Georgist
Thought and the Emergence of Municipal Socialism in Britain,
1870-1914
by Jules Gehrke
Introduction
Examination of connections between municipal socialism and the debate over Henry
George’s thought at the turn of the twentieth century clarifies George’s
impact on social reform in Britain and highlights unresolved tensions between
his own beliefs and those of British socialists. Municipal socialism was the
provision of utility services, transportation, housing, and sometimes even recreation
and leisure by local governments seeking to tackle social problems and provide
public services where private ones were inadequate. George’s ideas regarding
the taxation of the unimproved value in land, promulgated during his trips to
Britain in the 1880s, became critical to those who sought to find a just and
equitable means of financing municipal endeavors. The discomfort with which
many of these same municipal socialists later regarded his work, however, reveals
much about the strengths and weaknesses of ‘Georgist’ thought when
applied to practical issues of finance and governance in Britain in the late
nineteenth century.
Tensions between George’s thought and municipal socialism came in two important
areas. First, George remained convinced that the benefits of a tax on land
would remove the necessity of enacting taxes on the accumulation of capital. Many
municipal socialists (and socialists as a whole) disagreed and thus never embraced
the tax on land as a ‘single tax.’ Second, George failed to
clarify how a government which sought to use the proceeds of a land tax to eliminate
poverty and establish services not offered by the private sector, could remain
a limited affair and thus avoid the endemic corruption which he witnessed in
his own time. Most socialists believed that the risks of larger government
would be minimal when placed in the hands of a democratically-chosen administration
and thus found George’s resistance to interference with private capital
a stumbling block. George’s moral and economic arguments were to
have an important effect in shaping discourse over the emergence of municipal
socialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nonetheless,
this impact was circumscribed by socialist thinkers who rejected the notion of
a tax on land as comprehensive.
The emergence of municipal socialism coincided with Henry George’s early
struggle to grapple with the dysfunctions of the American economy of the 1870s
-- in particular, the generation of vast fortunes despite the persistence of
poverty and unemployment. George was born in Philadelphia in 1839 and left
school at the age of 14. After spending time at sea and attempting to seek
his fortune in gold in Canada, he settled down to learn the newspaper trade in
California. As a journalist, he witnessed the effects of the capitalist
boom-and-bust cycle and traced much of economic failure to the persistence of
monopoly in land. The taxing away of the economic rent in land in which
a landowner had not invested his own labor, would provide a reservoir of money
for governmental responsibilities and eliminate the need for other debilitating
taxes on capital, George believed. His solution derived from his passion
to secure a morally and economically just world in which the forces of labor
and production would be put to their greatest use. He refined his economic
ideas while working as a journalist and in 1879 published his most famous work, Progress
and Poverty. The work argued that rent
swallowed up gains in production, leaving wages and interest depressed. The
taxing away of economic rent in land would end the benefits that accrued to those
who maintained the monopoly of land and open the door to economic prosperity
for those who labored. George’s model for the wholesale transfer
of taxation to the economic rent generated by land was fortuitous for those municipal
socialists in Britain seeking to provide a just and efficient means of financing
collective endeavor.
‘Georgist’ Thought and the United
Kingdom
The publication of Progress and Poverty had
a profound effect in the British Isles. Land remained largely under the
control of aristocratic landowners who offered long term leases for both rural
and urban tracts, the occupiers of which were responsible for a majority of
the taxes or ‘rates.’ Tenants in Ireland, Scotland, and England
had long been victims of ‘enclosure’ efforts, whereby landowners
could usurp long-held rental agreements to take control of land in the interests
of more efficient agriculture or the replacement of agriculture with grazing. Tensions
had become particularly acute in Ireland, where the population had doubled
from four million to eight million between 1780 and 1840. In the late
1840s, the island was devastated by a blight that destroyed successive potato
crops, caused the eviction of thousands of Irish peasants, and forced peasants
to turn to the Poor Law or other meager charities for assistance. The
rapidity with which many British landlords forced out tenants who could no
longer pay their rents helped to fire agitation for land reform and eventually
girded the movement for Irish self-rule, or ‘home rule’. In
Scotland, the clearance of ‘crofters’ from the Highlands set tenant
against landlord and raised the question of individual property rights versus
those of long-term tenants within England, itself. Moreover, the rise
in the unearned increment of land values near fast-growing British cities led
to accusations that the holdings of ground landlords stymied efforts to relieve
overcrowding in cities.
Concentration of land ownership and the accumulation of rental income
by a small class of wealthy owners naturally aroused George’s interest
in the United Kingdom. In 1881, he published a short book entitled The
Irish Land Question, What It Involves and How Alone It can be Settled in
an effort to gain support for the Irish Land League. His
ideas were distinct form those of Charles Stewart Parnell, the leading Irish
‘home rule’ advocate and Member of Parliament. While George
argued for a complete confiscation of the rental income of large landowners
(and a return of that value to the community), Parnell simply favored a re-division
of the land into small holdings. George’s
book emphasized the precepts already set forth in Progress and Poverty,
and thus did much to spread his core ideas and increase the sales of the larger
work. Progress and Poverty and The
Irish Land Question were often reviewed
together in the British press. Consequently, debate regarding the steadily
rising incomes of ground landlords was popularized in both Britain and Ireland. While
the Contemporary Review published
a favorable critique of Progress and Poverty by the Belgian academic and socialist Emile de Laveleye,
the Quarterly Review condemned
the seriousness with which his ideas were being taken by the artisan classes
of England. The degree to
which Progress and Poverty might
unite the ill-educated meant that the book ought to be taken seriously by all,
the author of the Quarterly Review article
argued. George
had gained notoriety after his involvement in the Irish land agitation led
to his arrest and brief imprisonment. Thereafter, the review The
Times gave of Progress and Poverty offered
a thorough analysis, noting that readers would find within its pages “much
to ponder with care and much that is highly suggestive.” In its
editorial comment, however, the paper failed to endorse his ideas.
George traveled to Ireland and England for the first time in October
of 1881 as a correspondent for the New York paper the Irish World. The British prime minister William E. Gladstone’s
ameliorative Irish Land Act of 1881 had failed to solve the dilemma of violence
in Ireland. In sympathy for the plight of the Irish under British governance,
George wrote that, “This is the most damnable government that exists
to-day outside of Russia…”. George
continued his travels around Ireland and reported on the miserable conditions
which he saw. He remarked, though, that the Irish nationalist movement as yet
seemed unsure in which direction in was going. During his first trip
to the British Isles George also established relations with a host of prominent
intellectuals who were, despite their agreement or disagreement with his proposals,
inspired by his call for the taxation of land values. He met and spent
time with the Marxist Henry Hyndman, though very early on their ideas diverged
because of George’s continuing defense of capitalist enterprise. Later,
George also met Joseph Chamberlain, who by 1882 had parlayed his credentials
as a radical Liberal (founded on local government reform and the municipal
supervision of gas and water utilities) into parliamentary and governmental
political power. The two agreed on much, and Chamberlain would later
become an outspoken proponent of the taxation of land values in the mid-1880s
– a position significantly tempered in his later years, however.
