to think not only of the great social and economic changes that are to take effect in the coming period of reconstruction but of the methods and means of securing them. The war has proved to democracy that a dictatorship, whether with one head or five, is incompatible with its spirit and its ideals even in war-time. It has also revealed many serious defects in the structure of society. And it has shown the need for drastic change in the composition and organization of political parties. It is generally acknowledged that the old party system has irretrievably broken down. Evidence of this is afforded by the clamant call for new parties. The appearance upon the horizon of a National Party and a Women's Party, the probability of separate groups forming in Parliament around the personality of political leaders who have lost or are losing their grip upon the more or less coherent and strongly organized parties of pre-war days, are symptoms of this disintegration. Political power is about to be re-distributed, not only amongst the electors under the Franchise Bill, but amongst the political parties in Parliament which will claim to represent the new democratic consciousness. Minor readjustments designed to adapt orthodox Liberalism or Unionism to the changing psychology of the electorate will not avail. A thoroughgoing transformation of the machinery of the parliamentary parties and a fundamental revision of their programmes are in my judgment not merely timely but necessary.

The Labour party, at any rate, has proceeded upon the assumption that reconstruction is inevitable. It has formulated a scheme which is deliberately designed to give the enfranchised millions full opportunity to express their political preferences in the choice of members to represent them in the Reconstruction Parliament which will have to deal with the vast problems arising out of the war. The outline of the new party constitution is now familiar to every attentive reader of the newspapers. It contemplates the creation of a national democratic party, founded upon the organized working-class movement, and open to every worker who labours by hand or brain. Under this scheme the Labour party will be transformed, quickly and quietly, from a federation of societies, national and local, into a nation-wide political organization with branches in every parliamentary constituency, in which members will be enrolled both as workers and as citizens, whether they be men or women, and whether they belong to any trade-union or socialist society or are unattached democrats with no acknowledged allegiance to any industrial or political movement. are casting the net wide because we realize that real political democracy cannot be organized on the basis of class interest. Retaining the support of the affiliated societies, both national and local, from which it derives its weight and its fighting funds, the Labour party leaves them with their voting power and right of representation in its councils unimpaired; but in order that the party may more faithfully reflect constituency opinion it is also proposed to create in every constituency something more than the existing trades council or local labour party. It is proposed to multiply the local

1 The Representation of the People Act, approved February 6, 1918. See p. 231.

organizations and to open them to individual men and women, both handworkers and brain-workers, who accept the party constitution and agree with its aims. The individually enrolled members will have, like the national societies, their own representatives in the party's councils, and we confidently believe that year by year their influence will deepen and extend. The weakness of the old constitution was that it placed the centre of gravity in the national society and not in the constituency organization: it did not enable the individual voter to get into touch with the party . . . except through the trade-union, the socialist society, or the coöperative society. The new constitution emphasises the importance of the individual voter. It says to the man and woman who have lost or never had sympathy with the orthodox parties, " You have the opportunity now not merely of voting for Labour representatives in Parliament, but of joining the party and helping to mould its policy and shape its future."

Under the old conditions the appeal of the party was limited. It has seemed to be, though it never actually was, a class party like any other. It was regarded as the party of the manual wage-earners. Its programme was assumed, by those who have not taken the trouble to examine its whole propaganda, to reflect the views of trade-unionists not as citizens with a common interest in good government, but as workers seeking remedies for a series of material grievances touching hours of labor, rates of wages, conditions of employment. This misapprehension rests upon a too narrow definition of the term "Labour." On the lips of the earlier propagandists the word was used to differentiate between those whose toil enriched the community, and those who made no productive effort of any kind but lived idly and luxuriously upon the fruits of the labors of others. It is that differentiation we design to perpetuate in the title of the party. The Labour party is the party of the producers whose labor of hand and brain provides the necessities of life for all and dignifies and elevates human existence. That the producers have been robbed of the major part of the fruits of their industry under the individualist system of capitalist production is a justification for the party's claims. One of the main aims of the party is to secure for every producer his (or her) full share of those fruits and to ensure the most equitable distribution of the nation's wealth that may be possible, on the basis of the common ownership of land and capital, and the democratic control of all the activities of society.

The practice of empirical politics, the effort to secure this or that specific reform, will not suffice; Labour lays down its carefully thought-out, comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of society, which will guarantee freedom, security, and equality. We propose, as a first step, a series of national minima to protect the people's standard of life. For the workers of all grades and both sexes we demand and mean to secure proper legislative provision against unemployment, accident, and industrial disease, a reasonable amount of leisure, a minimum rate of wages. We shall insist upon a large and practicable scheme to protect the whole wage-earning class against the danger of unemployment and reduction of wages, with a consequent degradation of the standard of life, when the war ends and the forces are

demobilized and the munitions factories cease work. The task of finding employment for disbanded fighting men and discharged munitions workers we regard as a national obligation: we shall see to it that work is found for all, that the work is productive and socially useful, and that standard rates of wages shall be paid for this work. In the reorganization of industry after the war, the Labour party will claim for the workers an increasing share in the management and control of the factories and workshops. What the workers want is freedom, a definite elevation of their status, the abolition of the system of wage-slavery which destroyed their independence and made freedom in any real sense impossible. We believe that the path to the democratic control of industry lies in the common ownership of the means of production; and we shall strenuously resist every proposal to hand back to private capitalists the great industries and services that have come under government control during the war. This control has been extended to the importation and distribution of many necessary commodities many of the staple foods of the people and some of the raw materials of industry. More than the great key industries and vital services have come under control; and we do not mean to loosen the popular grip upon them, but on the contrary to strengthen it.

