INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 417
(7) “The Party will endeavour to provide for the workers, agricultural as well as industrial a minimum standard of living compatible with civilised life.
(8) “For the benefit of the industrial workers the party will endeavour to introduce legislation to control the employment, dismissal and promotion of employees in factories, to fix maximum hours of work, to make provision for the payment of adequate wages, for leave with pay, and as many amenities of life as possible, and to provide payment to the workers of bonuses, pensions of other provisions on retirements from active work, on account of old age or other incapacity. The party will also introduce a scheme of social insurance which will provide the workers against sickness, unemployment and accident. The party will endeavour to provide cheap and sanitary dwellings for the workers.
(9) “For the benefit of the agricultural workers the party will endeavour to extent to them the same benefits which it proposes to secure for the industrial workers with such modifications as circumstances may require.
(10) “The Party accepts the principle that it is the duty of the State to relieve unemployment, and the party will therefore endeavour to carry out this obligation by introducing schemes of land settlement and by starting public works to provide for the unemployed and the landless labourers.
(11) “The Party will undertake legislation to protect the debtor class from undue exactions, usurious delings and fraudulent transaction of the money-lenders and endeavour to tackle the problem of rural indebtedness.
(12) “The Party will undertake legislation to afford adequate protection to the lower middle class in the matter of house rents, in industrial centres in big cities and towns.”
Taxation Problems
The attitute of the Party towards taxation is that “it believes that for the improvement in the wellbeing of the people every Government must undertake a large number of nation building activities and that these activities can be undertaken only when