GOVERNMENT IN A NEW AGE

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25953, 5 November 1949, Page 3

GOVERNMENT IN A NEW AGE

CASE FOR AN INDUSTRIAL PARLIAMENT Christopher Hollis persuasively argues the case for an Industrial Parliament in his latest book, “CAN PARLIAMENT SURVIVE?” (Hollis and Carter Ltd., 148 pp.). He sees the modern Parliament in a troublous world struggling to maintain even nominal control of the steadily widening business of the State; Ministers of the Crown grappling with the new problem of managing the managers; and Industrial Man, [who] endowed with material amenities. . . . sees life as unfaceable and contents himself to complain of his poverty.” Against this background he sets his generation three tasks: to join with men of good will of other nations in banishing new weapons of sudden destruction; to form the larger economic unit within which Britain can live; to find a means of giving the worker a w’ay of freedom and responsibility. He looks longest at the third aspect and discusses chiefly the third task. Mr Hollis is a Conservative M.P. but this book is not the work of the party propagandist. By his sincerity he avoids his own jibe at “Tory leaders . . . [who] indulged, as bold Conservatives out of office often do, in surprisingly radical demands.” He draws his arguments and illustrations as much from Marx, the Webbs, and Cole as he does from Churchill and Macmillan. He sees industrial democracy beginning in shop committees, going through national bodies like the Whitley councils, and reaching the Industrial Parliament. This, as he sees it, will legislate for all industry, subject to the veto of the political Parliament, which, freed from its new burdens, will be able to do its real work of government more efficiently. The nationalisation of the coal industry is discussed to show how Mr Hollis thinks it could have been handled better This is a book about English conditions, but much of it is relevant in New Zealand. The problem is bigger in Britain; the solution might be more easily worked out in New Zealand. Those seem to be the main differences.Its publication is timely in New Zealand. Tw’ce in the life of the old Parliament constitutional reform was discussed, regrettably inadequately. Mr Fraser, presumably well read in the idea -of an Industrial House, had tantalisingly little to say about it. The election campaign will give another opportunity. It is- true that a start towards industrial democracy was made this year with Mr McLagan’s Industrial Relations Act, but it seems a somewhat tentative start. Mr Hollis’s statement of the facts is brilliantly, fairly written. His conclusions are logically developed. Together they are a stimulating contribution to the thought about what he may well be right in describing as “the conditions of liberty and of our survival.”