The Labour election manifesto says that the Govern- ment were
defeated by "a partisan combination, of Liberals and Tories." It goes on to claim great credit for the Government's foreign policy. "The Government refused to exclude from this general pacification the Russian people with whom it is essential to resume our trade." The statement describes Mr. Wheatley's Act as "the great Housing Charter." The first Labour Budget had swept away not less than £30,000,000 a year of taxes on the people's food (" six times as much in eight months as the Liberal Government did in eight years "). Was not fear of the next Labour Budget, it is asked, the real reason why the Unionists. and Liberals turned out the Government ? [We can only answer quite emphatically that it was not.] Turning to unem- ployment, the statement says that "apart from the necessary transformation of the whole industrial system" the only practical way of dealing with unemployment is "the working out of a constructive policy of national development" along with the restoration of the trade of other nations. [That is quite true, but why did the Labour Party tell us at the last General Election that it alone had a scheme for ending unemployment all ready to be put into force ?] It is asserted, that during the past nine months the number of unemployed was reduced by considerably over 100,000. [It is amazing that the rival programmes should contain such con- flicting figures about the number of unemployed when the facts ought to be easily ascertainable. Even the Unionist and Liberal figures do not agree.] The Labour statement ends by exhorting the nation to make sure of each advance, so that every success may be used as the beginning of another, and ultimately "a really Socialist commonwealth" may be achieved.
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