ABSTRACT
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.