George’s reputation as a speaker and writer for Irish affairs
and for the land nationalization movement in Britain continued to grow. He
joined forces with the Land Nationalisation Society headed by Alfred Russel
Wallace and wrote an article on Ireland for the Fortnightly Review,
which was published just after the Phoenix Park murders. George
set off on a tour of western Ireland where he and his companion James Leigh
Joynes were arrested and detained briefly as “suspicious persons.” The
event made the international news and George eventually received an apology
from the British Foreign Office. As George closed out his first trip
to the British Isles, he spoke to a meeting of the Land Nationalisation Society
in London at which none other than the famous playwright and later Fabian social
reformer George Bernard Shaw was present. Shaw was enthused as he heard
George speak and stimulated by the elegance of George’s solution to the
social problems with which Shaw, himself, was struggling. Shaw remarked
that as a result of hearing George he began an intensive program of economic
study and soon became a socialist. His experience was repeated among
many of those beginning to grapple with issues of both rural and urban social
reform in Britain, and as he remarked, “When I was thus swept into the
great Socialist revival of 1883, I found that five-sixths of those who were
swept in with me had been converted by Henry George.”
On the heels of the publication of his work Social Problems, George returned
to Britain for a widely lauded, and derided, speaking tour. Scotland proved
the most receptive to his calls for reform and his presence led to the founding
of the Scottish Land Restoration League, an organization that was soon followed
by the English Land Restoration League. The tour ended early in 1884, but
George once again returned in November of the same year to fulfill a number of
speaking engagements in Scotland. The press followed his tours closely
and the Nineteenth Century printed his article, “The Reduction to
Iniquity” that came in response to the Duke of Argyll’s recent critique,
‘The Prophet of San Francisco.’ The Duke offered an able critique
in defense of landlordism that argued landlords had done much to improve land
and to create capital. George, however, attacked the privileges of landownership
as confined to an elite class and pointed to the decrepit conditions existing
among much of the Scottish peasantry. His arguments reiterated his opposition
to monopoly in land and were a pronouncement against the propertied classes
in Britain which were then lining up to oppose him.
The Irish Land Act of 1881 seemed to threaten far more to the propertied classes
of the United Kingdom than a simple reform of the rights of tenancy in Ireland. The
three provisions of the Act: fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale undermined
what many landowners believed to be their traditional and inalienable right to
dispose of property as they saw fit. The Act now offered protection to
tenants and allowed aggrieved parties to seek changes in their leases in court. In
the wake of the interest in land reform spread by Progress and Poverty and The
Irish Land Question, landed proprietors, and indeed many business owners
who scented socialist confiscation, rushed to reaffirm traditional rights in
property. The Liberty and Property Defence League was formed in 1882 by
political ideologues, both Conservative and some Liberal, who believed that the
foundations of individualism were under assault. Members took their inspiration
from Herbert Spencer, who in the early 1880s had noted his worry about the direction
of the Liberal Party. They
focused their efforts on maintaining parliamentary opposition to the expansion
of state welfare and government involvement in the control of business and industry. The
landed core of the Liberty and Property Defence League would oppose Georgist
thought well in to the twentieth century. Indeed, George, who offered explicit
support for individual enterprise outside the ownership of land, was often confronted
by opposition from those who regarded his ideas as simply one facet of a socialist
or even communist agenda. The confiscation of land, his opponents believed,
would only be part of a confiscation of wealth that would encompass capital as
well as land.
George, however, saw in his scheme a mechanism for protecting individual initiative
and allowing it to garner the full restitution that was its due. He believed
that rent currently swallowed up much of the income derived from labor, and that
speculation held back land from effective production. It was the income
that accrued to landowners who had put no labor in to the land that retarded
economic growth, caused poverty even where there was industrial advance, and
was a cause of periodic economic crisis. If land were freed from monopoly,
unemployment would likely disappear. Like
Herbert Spencer, George recognized that the ownership of land was a monopoly,
and that where the ability to create wealth by the application of labor to land
was restricted, that which cultivators or occupiers paid for the use of land
ought to revert to the community at large. The institution of common control
of land, or at least its rental income, would ensure that the community received
the benefits of land, the ownership of which might indeed be the result of random
chance. George believed that the institution of a tax upon the full value
of land would make private ownership in land un-remunerative and lead to either
effective control by the community or at least the end of private interests.
Land, which George believed had been bequeathed by God to all people, was the
ultimate source for the generation of wealth. The taxation of land
values, he believed, would end the critical monopoly on land and allow laborers
access to land that they could use to become capitalists. No longer would
the laborer be held captive to the capitalist employer who used an excess of
available labor to drive down wages. By ending the monopoly on land, labor
would have free play to make it productive to its fullest potential.
George’s ideas were applicable to an increasingly urbanized society
where the desire for land in growing cities meant that landlords accumulated
significant increases in the unearned increment or sometimes kept undeveloped
land off the market waiting for the most wealthy buyer to purchase or lease. Monopoly
in land had fallen to the landlords of the United Kingdom by a simple accident
of birth, George believed, and the historical circumstance of their ‘ownership’
blocked the rightful application of labor to land for productive purposes. George’s
travels, writings, and speeches had focused primarily upon rural Ireland and
Scotland, but his ideas were readily applied to rapidly urbanizing areas of
England, as well. Prominent aristocrats were achieving substantial gains
in cities where their lands were offered on the short leasehold system in which
developers would be allowed to build on land and then sell or lease the construction. At
the end of the lease, usually 99 years, the land would revert back to the ‘ground’
landlord. In London, the dukes of Bedford and Westminster ultimately
controlled substantial sections of the metropolis. Writing in 1883, George addressed
the question of landlordism in cities by writing that if he wished to introduce
an Irish peasant to some of the worst sights attributable to landlordism, he
would take him to see Dublin, Cork, and Belfast.
George eschewed the notion that capitalism was the root of exploitation
and thus distanced himself from many of his socialist counterparts who sought
social justice by an assault on the accumulation of capital. Capital,
he believed, was the engine by which employment would be expanded and poverty
and want eliminated. His support for cooperative control of land, but
the maintenance of free enterprise, meant that he drew fire from both socialists
and conservatives suspicious of his intent. Some Marxists argued that
he represented the last attempt of the capitalist system to assuage the masses
and avoid its own destruction, while his aristocratic opponent the Duke of
Argyll accused him of communism. Nonetheless, the intellectual socialist
group, the Fabians, absorbed George’s beliefs regarding the taxation
of land and combined it with continued support for the further taxation of
capital. They were among the first to call for a full examination of
the prospects and possible impact of the tax on land and it became a part of
their program for the reform of government at both the local and parliamentary
levels in Britain.
George believed that the full taxation of the unimproved value of land
ought to be the ‘first reform.’ Nonetheless, his stand against
monopoly in land begged the question of whether there might also be monopoly
in capital. Although he believed that most private undertakings that
were not by nature monopolistic ought not to be discouraged, he wrote in Social
Problems that the “…sphere of government begins
where the freedom of competition ends.” Social
Problems, in which George wrote most extensively regarding
the role of government in a reformed society, is considered by some accounts
to be his most “socialistic” work. With
a focus upon the United States, but a corresponding recognition of similar
conditions in Britain, he described an industrial landscape in which it was
becoming ever more difficult for young entrepreneurs to displace those who
had set up shop and made their millions. The pioneers of industry, both
by being the first in the field and taking advantage of the first advances
in machinery, now effectively precluded many young entrepreneurs from establishing
themselves in their respective fields. George remained supportive of
industrial initiative and the role of capital, but was angered by those whose
fortunes had become large enough for them not only to exercise a monopoly in
the marketplace, but to seek governmental protection in the form of tariffs. He wrote:
Through all great fortunes, and, in fact, through nearly all acquisitions
that in these days can fairly be termed fortunes, these elements of monopoly,
of spoliation, of gambling run … Capital is a good; the capitalist is
a helper, if he is not also a monopolist. We can safely let any
one get as rich as he can if he will not despoil others in doing so.
