Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

CHAPTER VIII
THE LABOUR PARTY’S INDUSTRIAL AND LAND POLICY
1. DETAILS OF THE PROPOSALS

The Industries and Businesses to be Nationalized—Extension of Municipal Enterprise—Control of Capitalistic Industries and Businesses—Labour’s Agricultural Policy—Abolition of Landlordism—Councils for Agriculture—A Legal Minimum Agricultural Wage—Workers’ Control of Agriculture.

We have already given a general outline of Labour’s policy; it now remains to set out its particular proposals in regard to the reconstruction of industry. These we take from Labour and the New Social Order, published in 1918. If, as is not unlikely, readers feel aggrieved by want of definiteness, it is not the fault of the author, but of the Labour Party.

The Industries and Businesses to be Nationalized

“The Labour Party stands not merely for the principle of the common ownership of the nation’s land, to be applied as suitable opportunities occur, but also, specifically, for the immediate nationalization of railways, mines, and the production of electrical power. We hold that the very foundation of any successful reorganization of British industry must necessarily be found in the provision of the utmost facilities for transport and communication, the production of power at the cheapest possible rate, and the most economical supply of both electrical energy and coal to every corner of the kingdom. Hence the Labour Party stands, unhesitatingly, for the national ownership and administration of the railways and canals, and their union, along with harbours and roads, and the posts and telegraphs—not to say also the great lines of steamers which could at once be owned, if not immediately directly managed in detail, by the Government—in a united national service of Communication and Transport, to be worked, unhampered by capitalist, private or purely local interests (and with a steadily increasing participation of the organized workers in the management, both central and local), exclusively for the common good. If any Government should be so misguided as to propose, when peace comes, to hand the railways back to the shareholders; or should show itself so spendthrift of the nation’s property as to give these shareholders any enlarged franchise by presenting them with the economies of unification or the profits of increased railway rates; or so extravagant as to bestow public funds on the re-equipment of privately-owned lines—all of which things are now being privately intrigued for by the railway interests—the Labour Party will offer any such project the most strenuous opposition. The railways and canals, like the roads, must henceforth belong to the public, and to the public alone.”

“In the production of electricity, for cheap power, light and heating, this country has so far failed, because of hampering private interests, to take advantage of science. Even in the largest cities we still ‘peddle’ our electricity on a contemptibly small scale. What is called for, immediately after the war, is the erection of a score of gigantic ‘super-power stations,’ which could generate, at incredibly cheap rates, enough electricity for the use of every industrial establishment and every private household in Great Britain, the present municipal and joint-stock electrical plants being universally linked up and used for local distribution. This is inevitably the future of electricity. It is plain that so great and so powerful an enterprise affecting every industrial enterprise, and, eventually, every household, must not be allowed to pass into the hands of private capitalists. They are already pressing the Government for the concession, and neither the Liberal nor the Conservative Party has yet made up its mind to a refusal of such a new endowment of profiteering in what will presently be the life-blood of modern productive industry. The Labour Party demands that the production of electricity on the necessary gigantic scale shall be made, from the start (with suitable arrangements for municipal co-operation in local distribution), a national enterprise, to be worked exclusively with the object of supplying the whole kingdom with the cheapest possible power, light and heat.”

“But with railways and the generation of electricity in the hands of the public, it would be criminal folly to leave the present 1,500 colliery companies the power of ‘holding up’ the coal supply. These are now all working under public control, on terms that virtually afford to their shareholders a statutory guarantee of their swollen incomes. The Labour Party demands the immediate nationalization of mines, the extraction of coal and iron being worked as a public service (with a steadily increasing participation in the management, both central and local, of the various grades of persons employed), and the whole business of the retail distribution of household coal being undertaken as a local public service, by the elected municipal or county councils. And there is no reason why coal should fluctuate in price any more than railway fares, or why the consumer should be made to pay more in winter than in summer, or in one town than another. What the Labour Party would aim at is, for household coal of standard quality, a fixed and uniform price for the whole kingdom, payable by rich and poor alike, as unalterable as the penny postage-stamp.”

“But the sphere of immediate nationalization is not restricted to these great industries. We shall never succeed in putting the gigantic system of Health Insurance on a proper footing, or secure a clear field for the beneficent work of the Friendly Societies, or gain a free hand for the necessary development of the urgently called for Ministry of Health and the Local Public Health Service, until the nation expropriates the profit-making industrial insurance companies, which now so tyrannously exploit the people with their wasteful house-to-house industrial life assurance. Only by such an expropriation of life assurance companies can we secure the universal provision, free from the burdensome toll of weekly pence, of the indispensable funeral benefit. Nor is it in any sense a ‘class’ measure. Only by the assumption by a State Department of the whole business of life assurance can the millions of policy-holders of all classes be completely protected against the possibly calamitous results of the depreciation of securities and suspension of bonuses which the war is causing. Only by this means can the great staff of insurance agents find their proper place as civil servants, with equitable conditions of employment, compensation for any disturbance and security of tenure, in a nationally organized public service for the discharge of the steadily increasing functions of the Government in vital statistics and social insurance.”

“In quite another sphere the Labour Party sees the key to temperance reform in taking the entire manufacture and retailing of alcoholic drink out of the hands of those who find profit in promoting the utmost possible consumption. This is essentially a case in which the people, as a whole, must assert its right to full and unfettered power for dealing with the licensing question in accordance with local opinion. For this purpose, localities should have conferred upon them facilities:—

“(a) To prohibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries;