involved to themselves. They will judge the present Government, as 
Governments should be judged, not by its words, but by its deeds—by 
its achievements, its actions and its omissions. 
THE RECORD OF THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT 
The Labour Party accepts that criterion. When once again it 
assumes office, it not only will be willing, but will desire, that the nation 
should judge st by its works. But, if it demands to be tried by its 
record itself, it demands no less that the same just measure should be 
applied to its opponents. It is not Socialism which to-day is in the 
dock, but the policy of parties to whom Socialism is anathema. With one 
short interval of eight months, Conservatives, or Conservatives and 
Liberals in coalition—for, though they are sparring to-day, they are old 
allies—have governed Great Britain since the day when they hailed, 
with outward enthusiasm and inward terror, the dawn of the new era of 
social justice which, as both of them so often and so eloquently 
explained, the return of peace was to usher in. How have these masters 
of state-craft used the power entrusted them by the confidence of their 
fellow-countrymen in the traditional wisdom of the governing classes? 
What sort of world have they created as an alternative to the Socialist 
Commonwealth? The answer to that question, the Labour Party 
submits, is not in doubt. 
The Betrayal of the Unemployed 
For four years more than a million workers have been deprived, 
through no fault of their own, of the opportunity of adding their quota 
to the nation’s output of wealth. The Government has refused either 
to take steps to check the occurrence of unemployment, or to make 
adequate provision for those who are its victims. In the teeth of expert 
spinion, it has declined to make their maintenance a national 
responsibility. On the contrary, it has by two different Statutes 
‘mposed more restrictive conditions. While making a present of over 
£40,000,000 to the payers of income-tax and super-tax, it has established 
lower scales of unemployment benefit for large numbers of insured 
workers, and has driven thousands of them, including the soldiers who 
ren years ago were the saviours of the nation, to the degradation of 
-elief at the hands of an overburdened Poor Law. 
The Betrayal of Organised Labour 
The wage-earner’s bulwark against oppression is his Trade Union. 
The Government has used its majority in an endeavour to hamstring the 
ndustrial strength of Trade Unionism, and, while itself financed by the 
cheques of the rich, has not been ashamed to cripple the political 
activities paid for by the coppers of the poor. 
The Betrayal of Industry 
The coal industry, on which a population of some four million 
persons depends, and with whose economic prosperity the life of the 
whole community is inextricably intertwined, has relapsed into a