Thus, in both land and industry, it was the existence of monopoly and
not wealth itself that was to be attacked. George was troubled, but ultimately
hopeful regarding government’s role in alleviating the abuses of monopoly. He
charged it with corruption and abuse in regard to the institution of public
debt and indirect taxation, which taxed all in order to protect the interests
of the few. Yet, he was confident that it would change in response to
the drastic simplification of its duties and the elimination of a wide number
of special interests under his plan for land value taxation. He
believed that in keeping government local, as well, many abuses which had crept
in could be reduced. George suggested that it was
well within the scope of the duties of government to regulate or control those
activities which private initiative could not provide or provide only in poor
fashion. Here, he seems to have included schools and libraries – a
particular category of enterprise that responded to society’s collective
interest in achieving justice and efficiency, but could not be supported fully
by the private sector. Such duties were inevitable as society grew larger
and more complex; to ignore them, he believed, would be to overlook the duty
of government to do for the “mass of individuals those things which cannot
be done, or cannot be so well done, by individual action.”
George’s response to governmental intervention in areas traditionally controlled
by private enterprise was based upon a careful weighing of the significance of
individual concerns in serving the common interests of society. In Social
Problems, he stated, “It is not the
business of government to direct the employment of labour and capital, and to
foster certain industries at the expense of other industries.” However, in the
same work he also supported government control of railways. In an 1885
interview he said that he was in favor of state control of natural monopolies
such as the telegraph and railways, provided that they were “in their nature
cooperative.” George,
with his strong ties to California, considered railways particularly important
and he wrote candidly of the ‘tariffs’ they exacted on the American
people not only through their monopolies, but through the political power they
wielded in protecting their interests. He believed that
though government might hardly be free of corruption, its control of certain
services and industries in the public interest would rid society of the greater
evil of corruption through private monopoly. Moreover, he wrote that in
many cases the public’s interests would be far more favorably served by
direct government control rather than by contracts with private companies. Particularly
where public attention was directed to the activities of particular departments
or services, corruption that did arise could be dealt with. However,
“…to go further than this, would be to strike at the springs of
individual well-being and national wealth…our effort should be to encourage
everyone to produce and accumulate all he can, by removing all obstructions
and sacredly guarding the rights of property,” he added.
Thus, George was committed to government interference to destroy or control
monopoly and to preserve individual freedom. But, he was short on specifics:
“The proper line between governmental control and individualism is that
where free competition fails to secure liberty of action and freedom of development. The
great thing which we should aim to secure is freedom – that full freedom
of each which is bounded by the equal freedom of others.” It was just this line between
freedom of development and freedom of individual economic action that was to
be such an important component in the coming debates over municipal socialism.
The collection of a ‘single tax’ – as many were coming
to call the Georgist philosophy -- would mean the end of “cumbrous and
expensive” schemes of taxation, according to George. The costs
of government would be driven down and other costs traceable to the current
monopoly upon land, such as pauperism and vice, would be significantly reduced. In addition to
fulfilling a great moral duty in reclaiming the rental value of land, government
would have more than enough money to confront the social problems of the day. These
governmental efforts would be largely confined to areas where private capital
failed to provide a service (or provided an inadequate one) because of lack
of remuneration. In Progress and Poverty, George wrote:
This revenue arising from the common property could be applied to the
common benefit, as were the revenues of Sparta. We might
not establish public tables – they would be unnecessary; but we could
establish public baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and
dancing halls, theaters, universities, technical schools, shooting galleries,
play grounds, gymnasiums, etc. Heat, light, and motive power, as well
as water, might be conducted through out streets at public expense;
our roads be lined with fruit trees; discoverers and inventors rewarded,
scientific investigations supported; and in a thousand ways the public
revenues made to foster efforts for the public benefit.
George’s pronouncement upon the new duties of government in Progress
and Poverty did attract the criticism of his opponents who suggested
that his vision of a simplified government was utopian and that expanded government
would surely mean corruption and bureaucracy if pushed to develop the duties
he had listed. Moreover, these opponents suggested that his estimate
of the remuneration brought by a tax on unimproved land was vastly inflated. George, however, argued that
the amount of rental income to be drawn from land was more than enough, and
that once government had shed its extraneous duties and was subject to the
overriding concern of enhancing the welfare of its citizens, it would change
its character, becoming the expression of a ‘cooperative’ society
that no longer had to contend with the problems arising from want and greed. “…there
would be brought to the management of public affairs, and the administration
of common funds, the skill, the attention, the fidelity, and the integrity
that can now be secured only for private interests.” George
excoriated the corruption that emerged as special interests attempted to manipulate
a tax to their own advantage. “Nearly all the taxes which we propose
to abolish become, in one way or another, taxes upon conscience, and by setting
a premium on bribery, forgery and fraud, foster political corruption and social
demoralization.” He
argued:
We should reach the ideal of the socialist, but not through government
repression. Government would change its character, and would become the administration
of a great co-operative society. It would become merely the agency by
which the common property was administered for the common benefit.
While many of his opponents labeled George a socialist, he made it clear
that he was no opponent of private accumulation once the great monopolies (most
importantly in land) were abolished. “I have always insisted that
no man should be taxed because of his wealth, and that no matter how many millions
a man might rightfully get, society should leave to him every penny of them.” George
believed that socialists had made a grave error in confusing land with capital
and believing that the laborer was the victim of the wage system just as much
as he was the victim of monopoly in land. Socialists
sought a solution for the injustice done to the laborer in broad state control
of both production and distribution; this was ultimately destructive of individual
freedom, according to George. Although recognizing the noble aims of
socialism, he wrote, “If it were absolutely necessary to make a choice
between full state socialism and anarchism, I for one would be inclined to
choose anarchism
…” George
sometimes gave speeches under socialist auspices and was often defended by
them against conservative opponents, but the two sides often remained alienated
despite their agreement on the taxation of land. For their part, conservative
and some laissez-faire liberal opponents could detect little difference between
George and the socialism of Henry Hyndman. George’s solution to
the question of land, to them, promised a radicalism that mirrored socialism
and would eventually seek to sweep away private capital.
