The sensible remedy is the municipalization of the liquour traffic which would fulfil all the above conditions. The municipal public house would refuse to sell any but the best liquors, and it would supply these with humanising instead of demoralising surroundings. The profits which the public are entitled to the public would receive. And let me say here that there is no reason whatever why we should wait for a municipal monopoly—which means waiting till Doomsday. The idea that municipal houses must not compete with privately owned ones rests ultimately upon the mischievous notion already examined that the drinking of alcohol is in itself an evil thing upon which the state ought to frown if it cannot actually suppress it. The typical British workman (whatever “democratic” politicians may say) does not go into the public house in order to get drunk but in order to refresh himself. If the municipality gives him better drink under more pleasant conditions than the publican he will frequent its houses without demanding that drunkenness shall be either encouraged or connived at. And the competition of the municipal house will infallibly raise the standard of those houses that remain in private hands.
Why does not the London County Council abandon its “Settled Temperance Policy” and go as straight for municipal public houses as it has gone for municipal trams? The common answer is that the Council has no power to run public houses; but this is no answer at all. Till this year it had no power to run steamers on the Thames. But it wanted the power, it agitated for it, embodied it in its Bills and eventually forced a Tory House of Commons to concede it. Has it ever asked for power to run public houses? Not once. Moreover, even as things stand, it could if it pleased get to work on the right lines instead of on the wrong ones. Instead of abandoning licenses it could retain them and lease the new houses to publicans at pretty high ground rents and on stringent conditions such as would insure that the house should be of the best type possible under private management. Besides there is Earl Grey’s Trust, an organisation founded expressly to anticipate most of the results of municipalism. They could easily have let the Trust take over the licenses, but they have persistently refused to do so. The fact is that the London Progressives do not want to municipalise the retail liquour trade. They do not want to do it, because they dread the power of the Nonconformist chapel and the forces which find their political rallying ground in the local P.S.A., forces of which the guiding principle is not temperance, but a hatred of alcohol per se. But surely it is possible to make a last appeal to the Progressive leaders. After all they have pricked that bubble once. To their eternal credit they have defied and bitterly offended the chapels over the education question, and no very dire consequences have followed. Will they not take their courage in their hands and defy them on the drink question also?
“RETRENCHMENT AND REFORM.”
Who could have believed five years ago that we should ever have heard again, from any quarter more deserving of notice than the foolish and impotent Cobden Club, the almost forgotten cry of “Peace, Retrenchment and Reform.” That it has become once more the rallying cry of the whole Liberal party is significant, as nothing else could be, of the extent to which that party has moved backwards during the last decade or so. So far from the Liberal party having been “permeated” with Socialism since 1885, everything that has happened since then has tended to weaken the progressive collectivist element in its ranks and to strengthen the reactionary individualist element. We hear nothing now of the well-meant if somewhat amateurish attempts at social reform which were popular with the followers of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain twenty years ago,—nothing of “ransom” or of “three acres and a cow.” As little do we hear or see of the Collectivist-Radical ideals of the early nineties, of which the Star and the old Daily Chronicle were once such vigorous exponents. Not only do the leaders of Liberalism care for none of these things, but those who professed such enthusiasm for them speak of them less and less. Mr. Massingham now-a-days appears to have eyes and ears for nothing but the diabolical wickedness of Imperialism. Dr. Clifford, once the rising hope of collectivist Dissent, is now too busy promoting sectarian anarchism to pay any perceptible attention to the “condition-of-the-people” question. It used at one time to be said that Mr. Gladstone’s stupendous authority made it difficult for the party to become definitely Collectivist while he led it; but when he retired the new era was to begin. Well, Mr. Gladstone is dead; but where is the new era? Mr. Gladstone’s place has been taken by men who have inherited all his obsolete prejudices—only lacking his abilities; the “left wing” of the Liberal party on which so many hopes were built is weaker and less disposed to a forward movement than ever. The consequence is that since 1895 we have seen nothing but Ghosts—ghosts of dead things which everyone thought to have been nicely nailed down and buried long ago. The South African War raised the ghost of Gladstone with his anti-imperial bias and his narrow nationalist philosophy. Then the Education controversy brought up the ghost of Miall with all the Dissidence of Dissent and all the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion. Lastly with the Fiscal Question has come to light the yet older and mouldier ghost of Cobden from whose shadowy lips issue the once famous formula—“Peace, Retrenchment and Reform.”
Since this dilapidated Manchester sign-post has now become the meeting point of all sections of the Liberal party, Radical and Whig, Imperialist and Little Englander, and since some of the leaders of Labour and even (strange to say) some of the Socialists are taking up their places in the shadow, it becomes imperative to ask what meaning exactly the words are intended to convey. With “Peace” I have dealt fully already, and have endeavoured to define the Socialist attitude towards it. But “Retrenchment and Reform” demand further examination.
