It may well be that in one or more of our coalfields a public authority of this type, though with larger labour representation upon it and with a large measure of joint control from top to bottom, would be a suitable lessee of the minerals in that area. The important point is that public management need not mean bureaucratic State-management with the disadvantages popularly associated with it.
(v) I have mentioned several types of possible lessees, but it will be noticed that there is nothing in these suggestions which would prevent the National Mining Board from making the experiment of working a few mines themselves.
To sum up. There is a problem of the Mines. No sensible person should be deceived by the quiescence of the last twelve abnormal months. Without using extravagant language, the coal-mining industry is a volcano liable at any moment to erupt and involve the whole community in loss and suffering. Therefore, as a body of citizens, we are under a duty to seek a solution which can be effected between the occurrence of the recurring crises. As a body of Liberal citizens we shall naturally seek a Liberal solution, and the foregoing suggestions (for which no originality is claimed) are inspired by the Liberal point of view. They apply to the industrial sphere principles which have been tried and proved in the political sphere, both in the central and the local government. Apart from State acquisition of the minerals, about which there can surely be no question, these suggestions merely develop tendencies and organisations already existing within the industry. They involve no leap in the dark, such as has been attributed by some to nationalisation of the whole industry, and they provide for great flexibility and experimentation. The fact that the official spokesmen of neither miners nor colliery-owners may like them need not deter us. They have had numerous opportunities of settling the problem amongst themselves, but the “die-hards” in both camps have always prevented it. It is time that the general public outside the industry took the matter in hand and propounded a solution likely to be acceptable to the vast body of sensible and central feeling within the industry.
THE LAND QUESTION
By A.S. Comyns Carr
Member of Acquisition of Land Committee, 1918.
Mr. Comyns Carr said:—The Land Question I believe to be the most important subject in purely domestic politics to-day, as it was in 1914. At that date we were embarking, under the especial leadership of one who has now deserted us, upon a comprehensive campaign dealing with that question in all its aspects. The present Government has filled a large portion of the Statute Book with legislation bearing on the land; it is not the quantity we have to complain of, but the quality. In 1914 we had already achieved one signal victory in carrying against the House of Lords the Land Clauses of the Budget of 1909-10, and although many of us were never satisfied with the form which those clauses took, they were valuable both as a step in the direction of land taxation and for the machinery of valuation which they established. Mr. Lloyd George in his present alliance with the Tories has sunk so low as not only to repeal those clauses, but actually to refund to the landlords every penny which they have paid in taxation under them.
The campaign which was inaugurated in 1913 did not deal with the question of taxation only, and for my part, although I am an enthusiast on this branch of the subject, I have never thought that other aspects should be neglected. We put forward proposals for dealing with leases both in town and country. The present Government has carried and repealed again a series of statutes dealing with agriculture. Their original policy was to offer to the farmer guaranteed prices for his produce, if necessary at the expense of the tax-payer, and to the labourer guaranteed wages, to be fixed and enforced by Wages Boards. Before this policy was fully in operation it was repealed. The farmer got some cash compensation for his losses; the labourer has got nothing but voluntary Conciliation Boards, with no power to do more than pass pious resolutions. There has, however, survived this welter of contradictory legislation, a series of clauses which do confer upon the tenant farmer a substantial part of the rights in his dealings with his landlord for which we were agitating in 1914. The town lease-holder, on the other hand, has got nothing, and it is one of the first duties of the Liberal Party to provide him with security against the confiscation of his improvements and goodwill, to give him reasonable security of tenure, and to put an end once for all to the pestilent system of building leases which extends all over London and to about half the other towns of England. The evils of this system are especially to be found in those older parts of our great cities where the original leases are drawing to a close. In such cases a kind of blight appears to settle on whole neighbourhoods, and no improvements can be carried out by either party because the landlord cannot obtain possession, and the tenant has not, and is unable to obtain, a sufficient length of term to make it worth his while to risk his capital upon them.