After George’s first visit to the United Kingdom, Alfred Russel
Wallace’s Land Nationalization Society and the Social Democratic Federation,
which had given support to land nationalization, came together to form the
Land Reform Union (LRU). George was never comfortable with either of
the individual groups, since he disagreed with the Land Nationalization Society
on the need to compensate landlords and with the Social Democratic Federation
on their goal of nationalizing industrial production as well as land. Nonetheless,
the LRU adopted a constitution that accommodated virtually anyone interested
in the issue of land nationalization and was willing to forego other areas
of disagreement until the issue of land could be settled. Members of
the LRU organized a speaking and propaganda campaign that spread Georgist ideas
among local Liberal associations and trade unions. George was warned
that his commitment to a confiscation of rental income without compensation
for landlords could set the movement back, but he remained committed to the
principle that landowning had been bequeathed arbitrarily by nature and that
no compensation was necessary. George arrived
in Britain in 1884 to undertake a series of speeches in Scotland and England. The
focus of his influence was now concentrated in Britain, itself, as Ireland
had become preoccupied with the issue of Home Rule. His campaigns in
Britain in 1884 and 1885 had led to the founding of the Scottish and English
Land Restoration Leagues, which soon eclipsed the LRU (which itself collapsed
in May of 1884). These groups capitalized on the popular support that
had been generated by George’s ideas, and instead of merely uniting forces
behind the issue of land reform, adopted the Georgist remedy of a complete
tax on rental income. They also laid the groundwork
for cooperation with municipal reform groups and the Liberal Party in the late
1880s.
But, whether one considered George a socialist or not, the precise definition
of socialism in Britain in the 1880s remained problematic. For some,
‘socialism’ was any protective legislation that tended to set the
interests of the community above those of the individual seeking to contract
freely for employment or services in the marketplace. Others, however,
attributed socialist ideology more precisely to continental Marxism. While
the Social Democratic Federation under the leadership of Henry Hyndman supported
a Marxist interpretation of the development of British society, other groups
sought to effect change within Britain’s tradition of gradual reform
and democratization. There were radical Liberals (accused by many of
supporting ‘socialistic’ legislation), Christian socialists (emphasizing
the critical moral component of community action) and the Fabians (devoted
to a gradual institution of state socialism by influencing the major political
parties). Labor unions of the 1880s and 1890s were only slowly beginning
to embrace the idea of state socialism as a means of solving the power imbalance
between labor and capital. Fabianism, with its emphasis on a gradual
approach to socialism, made the greatest intellectual contribution to the socialist
agenda in Britain. Few British socialists espoused support for Marxism
and calls for revolution made little headway in the late nineteenth century.
The
Emergence of Municipal Socialism
and Tensions in Georgist Thought
George’s concerns with property, inequality, and urban blight
were reflected in the desire of numerous socialists to effect greater social
and economic justice among Britain’s city and town dwellers. Rapid
urbanization at mid-century overwhelmed many local political bodies that had
been focused upon keeping rates (taxes) low in the early nineteenth century. Between
1800 and 1860 the population of Britain more than doubled and the percentage
of inhabitants living in cities increased from 30 to over 50 percent. Housing
was generally unregulated and the construction of shoddy, back-to-back housing
in the teeming streets and courts of many cities meant a lack of access to
fresh water, poor sanitation, and the persistence of disease. Demands
among middle-class reformers for improvements in urban sanitation had taken
shape in the public health movement of the 1840s, spurred on by Edwin Chadwick’s Enquiry
into the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842)
and the passage of the Public Health Act (1848). Individual towns and
cities, which had heretofore been focused on maintaining a stable environment
for local businesses, took steps to improve their infrastructure through private
acts of Parliament. Manchester began providing gas in 1824 and later
secured a number of private acts to improve its services. In 1847, Liverpool began the
process of securing control over local water companies and by 1857 was operating
a water supply drawn from reservoirs nearly 40 miles away. By the 1870s, municipal reform
had affected most cities of industrial Britain; the movement toward municipal
socialism had begun.
The potential of municipal authority was demonstrated decisively in
Birmingham. Joseph Chamberlain was elected mayor in 1873 after having
made a small fortune in the screw-making business and immediately initiated
plans to purchase the city’s two rival gas companies. These companies
were amalgamated in to a single municipal concern and the new company immediately
demonstrated efficiencies that lowered the price of gas and garnered a profit
for the city. This success was reinforced the following year when the
town council purchased the city’s privately-held water works and set
about improving the water supply for many in working-class neighborhoods. Chamberlain
argued that his endeavors ended ruinous competition in the gas industry and
reversed an unwillingness to supply capital in water utilities. He was
committed to using the power of government to achieve social reform, yet believed
that such activity must be shown to operate on sound business principles. He
saw gas and water as natural monopolies, the efficiency of which were critical
to the health and well-being of the population. Moreover, he was proud
of the provision of a public art gallery above the offices of the new municipal
gas works.
However, Chamberlain believed that municipal operations must be run on sound
business principles. His vast ‘Improvement Scheme’ of 1875
removed dilapidated housing in the center of Birmingham, but at the same time
was posited as a way to improve the city’s business sector. This ‘civic
gospel’ (at least partly inspired by the Unitarian religious background
from which Chamberlain emerged) was a commitment to ‘collective’ endeavor
by local officials who struggled to address the conditions of an industrial nation
where political economy remained founded upon the tenets of free enterprise and
individualism. Informally referred to as ‘gas
and water socialism’ during Chamberlain’s years in Birmingham, it
would eventually become known as ‘municipal socialism’ – a
variety of ‘socialistic’ activity which Liberals, Conservatives and
socialists, themselves, were coming to realize was a key component of a new collectivist
era in British history.
In 1876, Chamberlain transferred his zeal for reform to the national
level when he stood for Parliament and became the foremost spokesman of radical
Liberalism in England, a movement whose advocacy of social, educational, and
franchise reform challenged prevailing Liberal notions of the minimal state. In
1883, his response to Lord Salisbury’s call for improvement of urban
housing attacked the lack of responsibility among landowners in towns and cities
and highlighted the need for the participation of the state in achieving reform. In
Chamberlain’s eyes, state efforts were critical to securing the responsibility
of landowners whom he believed had profited too easily from efforts to construct
urban housing. He clearly believed that active reform was something separate
from state socialism, but necessary to respond to emerging demands of a more
radical nature:
The cry of distress is as yet almost inarticulate, but it will not always remain
so. The needs of the poor are gradually finding expression; the measures
proposed for their relief are coming under discussion. The wide circulation
of such books as Progress and Poverty,
of Mr. Henry George, and the acceptance which his proposals have found among
the working classes, are facts full of significance and warning…The
expense of making towns habitable for the toilers who dwell in them must be thrown
on the land which their toil makes valuable and without any effort on the part
of its owners.
The essential connection between Henry George and the emerging philosophy
of municipal socialism had been made, and it would be of importance for at
least the next three decades. In its broadest sense, ‘municipal
socialism’
meant collectivist efforts led by local government that attempted to take control
of the delivery of local services in the interests of the community rather
than those of private entrepreneurs or the shareholders of private companies. Municipal
socialism included concerns that could find a private market and those that
were generally considered un-remunerative for private enterprise. Among
the former were water and gas works, as well as tramways, the operations of
which were often in private hands in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Among
the later were libraries, museums, and public baths, whose provision rarely
engaged the private sector and were built and administered by local government
officials. Whether they fell in to the first category or the second,
the operations of municipal socialism were characterized by a staff of governmental
employees and budgets and accounts which became the source of public debate. The
term ‘municipal socialism’ could be re-interpreted by those who
found themselves on either one side or another in their attitudes regarding
its wisdom. For radical Liberals and socialists who believed that it
brought the power of democratic control to markets where private enterprise
had failed to meet the needs of the urban masses, it was a positive descriptor
of the new power of local government. For political conservatives and
advocates of the laissez-faire marketplace, however, it circumvented natural
controls over competitiveness.
