the market. It is no less imperative that suitable provision against being turned suddenly adrift without resources should be made, not only for the soldiers, but also for the three millions operatives in munition work and other war trades, who will be discharged long before most of the Army can be dis |