Labour and Land
Labour Party Manifestos
An analysis of the first Labour Party manifestos, showing initial recognition of the importance of the land issue and gradual amnesia, by Dave Reed.
1900 No Leader
The manifesto is in shopping-list form (16 items). The fourth is 'Nationalisation
of Land and Railways'. After 16 items is a conclusion which proclaims the
'Socialisation of the means of Production, Distribution and Exchange….and
the Complete Emancipation of Labour from the Domination of Capitalism and
Landlordism'.
1906 Leader: Keir Hardie
This was the first land value taxation manifesto. There are references
to LVT sprinkled throughout the text. 'The slums remain, overcrowding continues
whilst the land goes to waste. Shopkeepers and traders are overburdened
with rates and taxation whilst the increasing land values that should relieve
the ratepayer go to people who have not earned them.'
1910 Leader: George Barnes
This followed the People’s Budget furore It is a short manifesto
much concerned with the House of Lords and the Osborne judgement. 'The
new Parliament will be concerned with the right to work, insurance, land
reform;
adult suffrage, Poor Law reform, factory inspection, medical treatment
for school children.'
1918 Leader: George Adamson
This manifesto is very internationalist in scope but includes: 'land nationalisation
is a vital necessity… so as to afford a high standard of life to
a growing rural population not by subsidies or tariffs but by scientific
methods and the freeing of the soil from landlordism and reaction.'
1923 Leader: Ramsay MacDonald
The manifesto leads on rising unemployment. 'Work or maintenance' is the slogan, but a later section on land gives a major statement of the case for LVT: 'The Labour Party proposes to restore to the people their lost rights in the land, including minerals, and to that end will work for the re-equipping of land valuation departments, securing to the community the economic rent of land and facilitating the acquisition of land for public use.'
The section on taxation continues the long-established Labour Party tendency
to avoid being labelled the high income tax party (only the 1900 manifesto,
so far, has mentioned it): '…the savings effected with reductions
on armaments, other sane economies and the increased revenue derived from
taxation of land values would make it possible to reduce the burden of
income tax, abolish not only the Food Duties but also the Entertainments
Tax and the Corporations Profit Tax as well as provide money for necessary
social services.'
1924 Leader: Ramsay MacDonald
LVT is soft-pedalled. 'The measures still in one or other stages of preparation
for the next twelve months include:' ….. A list of bullet points
follows, the fourth of which is: 'The taxation of land values and such
as in dealing
with agricultural land will secure its maximum productivity and with urban
land and building sites as would protect the occupying tenants and secure
its best use.'
1929 Leader: Ramsay MacDonald
This was after the General Strike, which he blames on Tories. In the midst
of Red scares, he proclaims 'The Labour Party is neither Bolshevik nor
Communist'. There is a shift towards land nationalisation, perhaps because
land values
are collapsing, particularly farmland: 'Landlordism has ceased to perform
its function and it cannot be allowed to go on starving the land of capital
and the countryside of cultivation and people and generally obstructing
national need and development. The land must therefore pass under public
control.' But LVT still appears: 'The Party will deal drastically with
the scandal of the appropriation of land values by private landowners.
It will
take steps to secure for the community the increased value of land which
is created by industry and the expenditure of public money.'
1931 Leader: Arthur Henderson
The main aim is to trash the Coalition National government. Land Value
capture is relegated to the Countryside heading: 'the land must be publicly
owned and controlled and much more fully utilised for food production and
the provision of employment under good conditions. To achieve this end
full use be must be made of the Acts passed under its auspices' (presumably
previous Labour Party acts).
1935 Leader: Clement Attlee
This manifesto is very concerned with the international situation but
the Labour Party 'has also declared for the public ownership of land in
order that the community should profit by its value.'
1945 Leader: Clement Attlee
The Party is bedevilled by trying to maintain wartime controls like rent
controls: 'The Labour Party intends that … their work [County War
Executive Committees] shall continue in peacetime.' But this is where the
rot sets in with the first mention of 'betterment'. 'Labour believes in
Land Nationalisation and will work towards it, but, as a first step, the
State
and local authorities must have wider and speedier powers to acquire land
for public purposes wherever the public interest so requires. In this regard
and for the purposes of controlling land use under town and country planning,
we will provide for fair compensation, but we will also provide for public
funds from ‘betterment’.' (There is no explanation of what
this means or how it will work).
1950 Leader: Clement Attlee
This manifesto is vehemently anti Big Business. The Party still trusts
in wartime controls. 'The 1947 Agriculture Act has given ample powers to
ensure good husbandry, they will be used to the full; … public ownership
will be used as the means of bringing into good cultivation good food-producing
land not fully used.'
1951 Leader: Clement Attlee
Land value capture gets lost in technicalities. 'Our people have been
sheltered against rising prices by Labour’s policy of price control;
by rent control; by food subsidies worth 12 shillings a week.'
1955 Leader: Hugh Gaitskell
This manifesto leads on nuclear warfare and reaches the end of road of
the land value tradition. 'Labour.. will.. go on subsidising the building
of houses to let by local authorities.' There is no other even vague reference
to the land issue.
1959 Leader: Hugh Gaitskell
The nadir is reached. This manifesto advocates selling council houses: 'Every tenant, however, will have a chance first to buy from the Council the house he lives in.'