Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's Address Mr. MaeDonald's Election Address is appreciably
shorter than Mr. Baldwin's. He refers first (as is natural in his new constituency of Seaham) to the distress in the coal- fields. "The general strike of 1926," he says, was the price which the country had to pay for the Tory majority of 1924. History repeated itself. Reaction bred unrest." As a gloss upon the real origins of the general strike this would be hard to beat. As to the cure of unemployment among miners, Mr. MacDonald is a little ambiguous. He says that the coal industry "requires to be nation- alized," but that the distress "in the meantime" must be dealt with ; hours must be shortened ; pensions must be extended, and coal must be better used. He accuses the Government of having" devised nothing " to decrease unemployment, "until this election began to wake them up." The Government, we are next told, have "systematically taxed the necessaries of life of the wage- earners." This reads as though it might have been written before Mr. Churchill abolished the tea duties. Then Mr. MacDonald says that trade is the special concern of Labour. "We, unlike the Tories, are not a class Party." We cannot help remarking that there is more talk about class warfare in the Labour Party than in any other Party. No doubt Mr. MacDonald thoroughly disapproves of it, but at any rate he has not been able to repress it. However, it is a fine ideal which Mr. MacDonald professes—that national prosperity should not be the opportunity for profiteering, but should open up the prospect of an ampler life.
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