The term ‘municipal trading’ was sometimes used in conjunction with
that of municipal socialism. In most cases, municipal trading was used
to refer to those services that replaced or operated in competition with private
concerns. In theory, these services were funded by consumers and only administered
by public officials. Supporters of municipal activity believed that these
concerns could recapture the profits that might go into the pockets of shareholders
or private capitalists, and use them for the public good. Opponents of
municipal activity, however, believed that it was impossible for government officials
to adequately mimic the operations of private enterprise and that costs would
balloon and no real profits would be generated where the profit motive disappeared. Some
critics of municipal activity condoned governmental intervention in areas where
private enterprise was unlikely to tread (libraries, baths, etc.), while criticizing
the operations of municipal ‘trading’ companies. Others, however,
believed that nearly all government efforts to provide services, whether in an
area where private enterprise might compete or not, was bound to flounder on
the rocks of high cost and inefficient administration. The terms ‘municipal
trading’ and ‘municipal socialism’ could often be used interchangeably
by both supporters and critics of municipal activity; the terms were often blurred
at the turn of the twentieth century.
There were at least two main characteristics of municipal socialism
and/or municipal trading, however. First, such activity was predicated
on the notion that government monopoly could both offer sufficient capital
for the expansion of a utility or service and streamline its administration. Once
cities and towns had received parliamentary approval for their projects, they
could raise funds through taxation and borrowing (often at low interest rates)
that would allow them to construct large-scale infrastructure. In doing
so, they could almost certainly trump any private competitors that might remain
in the field. These new utilities, following the general understanding
of natural monopolies, could be run at less cost: administrative overhead would
be reduced, competing companies would no longer be building overlapping infrastructure,
and per unit costs to consumers would be reduced. Second, municipal socialism
and/or municipal trading was predicated on the idea that economic and administrative
efficiency intersected neatly with social reform. All areas of a city
would be covered through massive investment in infrastructure, housing congestion
and/or poor health and sanitation would be improved, and service would be made
affordable to all through a reduction in operational costs.
The British political left was becoming more attuned to the potential
of municipal socialism in the late nineteenth century. The Liberal Party
had generally been the champions of individual freedom and the restriction
of governmental interference in politics, religion, and the marketplace. Chamberlain,
however, represented a new form of radicalism that was challenging the rest
of the Liberal Party to take up the mantle of social reform; instead of concentrating
on the simple liberalization of the marketplace, he believed it should engage
in widespread reform in the interests of the widening electorate. British
trade unions had generally supported the Liberal Party, and Chamberlain’s
support for municipal endeavor was at least partially related to his desire
to capture working-class votes for the Liberals. He was wary of the label
socialism, but found that if his opponents tacked it on to him, he could accept
it. The Conservative Party, despite the strong paternalist instinct of
the early nineteenth century, had become wedded to the principles of free trade
as well as defense of property – a necessary corollary of its aristocratic
base. Members of the party rallied to the defense of property as Gladstone’s
Liberal Party instituted the Irish Land Act of 1881. As the decade continued,
and radical Liberals such as Chamberlain seemed to gain greater and greater
influence within governing circles, many Liberals who supported the party’s
old stands of laissez-faire and the restriction of governmental growth moved
to join the Conservative Party. Thus, it was from the Conservative Party
(later known as ‘Unionist’ in the battle over Irish Home Rule)
that some of the greatest protests against municipal socialism arose.
Chamberlain and his radical colleagues believed that landed wealth in
Britain had acted as a block to further social reform and the alleviation of
overcrowding and poor sanitation in Britain. He by no means favored taxing
away the entire rental value of land, but was well aware that the reluctance
of Britain’s privileged classes to be taxed made them particularly vulnerable
in an age of democracy. In 1885 he embarked upon a series of speaking
engagements which championed the plight of new working-class voters against
the aristocracy. The rhetoric of his “unauthorized campaign” called
upon the state to respond to the demands of its new constituency and to chasten
the rights of property – a position that his critics soon argued came
close to the type of social revolution advocated by socialists. In his most fiery
speech, delivered on January 5, 1885, he alluded to an historically distant
period in which all men had had common rights in land. Such a time had
now passed away and a new era of private rights in property emerged:
But then I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which
it enjoys! … Society is banded together in order to protect itself against
the instincts of those of its members who would make very short
work of private ownership if they were left alone. That is all very well,
but I maintain that society owes to these men something more than mere toleration
in return for the restrictions which it places upon their liberty of action.
… I think in the future we shall hear a great deal more about
the obligations of property, and we shall not hear quite so much
about its rights.
His words bespoke the continuing frustration with the earnings of landowners
who held a monopoly on land in Britain; the words were, nonetheless, ones which
he was forced to retreat from in later speeches when there was an uproar among
both Conservatives and traditionally-minded members of the Liberal Party. On the same day that Chamberlain
was tempering his “doctrine of ransom,” George was asked about
the January 5 speech in an interview with the Pall Mall Gazette. He
said that Chamberlain’s speech was a sign that the land question was
coming to the forefront of politics and that politicians would now be forced
to respond:
This speech is to me evidence of Mr. Chamberlain’s political sagacity…The
land question is simply the great social question – the question of work
and wages; of food and raiment. Everything is contributing to force it
into politics: the crofters’ revolt and the misery in London;
the losses of farmers and the distress among artisans; the work of the Land
Leagues and the Fair Trade propaganda. And now the dyke that held back
the flood is broken. I never fully realized what the extension
of the franchise meant until I found around me great audiences of men imbued
with the most Radical sentiments who have never yet had a vote.
Municipal reform was not a major component of Chamberlain’s published
work, The Radical Programme, which encapsulated
the pronouncements of the 1885 “unauthorized campaign.” However,
discussion of the issues of housing, taxation, finance, and schools were important
to the development of municipal activity. He argued that land in towns
must be valued according to its building rather than its agricultural uses
and thus pre-empted the later arguments of municipal socialists. Chamberlain did laud the accomplishments
of recent municipal endeavor and argued for an expansion of its scope. Although
he did not discuss the proper role of municipal government in administering
public services, he supported its potential. In answer to the critiques
of his detractors that his efforts were indeed socialism, he wrote:
If it be said that this is communism, the answer is that it is not. If
it be said that it is legislation of a socialist tendency, the impeachment
may readily be admitted…The socialistic measures now contemplated
would preserve in their normal vigour and freshness all the individual
activities of English citizenship, and would do nothing more
spoliatory than tax – if and in what degree necessary – aggregations
of wealth for the good of the community.
Although Chamberlain focused upon the duties of landowners in the “unauthorized
campaign,” he never spelled out a complete program of taxation of land
or committed himself to focusing his energies there. Indeed, evidence
indicates that he saw the Georgist program as too radical and a threat to the
political stability of Britain. At any rate, his role as the champion
of social reform would be somewhat diminished in coming years. In the
mid-1880s he took charge of a Liberal splinter group that aligned itself with
the Conservatives in the interests of preserving the Union with Ireland. From
this point forward, his career would be marked by a moderation of his stances
upon social reform. Yet, when the Liberal Party split over the issue
of Ireland, many traditionally-minded Liberals joined him in the coalition
with the Conservatives as “Liberal Unionists,”
thus leaving the Liberal Party with a more radical core that would be open
to efforts at social reform in coming years.