We

In the field of national finance the Labour party stands for a system of taxation regulated not by the interests of the possessing and profiteering classes, but by the claims of the professional and housekeeping classes, whose interests are identical with those of the manual workers. We believe that indirect taxation upon commodities should not fall upon any necessity of life, but should be limited to luxuries, especially and principally those which it is socially desirable to extinguish. Direct taxation, we hold, upon large incomes and private fortunes is the method by which the greater part of the necessary revenue should be raised; we advocate the retention in some appropriate form of the excess profits tax; and we shall oppose every attempt to place upon the shoulders of the producing classes, the professional classes, and the small traders, the main financial burden of the war. seek to prevent, by methods of common ownership and of taxation, the accumulation of great fortunes in private hands. Instead of senseless individual extravagances we desire to see the wealth of the nation expended for social purposes for the constant improvement and increase of the nation's enterprises, to make provision for the sick, the aged, and the infirm, to establish a genuine national system of education, to provide the means of public improvements in all directions by which the happiness and health of the people will be ensured. One step in this direction will be taken when the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink is no longer left to those who find profit in encouraging the utmost possible consumption. The party's policy in this matter asserts the right of the people to deal with the licencing question in accordance with the opinion of localities; we urge that the localities should have conferred upon them full power to prohibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries, or alternatively to decide whether the number of licences should be reduced, upon what conditions they may be held, and whether they shall be under private or any form of public

control. In our relations to other people, whether those of our blood and tongue in the British Empire, or those of other races and languages, we repudiate the idea of domination and exploitation, we stand for the steady development of the idea of local self-government and the freedom of nations. On all these points and the problems underlying them, the Labour party lays down its general principles and policies; and from time to time Labour's representative assemblies will apply these principles to the problems of immediate and pressing importance, and formulate the programme which the electors will be invited to support. In opposition, and presently as we believe and hope in office, Labour will seek to build up a new order of society, rooted in equality, dedicated to freedom, governed on democratic principles.1

SELECTED REFERENCES

A. L. Lowell, The Government of England (New York, 1909), II, Chap. xxxiii; F. A. Ogg, Economic Development of Modern Europe (New York, 1917), Chaps. xix, xxiii; C. J. H. Hayes, British Social Politics (Boston, 1913), Chaps. i-viii, x; S. P. Orth, Socialism and Democracy in Europe (New York, 1913), Chap. ix; P. Alden, Democratic England (New York, 1912); C. Noel, The Labour Party, What It Is, and What It Wants (London, 1906); L. T. Hobhouse, The Labour Movement (3d ed., London, 1912); A. Henderson, The Aims of Labour (New York, 1918); A. W. Humphrey, A History of Labour Representation (London, 1912); S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism (new ed., London, 1911); C. M. Lloyd, Trade Unionism (London, 1915); J. E. Barker, British Socialism (London, 1908); H. O. Arnold-Forster, English Socialism of Today (3d ed., London, 1908); B. Villiers, The Socialist Movement in England (2d ed., London, 1910); E. R. Pease, History of the Fabian Society (London, 1916); W. J. Ashley, The Tariff Problem (2d ed., London, 1910); S. Walter, The Meaning of Tariff Reform (London, 1911); W. Cunningham, The Case against Free Trade (London, 1911); C. Turnor, Land Problems and National Welfare (London, 1911); H. Harben, The Rural Problem (London, 1914); A. H. H. Mathews, Fifty Years of Agricultural Politics (London, 1915).

1 The Aims of Labour, 17-26. For a detailed statement of the party's reconstruction proposals, see pages 91–108 of the same volume.

CHAPTER XVI

GREATER BRITAIN: THE SELF-GOVERNING COLONIES

Character of the Empire. In the forefront of the group of nations that of late have fought in the cause of liberty and democracy stands the British Empire, wielding some degree of control over approximately one-fourth of the earth's habitable surface and also over one-fourth of the world's entire population - by far the most colossal political power known to history. Inasmuch as it is generally understood that the menace to democracy chiefly to be overcome in the war was the ambitions of militarist and conquering empires, some people, in all lands, have been troubled by the rôle assumed by, and even by the very existence of, this vast British dominion. Is not this huge Empire simply the greatest product of that spirit of aggression and conquest against which the free peoples are fighting? The Germans have been wont to describe it as a mighty, greedy tyranny, built up by fraud; to call loudly for Englishmen to release from bondage the millions of India before they talk about liberty; to declare the British naval supremacy a greater danger to the world than German military power could ever be.

Those who believe the British Empire an engine of tyranny have, however, been confronted in these past years with some facts that are difficult to explain away. As stated by an English scholar, writing in 1917, these facts are somewhat as follows: "Over a million volunteer soldiers have come from the great self-governing colonies of the British Empire without any compulsion being imposed upon them. The princes and peoples of India have vied with one another in their generous and spontaneous gifts to the cause, while Indian forces have fought gallantly in all parts of the world, and at the same time India has been almost denuded of British troops. That is not the sort of thing which happens when the masters of a tyrannical