Labour's appeal to the nation (manifesto)

              GENERAL ELECTION. 1929.
Labours Appeal to the Nation.
The long awaited opportunity has now come for the Nation to give its verdict on the present Government.
By its inaction during four critical years it has multiplied our difficulties and increased our dangers. Unemployment is more acute than when Labour left office. International relations are worse. Vast areas of the country are derelict. The posters on our hoardings announcing the grim truth that "a million of our fellow countrymen are needing food and clothing " tell
HOW THE GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED.
In the face of such a state of things this Tory Government has sat supinely with folded arms without a policy, without a vision, waiting for Providence or charity to do its work.
For nine months the Government watched the paralysing struggle in the Coal Industry. It aided and abetted the mine owners when they locked out the men, and provoked the industrial unrest that led to the General Strike, for which the Government was mainly responsible.
The Government's further record is that it has helped its friends by remissions of taxation, whilst it has robbed the funds of the workers' National Health Insurance Societies, reduced Unemployment Benefits, and thrown thousands of workless men and women on to the Poor Law.
TORIES TAX THE POOR.
The Tory Government has added £38,000,000 to indirect taxation, which is an increased burden on the wage-earners, shop-keepers and lower middle classes. In its only Budget the Labour Government reduced the Food Taxes by £25,000,000. Now that the Election is in sight the Tory Chancellor has repealed what was left of the Tea Duty but has retained the duties on sugar, coffee and cocoa and other foods. This remission only amounts to one-sixth of the additional indirect taxation he has added in the last four years.
Whilst every economic influence has been tending to reduce the cost of living the Government's policy has been to put obstacles in the way. It means to continue this policy. The Tory plan for solving Unemployment and improving trade — called "Safeguarding" — was denounced by the Prime Minister in 1923 as "pottering along." He was right, as experience shows. "Safeguarded" countries have Unemployment, low wages and sweating, poverty, generally corrupt politics, and high costs of living.
THE OLD BOGEY.
In order to hide their record of incompetence and reaction, Tory leaders are trying to frighten the electors with horrifying pictures of the disasters which would come upon the country if a Labour Government were returned.
It was such scaremongering tactics as this which gave the Tories a majority at the last Election. We do not believe that the voters will be misled a second time by such discreditable deception.
We warn the electors against the misrepresentations of Socialism and the aims and policy of the Labour Party, which are already pouring from our opponents.
The Labour Party is neither Bolshevik nor Communist. It is opposed to force, revolution and confiscation as means of establishing the New Social Order. It believes in ordered progress and in democratic methods.