Intersections between municipal socialism and Georgist thought were
to be complex in coming years. Connections came in at least two important
areas. First, municipal proponents absorbed the land tax as a key ingredient
of social reform. They saw within it a means of forcing the landowners
of major cities to contribute to the costs associated with the expansion of
municipal activity that, in addition to the provision of utilities, included
efforts at the provision of working-class housing, public parks, baths, libraries,
and museums. These activities, along with street improvements, were designed
to improve the conditions of Britain’s industrial landscape. Though
trading enterprises such as gas and tramway systems might reduce the costs
for the middle and working classes in some areas, rate increases on occupiers
had political costs which made it difficult to secure support for municipal
endeavor. The advantages of taxing the landowners thus seemed obvious. Yet,
municipal socialists do not seem to have embraced a full taxation on land as
the solution to their problems. Although the Fabians were heavily involved
in the development of municipal socialism and advocated a substantial tax on
land, they continued to regard private capital as a legitimate source of taxation,
as well.
Second, municipal proponents had to contend with the very warnings George had
issued regarding the need to restrain government in the interests of individual
freedom. Proponents of municipal socialism had to defend themselves against
accusations of corruption, inefficiency, and exorbitant costs in municipal endeavor. Questions
arose as to whether elected municipal officials pandered to organized labor under
the influence of socialist politicians, assigned costs to alternative accounts
in order to show a profit in trading concerns, and whether the overlapping administration
of municipal concerns disguised inefficiencies in certain areas and allowed unprofitable
municipal operations to continue. Moreover, there were charges that municipalities
restricted entrepreneurs who might be prepared to enter a market using improved
technology, and whether the desire on the part of municipal officials to balance
the books meant that users were subjected to higher prices to cover operating
inefficiencies. Critics contended that municipal socialists were so emboldened
by their desire to challenge private enterprise that they fostered their own
form of corruption. George had argued that there was risk of corruption
in governmental agencies and that only certain monopolies were the proper sphere
of government. He had suggested that public administrators might well be
more efficient in supervising governmental activities that were under the watchful
eye of the public; and this did correspond to the argument of municipal proponents
that democracy was the ultimate check on governmental misconduct. In practice,
however, the intricate financial and administrative aspects of municipal socialism
did make it increasingly difficult to determine whether efficient practices were
actually followed.
The debate over municipal socialism reflected some of the most critical
tensions in Georgist thought. George had warned about government corruption,
but also envisioned a wide variety of legitimate governmental activities after
the single tax had been enacted. His argument was that government would
change its character under the operation of the single tax – a somewhat
specious argument for observers in later and perhaps less idealistic years. Supporters of municipal socialism,
who argued in favor of the cooperative world George envisioned, believed that
local government under the operation of municipal socialism offered the best
route to ensuring that the benefits of monopoly were returned to the community. Most
sought a defined program of governmental responsibilities for which the minimalist
structure that George had proposed seemed inadequate. This applied to
socialists considering issues at the national level, as well. As George
Bernard Shaw was later to write in discussing the application of land taxation
to the national budget, one could not, “dump four hundred and fifty millions
a year down on the Exchequer counter, and then retire with three cheers for
the restoration of the land to the people.” George
had both envisioned a utopia and prepared a roadmap to achieving economic justice,
but come up short on basic issues of governance.
For their part, the opponents of municipal socialism, who argued in favor of
the rights of the individual which George championed, were far more pessimistic. They
argued that local government (and bureaucracy at the national level, as well)
would never change its character and would only seek to protect itself at the
expense of the individual.
Municipal Socialism in Action: the London County
Council (LCC)
A trip George made to Britain in 1889 corresponded to a major step forward
in the development of municipal socialism. The election of the initial
London County Council (LCC) in early 1889 meant the first chance for political
progressives to press for an expansion of municipal activity in the capital
city. Previous governments in the metropolis had remained divided between
the closed corporation of the City of London and the individual parishes that
the City refused to absorb as the urban population spilled over its medieval
borders. Administration was chaotic and characterized not only by the
individual interests of the parishes, but by a mix of overlapping authorities
that included turnpike trusts, individual square trusts, and paving boards. The
chaos had been alleviated to some degree by the creation of the Metropolitan
Police in 1829, but the metropolis itself had been excluded from the parliamentary
Municipal Reform Act of 1835. The movement for the rationalization of
London government had come with heightened concerns over sanitation and crowding
at mid-century. Proposals for reform, however, were bound up with the
question of just how centralized London government ought to be. In the
1880s, the Liberals became the champions of centralized authority and the Conservatives
the spokesmen for the interests of individual vestries and district councils. The
Conservative government of Lord Salisbury eventually decided to constitute
London as a county council under the terms of the County Councils Act of 1888
– a reform which temporarily preserved the old vestries.
The first County Council election of January 17, 1889, was a signal
that forces of reform, many of them seeking to build on the tradition of municipal
socialism established at Birmingham and elsewhere, were to have an important
impact on the course of affairs in London government. This political
bloc, soon dubbed the “Progressives,” took approximately 73 out
of the 118 seats on the Council. It was made up of some traditional
Liberals, but was augmented by the Fabian theorist Sidney Webb and the labor
leader John Burns. The Progressives came to the LCC possessed with relatively
well-defined plans to use the power of the council, circumscribed as it was
by the vestries and the City, to relieve squalid social conditions that had
been laid bare by social investigations of the 1880s. Municipal
reformers had long recognized that London trailed industrial cities in outer
Britain in the provision of municipal services. In their eyes, the creation
of the LCC was the most important step in developing the metropolis as a civic
governing and administrative unit.
Two issues immediately came to the fore: the first was the issue of municipal
trading and the second was that of unification (and further centralization) of
government in London with a consequent extension of the powers of the LCC. Progressive
opponents, who came to be known as “Moderates,” were made up of politicians
of conservative leanings and were hostile to both developments. They
worried about the effects that expanded municipal trade would have upon rates
in London and worried that the LCC, if given greater authority, would threaten
business interests in the City as well as the interests of landowners and private
businessmen across the metropolis.
The plans which Progressives laid for London were set out in 1889 in
a booklet entitled Facts for Londoners,
a work followed two years later by The London Programme. Both were written by Sidney Webb (the first
anonymously so) and marked the beginning of Fabian efforts both to permeate
the Progressive Party and to establish a comprehensive program of municipalization. In
lucid prose that would come to mark a succession of his publications on behalf
of the Fabians, Webb wrote in Facts for Londoners that
“as a whole kingdom in itself” London had unique problems that
had to be solved by a clearly delineated program. He
highlighted the perennial Fabian concern with the concentration of London’s
rental income in to a few hands and the growth in the “unearned increment”
which accrued to ground landlords by virtue of heredity, depriving the masses
of the funds necessary for social reform. To carry out social reform,
it was not only necessary to enact reform of taxation, but to increase the
power of the LCC vis à vis the vestries which had “almost uniformly
neglected their most important public functions” and generally mismanaged
those of which they had taken charge.
Webb believed the inefficiencies of administration at the level of the vestries
and district councils were mirrored in the administration of the Poor Law, education,
hospitals, the provision of gas and water, and the construction of tramways and
public baths. After analyzing the County’s budget, Webb recommended
that “municipalization (by purchase) of the gas and water supply, the tramways,
the docks, the monopolist markets, and the private cemeteries”
would increase the county’s debt but eventually secure savings that were
lost in the payment of private interests. Moreover, reform of taxation
that recouped payments in ground rent and the unearned increment could offset
projects that benefited the masses.
