LABOUR'S LAND POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 56, 7 March 1923, Page 4

LABOUR'S LAND POLICY

There was much dabbling with colours at last General Election in an endeavour to hide the reddest patches of Labour's election programme. The colour-mixer was at work especially upon the land policy; but his product was no masterpiece. With the best efforts of the camouflage artist the policy yet appeared one of nationalisation. Labour candidates did much explaining, and the National Executive of the party issued & manifesto wherein generalities which might be harmless were substituted for. the awkward clauses of' the official platform. The embarrassment which candidates then suffered appears, however, to have been productive of some good. The remits for the Labour Conference indicate that some at least of the branches have learned that frank revision is wiser than defence by evasion and equivocation. The opportunity is to be given the conference to delete or modify some of the more objectionable clauses. Two branches propose the deletion of the clause which aims at the elimination of private ownership of land, and another branch suggests (in effect) that private land agents, but not landowner^, shall be abolished. It will be recalled that one of the devices of the National Executive was to present this clause in the manifesto as if it were directed only at land agents.

In so far as this is a movement to deal honestly with the land policy, to acknowledge its faults and remove them, it is in the right direction; but the remits give little clue to what shall be substituted for the old policy (even if the con' ference agrees to substitute anything). "Extending the principle of graduated taxation of unimproved land values," as proposed by Wellington North Branch, i$ too vague to be of value, and the communal co-operative holding suggested by Dunedin North as an alternative to close settlement may mean almost anything. The Hamilton L.E.C., to prevent aggregation, proposes ;a maximum holding of 640 acres of first-class land—which would certainly give would-be aggregators in some areas all the freedom they desire. Taken altogether, the remits are but a poor instalment of constructive policy, but they do indicate that some units of the party, having realised that the policy is not in line with public sentiment, prefer to follow the straightforward course of amendment rather than the devious ways of dissimulation. It is significant that most proposals having this tendency come from the centres which propose also to recast or reconsider the objective of the party. "The socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange" has not, evidently, the old appeal for a party which has hopes of being called upon to give effect to its, policy and carry out its promises. A near view robs the prospect of its enchantment. Under such circumstances the party can keep faith with the public in only one way—by acknowledging that it has been visionary in the past and by jettisoning those leaders and proposals which have been responsible for its extremism.