No surer proof of the utter emptiness of what is called “Liberal Imperialism” can be advanced than the manner in which its leaders have joined in the demand for retrenchment. I can understand the position of those who manfully opposed the South African War; I can understand the position of those who manfully supported it. Both are honest and consistent and worthy of all respect. But surely there never was a meaner spectacle than this of eminent and influential politicians shouting vigorously with the Mafficking crowd while war is popular, and then, when the brief season of ultra-patriotic excitement is over, grumbling and whining when presented with the inevitable bill of costs. It is equally absurd and unworthy. If we want an Empire, if we want a strong foreign policy, if we want vigour and efficiency—we must be prepared to pay for it. If we think the price too high, then, in heaven’s name, let us be honest and admit that the Little Englanders were in the right all along. Do not let us court an easy but most contemptible popularity by swaggering as Imperialists, when what we really want is all the sweets of Empire but none of the burdens. That is what “Liberal Imperialism” seems to mean. Indeed Liberal Imperialism has proved nothing better than a fizzle. Three years ago we thought that there might be something in it. So far-sighted a reformer as Mr. Sidney Webb celebrated in a memorable magazine article “Lord Rosebery’s Exodus from Houndsditch,” expressing the hope then widely entertained that the Liberal Imperialist movement meant the final laying of Gladstonian Ghosts and the creation of a Progressive party alive to the needs of the new time. That hope is at an end. Lord Rosebery and his retainers have re-entered Hounds ditch with triumphal pomp and ceremony, and are now distinguishable from their frankly Gladstonian colleagues only by the greater fluidity of their convictions.
But expenditure on offensive and defensive armaments, though a most necessary item, is by no means the only item in our national accounts. We spend a great deal of money on education; we ought to spend more. We spend a great deal of money on Home Office matters—factory inspectors and the like; again we ought to spend more. We want to spend money in a variety of other ways upon the improvement of the condition of the people. We want Old Age Pensions, we want free meals for school-children, we want some sort of provision for the unemployed, we want grants in aid of housing and other forms of local activity. How are we to get these things and yet retrench. Will not better education cost money? Will not more efficient factory inspection cost money? Will not Free Feeding cost money? Does not almost every kind of social reform mean increased expenditure? It is significant that the demand for “retrenchment,” which is the Liberal cry in national affairs, is in local affairs the cry of the “Moderates,” that is of the magnates and monopolists who wish to exploit the public. But Liberal or Moderate it is always a reactionary cry. If we are to do our duty by the people, we cannot retrench.
And indeed why should we want to retrench—we I mean who profess ourselves Socialists? Our complaint is not that too much of the national revenue goes into the coffers of the state, but that too little finds its way thither. Too much of it goes to swell the incomes and maintain the status of a wealthy class of idle parasites. The more we can get hold of and use for public purposes the better. And the more we pile on taxation (always supposing we pile it on in the right place) the nearer we approach to the Socialist ideal. Retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduction of taxation to a minimum is essentially an individualist policy. The socialist policy is to pool the rents and profits of industry and devote the revenue so obtained to useful public work.
But, if retrenchment is an inadmissible policy for Socialists, what about reform? I can only say that I wish all such words as “reform,” “progress,” “advanced” etc. were at the bottom of the sea. They are mischievous because they lend colour to the vague idea which exists in the minds of so many “moderns” that if we keep on moving fast enough we are sure to be all right. It never seems to occur to people that something depends on the direction. What I want to know about a man is not whether he is “progressive” or “advanced” or “modern” or “a reformer,” but whether he wants to do the same things that I want to do. If he wants to do the exact opposite the less “advanced” and “progressive” he is the better. When therefore amiably muddy-minded people talk about “Reform” all we have to ask them is, “What reform?” What did Cobden and Gladstone mean by “reform?” What do the present-day Liberals and Radicals mean by it? One thing is certain; neither has ever meant social reform—the only kind that seems to me to matter; or, if the thought of social questions ever crossed their minds at all, at least neither has ever meant collectivist social reform—the only kind that in my view can ever be effective. What the Liberals meant and mean, so far as they now mean anything at all, was and is political reform and political reform along certain defined lines.
The old Radical programme of political change is worn so threadbare that it is hardly worth discussing at this time of day. As however, in the general resurrection of Gladstonian Ghosts, which we are now witnessing, a very attenuated spectre of the Old Radical-Republican propaganda of the ’sixties seems disposed to put in an appearance, it may be worth while to say a word or two about it.