NATIONALISATION

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 36, 11 August 1920, Page 6

NATIONALISATION

While the German- Labour International has been denouncing Bolshevism, the International Miners' Congress has been endorsing the nationalisation of mines. If nationalisation, means compenI sated resumption on constitutional lines, ; it has, oi course, nothing to dfr with i Bolshevism 5 the nationalisation argument j is more economic than political, while the Bolshevik argument is more political than economic, and is also frankly confiscatory. But the fight in Great Britain over the nationalisation of the coal-mines will nevertheless go to the root of political partyism as it exists in Britain today. Writing in the Fortnightly Review," Mr. Archibald Hurd argues that the nationalisation of coal is regarded by Labour as the stepping-stone to nationalisation of shipping and other industries to which coal is the key. "The attack on the coal industry," he writes, "represents, as the Miners' Federation realises, an assault upon the outworks of the shipping industry." Mr. Hurd adds: Not only are our ships dependent to a great extent upon coal for their motive power, but 76 per cent, of the volume of the outward cargoes from this country consists of coal. The argument is: "Let us first secure the nationalisation of coal, and the nationalisation' of the mercantile marine will soon follow. We must get in the thin end of the wedge, and then we can drive it home." The conception of the British mercantile marine, worked by a central organisation, is one which is calculated to make experienced shipowners, as well as manufacturers and merchants; despair of tho sanity of many of their fellow-countrymen. It would have to control the movement of upwards of 80Q0 steamships, apart from several thousand sailing vessels, barges,- tenders, and the other miscellaneous craft which serve the larger ships; and of those steamships no mean proportion trade between foreign j ports carrying at times exclusively foreign {roods. Since the British Liberal Party is so j closely identified with shipping interests, Mr. Hurd's picture of nationalisation must be just as repugnant to Liberals as to Conservative-Unionists. Labour's nationalisation movement has thoroughly aroused the shipping people, and so has the instalment of nationalisation represented by the Commonwealth mercantile fleet, with which a rebate war is reported to be in progress.