The London Programme expanded upon the
problematic conditions Webb had highlighted in 1889, but posited them firmly
in terms of the need to expand the powers of the LCC and to restrict those of
the vestry. In the context of this general need for expanded powers, the
work reflected major issues in efforts at municipalization in London, and indeed
in other English and Scottish cities during the 1890s. Webb’s program of
municipal expansion was synergistic: a municipal effort to heat the fresh water
it supplied would make apparent the need for a municipal supply of gas. Furthermore,
a modern city that had already demonstrated its responsibility in maintaining
the health of its citizens would naturally work to provide free trams to relieve
congestion. Knowing that there was indeed growing pressure against an increase
in the rates, Webb emphasized that landowners, particularly those who saw the
value of their properties increased by public improvements, must pay increased
taxes. He acknowledged that economic theory dictated landowners already
saw their rents reduced due to the rates for which occupiers were responsible,
yet he believed that the marketplace failed to function in such a manner as to
directly transfer the burden of the rates to landowners. Currently, middle
and working-class occupiers were made to feel every increase in the rates while
land owners grew wealthy through unearned increases in the value of their properties.
The impact of municipal reform on local rates – which were usually
paid by the occupiers of property – was an issue of concern for both
Progressives and Moderates. Progressives had to walk a fine line between
emphasizing reform (and the strengthening of the LCC), while making sure that
increases in the rates did not alienate the core of their constituency. Moderates,
on the other hand, reflected many of the concerns that had emerged in ‘ratepayers’
organizations in industrial cities where reactions had set in when it appeared
the price for local officials’ reform would be borne by the town’s
taxpayers.
For some Moderates on the LCC, Webb’s proposals would not have
seemed outlandish. They had early on accepted that municipal intervention
was necessary to correct problems of health and sanitation; purchase of the
water supply was well within the scope of the activities they envisioned. In
the early 1890s, it was not so much what had been done in London as the prospect
of where it might all lead that concerned the most avowedly anti-socialist
officials and thinkers. Webb called for extension of municipalisation
to include intervention in the private market where he believed centralized
administration could achieve efficiencies that improved rather than simply
protected workers. As he concluded in The London Programme:
…when London’s gas, and water, and markets are owned and
controlled by its public authorities; when its tramways and perhaps its local
railways are managed, like its roads and parks, not for private
profit, but for public use; when the metropolis at length possesses its own
river and its own docks; when its site is secure from individual tyranny, and
its artisans’ dwellings from the whims of philanthropy; when, in short,
London collectively, really takes its own life into its own hands,
a vast army of London’s citizens will be directly enrolled in London’s
service. The example of short hours of labour, adequate minimum wages,
and regularity of employment set by this great employer of labour will go far
to extinguish the “sweater,” as it will have done to supersede
the demoralizing scramble for work at the dock gates. The example of
the municipal artisans’ dwellings and common lodging-houses will cooperate
with a drastic administration of the sanitary law in securing for even the
poorest London worker at least as a good a home as it provided for the meanest
of its cab-horses. With decent housing, short hours, regular work, and
adequate wages the worker will at last have been placed in a position really
to take advantage of the opportunities for civilization…rendered possible by
the “higher freedom” of collective life.
Arguments over the possible corruption engendered by municipal socialism
were much more widespread in political and intellectual circles than the discussion
of the taxation of land and the funding of local government. From the
early 1890s, a municipal “anti-socialist” movement began to pick
up speed. Its supporters were drawn not only from the ranks of the Conservative
Party, but from the ranks of traditional Liberals who might once have considered
themselves
“progressive,” but were now wary of the plans that Fabians and
labor supporters laid for local government. Each voice in the anti-municipalist
movement emphasized a different set of shortcomings. Yet, they included
(with many variations) the following concerns: the inability of municipal authorities
to manage businesses, the potential for corruption among local officials, the
potential for political pandering to workers employed by the municipality,
the increased debt that was accruing to local government, the difficulty of
calculating profits or losses at the local level, and the potential for municipalities
to stifle innovation and competition. For those who saw themselves as
fighting a battle against socialism at the local level, their crusade was a
chance to appeal to traditional liberal sentiments of limited government and
fiscal economy as well as dissect several case studies of municipal socialism. These
cases offered them a chance to assess local governments that had purchased
utilities and services, established charges and wages, managed the monies gathered
from rates, and made individual decisions on how profit and loss (and, indeed,
the health of an individual business) was to be judged.
Many anti-socialists believed that by debunking faith in municipal socialism,
pressure for socialism at the national level would be reduced. In addition,
for nearly all, there was a need to do battle with the aspirations of local government
so that rights in property might be protected against the desire to tax away
the rising value of land. They emphasized that the ledgers of municipalities
indicated increasing rates and growing indebtedness. Then, they declared
that the continued amateur administration of local authorities would lead to
bankrupt and inefficient local enterprise for which all would eventually pay.
The early years of the LCC were marked by efforts to expand parks, secure
support for the municipalization of water, and undertake improvement efforts
under the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890. Rates were increased
by roughly two pennies on the pound (from approximately 11.6 d/£ to 13.5
d/£) during the first two terms of the LCC, but significant portions
of the increases went to fund equalization (funds distributed locally to relieve
rates) and additional services imposed on the LCC. Considering these two factors,
the impact of the newly-formed LCC on the rates was marginal. However,
there were expensive projects in the planning stages which would cost the LCC
substantially in the coming years. An 1892 report published by the Council
showed that projects already authorized, including the Blackwall Tunnel and
the Boundary Street housing scheme, would cost £2.44 million. When
these and other improvements were totaled up, the report foresaw an additional £9
million in expenditures and an additional 4.1 d. on the county rate. Yet,
these included the projects for which plans had already been made. Progressive
ambitions were greater and if the purchase of London’s water companies
was added in (a cornerstone of the Fabian platform), the rating system might
indeed be pressed to the breaking point.
The second LCC election in March, 1892, pitted the forces of the reform-minded
Progressive Party against conservative voices which condemned the administrative
ineptitude (or at least inefficiency) of the LCC, its financial extravagance,
its thinly-veiled grab for political power, and its marked desire for socialism. London
voters endorsed the principle of an expanded LCC agenda, and the Progressive
Party won by an increased margin. While in 1889 it had garnered 73 seats
to the Moderates’ 45, in 1892 it got 84 seats to the Moderates’ 34. The
victory decisively transferred political momentum to the Progressives and ushered
in a three-year period that was marked by the desire of the party to see to
the enactment of many of the most ambitious plans laid out in The London
Programme. Pressure to expand the LCC’s authority
in to areas of labor and the provision of utilities increased. As an
emerging labor leader, John Burns had already endorsed the idea of an expanded
role for the LCC in securing labor gains during the 1892 campaign. He
contended that for sanitary workers, “reduced hours, higher wages and
improved conditions generally, although adding slightly to the cost, have produced
more efficient work, better health, stopped malingering, and given greater
satisfaction to all concerned than the old system.” Burns
endorsed not only fair wages for workers who did the LCC’s work, but
also believed that the LCC should undertake direct employment of labor in a
variety of activities ranging from construction to the supervision of asylums. Here,
he argued that efficiency would be improved as county officials would no longer
have to continually supervise the efforts of private contractors. Such
efforts were part of a much larger municipal agenda for Burns. “What
is the measure of the Council’s future work, the limit of its programme? In
Charles Booth’s wonderful but awful book…That is the Council’s
work.”
