PREPARING THE GROUND

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 131, 4 June 1924, Page 5

PREPARING THE GROUND

WILD AGRICULTURAL

SCHEME

INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GOVERNMENT.

(rKOU OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, '22nd April.

Enhanced importance' is invested in this year's annual conference of tho Independent Labour Party owing to the accession of the Labour Party to political office. A notable contribution to the volume of Socialist literature ■was contained in the address of Mr. Clifford Allen, this year's president, the delivery of which occupied a full hour. In the main ft. was an insistence on the purpose of the I.L.P. as a propagandist Socialist organisation, whoso function as such did not cease because a Labour Government had come into office. While recognising the inability of the Government to introduce Socialism in a series of immediate legislative measures, he claimed that it was not unreasonable to expect Ministers to use their position to prepare for the application of Socialism. "We wish to make the British people believe in Socialism," he declared, "for then, and then only, shall W3 have made it possible for our Labour Government to perform those feats of Socialist legislation that we so ardently desire." The Labour Government, said Mr. Allen, was occupied in preparing the ground and developing a situation for the next great incident in the progress of Britain towards Socialism. This, he declared, in an impassioned passage, is tlj S; Government of the common people, ilns is the Government of men and women who have suffered, who have jived the lives of those who sent them to be rulers, who have been poor with the poor, who have been unemployed, who have been underpaid. They will keep that spirit of the common people and will not. be severed from their, lives by office or power. "Other parties have made many promises and raised men's Hopes No party lias ever had the world at its feet as we have.. ' Labour dare not disappointment. That- would be too great a disillusion. ' ' . SOCIALISM THE ONLY REMEDY. Referring to what he described as the value of moral gestures, Mr. Allen declared that the British people were more closely knit to the people of France under a- Labour Government than they ever were by vain and meaningless assertions of the untarnished Entente. On' the question of wages and strikes, the chairman remarked that capitalistic Governments had never provided machinery for the constant safeguarding of \va"e standards or to assist the upward tendency of the real income of the worker .Almost every improvement in wages had to be forced by struggle and warfare, causing suffering to the wage-earner and grave destruction to trade and industry. Must a- Labour Government continue this folly? he asked. Can'it not prove itself the guardian of commercial ' prosperity and 'the active promoter of a progressive upward development, m wage standards by at-once setting up national machinery to ' anticipate and watch over all wage problems and to safeguard the proper use and coordination of all our national resources The Labour Government should not allow for, any reason the nation, their opponents, or the millions of workers to forget that they still believed ' that Socialism was the only remedy, and wlnle they were all aware that it was unreasonable tp expect the' prompt introduction of Socialism in a series of immediate legislative measures,- it was not unreasonable to expect the Government to use its position to prepare for the application of Socialism If they must introduce temporary measures while they were preparing the "Socialist programme, which they knew alone offered a full remedy, at least let them sustain the faith and hope of their peoPje by declaring frankly to'the "House , of Commons and to the electorate that ' they knew these temporary measures I would not do, that they were,' in' fact ' preparing fundamental legislation. Meanwhile, why should they not at once de-'I vote the vast, resources of the Government to inquire into' the application of Socialistic principles to the reorganisation of industry and our economic ' life ? I _ SOCIALIST FARMING. _An interesting booklet ha,s been published by the Agricultural Committee of the 1.L.P., in which the natipnalisar tipn of the land is advocated is the best means of saying. British agriculture. "The human factor,"' the committee assert, "underlies all the backwardness of English agricuture." The creation, of large industrial farms is regarded as oneof the goals for Socialist policy. The committee maintains that the. mere setting up of an'agricultural bajik will not meet the case. The Government must at least institute such a measure of control over the Bank of England aiid the joint stock' banks as' will secure that the flow of credit ar,d finance aiid the apportionment of available resources are in accordance with national policy, and that public utility rather than profit is taken as the guide. Good tactics, it is suggested, would be to dispossess, first of all, those .landlords whose estates are unproductive and 111— managed.' To aid in the work of taking over farms County Agriculutral Committees are proposed to be set.'up. These would^ be nominated as to one-third by the Farmers' Union of the country and as to one-third by the men's unions. The remaining third would be representative of the County Council and nominees of the Ministry of Agriculture, including landlords and'representatives of co-operative organisations. The Ministry would have at least one whole-time representative, and the C.A.C., as its work developed, "must recruit an able corps pf surveyors,-- land agents, and other trained officiate/' When hy compulsion and other means the C.A.C. is in a position to apply its .policy unhampered it may run its farms under skilled managers responsible to a corporation oreated by itseH. Every type of farm, including the small holding, may survive, the committee state, "if it can adapt "itself to changing.conditions," but the farmer as we know him to-day would have ceased to exist. REORGANISING TIIE COUNTRYSIDE. Specialisiic farming would bp made to pay its way by "the socialisation of wholesale trade in the chief imported foods." The body -'charged with ( - this would be a chartered Board of Supply, which "should bo as free to manage the. details of its own trading' as a private concern would be." It would siinply. submit its broad polipy and estimates to the Minister of Agriculture, who would b3 responsible to Parliament for an organisation over which he had no practical control ! The taxpayer would have to meet tile deficit when its estimates went w.)oiif;. Stocks^ would be bought three and five years ahead; nulls would be taken uvei> or controlled. 11l reorganising- the countryside the committee do

not hesitate to propose the transfer- of villages from traditional sites tp more convenient ones. Their ideal is that the village, y through the Parish Council, should own both the land on which it stands and a belt of land around it.

The ex-propriated'landlords are to get an amazing form of compensation. They are to receive land stock, and it is added that "the interest on this stock, which would be met from rents, should be a gradually diminishing quantity, decreasing by, say, per cent, at stated periods of years until it disappeared altogether."