At the close of the century, the heart of the Georgist campaign – the
taxation of unimproved value in land – also became a critical issue for
supporters of municipal socialism. Progressives were dedicated to taking
on reform of taxation in London in order to ensure that further plans for collective
activity could be financed. Moderates had already made an issue of the
rising rates levied upon occupiers, and Progressives had responded that London
landlords must be made to shoulder a greater share of the tax burden. In
particular, they believed that the unearned increment should be taxed. Rating
within London had also been a topic of concern because of the difference in
financial resources between poor and wealthy vestries. The “betterment”
schemes of the 1890s brought the issue of taxation to the forefront. Most
Progressives believed that it was now quite justifiable to force landowners
to pay for improvements that increased the value of their property. The
Fabian Society estimated the annual “unearned increment” of the
metropolitan region at £7,154,844 in the early 1890s. It wrote further that the annual
rise in rent represented an addition to the saleable value of London property
of about £4,000,000 per annum.
The total rates levied annually amount now to over £7,500,000,
and must inevitably increase with the growth of social compunction,
and the extension of corporate activity. Would it be anything but
bare justice to absorb, in order to meet this deficit, the whole of the £4,000,000
annually added to the value of London?
These calls for the taxation of local land values owed much to George’s
previous influence. His last visit to the United Kingdom had come in
1889 and afterwards it was up to champions of the ‘single tax’ in
the English and Scottish Land Restoration leagues to continue to spread his
ideals. George’s ideas were increasingly absorbed into the proposals
for land taxation that circulated amongst municipal reformers, Fabians, and
the Liberal Party. As such, however, they lost their force as a coherent
set of ideas – a set of ideas whereby the taxation of the entire rental
value of land would be the starting point for extensive social and governmental
reform. The English and Scottish Land Restoration leagues eventually
joined with the Municipal Reform League to establish the United Committee for
the Taxation of Ground Rents and Values. The journal The Single Tax, originally begun by the Scottish League, was moved
to London and renamed Land Values to
emphasize that Georgist supporters wanted politicians to at least make a start
in recognizing and taxing land values. The
United Committee continued to drum up support in cities and the countryside
and from 1891 to 1898 and sent “Red Vans” in to the countryside. These
tours did not immediately emphasize the land taxation issue, but instead emphasized
the need for agricultural workers to participate in social and political reform. Opponents,
such as the Liberty and Property Defence League sent their own speakers into
the field to attempt to counteract the influence of the red vans.
In 1890, just as the LCC was getting underway, Sidney Webb suggested
that about two-thirds of the LCC’s members supported the policies of
the United Committee. The idea of taxing local land
values had first emerged in the Glasgow City Council in 1889, but was not followed
up on until the later part of the decade. Municipal elections of 1896
had brought in a majority of councilors supporting land value taxation. A
bill seeking the taxation of land values, known as the “Glasgow Bill,” was
first introduced in 1899 and then again in 1905; it was unsuccessful both times. Introduced
again, it was rejected once by the new Liberal Parliament in 1906, then passed
only to be altered out of recognition by the Lords. As of 1894, the LCC had established
a committee that became known as the London Electoral Committee for the Taxation
of Land Values, and in that same year the LCC endorsed the principle of taxing
land values. One bill brought
on behalf of the LCC that sought the taxation of local land values failed in
1897, and in December of 1900 a second bill was prepared by the LCC Local Government
and Parliamentary Committee, but failed. Though
these bills were unsuccessful, the Municipal Journal remarked
early in 1901, “The general principle of the taxation of site values
has been so thoroughly canvassed of late years, that it is with a feeling akin
to relief that we witness this transition from abstract to concrete…” Indeed, a conference of local
government authorities brought together by the invitation of the Glasgow Corporation
in 1902 pledged to assist in the advancement of legislation relating to land
values taxation.
Pressure for the local taxation of land was related to the continued dominance
of the Progressive Party on the LCC. However, the Moderates found a
new source of strength in the London Municipal Society (LMS), an umbrella group
founded to further the campaign against municipal socialism. In 1895, they
succeeded in capturing 59 seats on the LCC to the Progressives’ 58. This victory proved to be fleeting
as the Progressives retook control in 1898 with a majority of 84 seats to 34. The major election issue of
1898 was the proposal for the creation of a second tier of government in London
which (many Conservatives hoped) would offset the strength of the LCC. A
poorly-considered speech by the Conservative prime minister Lord Salisbury, in
which he attacked the LCC as constituting a “little Parliament,” damaged
the Moderate campaign effort and the Progressives won handily. Ultimately,
the Government of London Act of 1899, passed by a Conservative Parliament, did
succeed in establishing a second tier of municipal boroughs which reined in the
power of the LCC. Support for Progressive plans to continue the streamlining
and centralization of utilities remained high, however. The battle between
a Conservative-dominated Parliament worried about the ‘socialist experiments’
then being tried on the LCC and a Progressive Party which was anxious to demonstrate
the benefits of municipal ownership continued. The Progressives did suffer a
major defeat in 1902 when the creation of the Metropolitan Water Board placed
London’s formerly private water companies under public authority, but dispersed
that authority amongst various governing bodies in the metropolitan area. This
step ended long-standing Progressive dreams of a water supply that would be under
the authority of London’s broadest elected body.
Conservative and anti-socialist attacks on municipal trading and municipal
socialism were increasing, and between 1902 and 1907 undermined what had heretofore
been widespread support for ‘Progressive’ London. The campaign
against municipal socialism was given signif-icant publicity by both journalistic
and governmental endeavors. In 1902, an extended series of articles appeared
in The Times analyzing the growth of
municipal activity and critiquing what the anonymous author said was the unwieldy
system of finances at its heart. Municipal socialism meant substantial
increases in local rates and debt, according to the series, and in all probability
the creation of a set of municipalized workers who could hold elected officials
hostage for continued increases in wages. The series came on the heels
of the Joint Select Committee on Municipal Trading appointed in 1900 and helped
to prompt a further select committee investigation in 1903. While the first
committee failed to reach a specific set of conclusions, the second emphasized
only the creation of a better set of accounting standards. Municipal
opponents could hardly call the select committees a great victory. Nonetheless,
the extended testimony of various officials made it clear that disquieting
evidence could be brought to bear against municipal trading.
Though it began with an apparent setback, moderate and anti-socialist
forces were to find 1906 a turning point. In January, the Liberal Party
gained an overwhelming majority in parliamentary elections and emerged with
399 seats to the Conservatives’ 156. In addition, the Labour Party
finally seemed to have emerged on to the national stage with a total of 30
seats in Parliament. At the parliamentary
level, Conservatives now sensed an unhealthy mix of radical liberalism and
trade union socialism; in addition, the connection between socialism at the
national level and municipal socialism seemed all too apparent. John
Burns was appointed as president of the Local Government Board, and in all
perhaps 30 London County councilors were returned to Parliament as either Liberal
or Labour representatives. London Conservatives believed
that Burns would take with him all the socialist philosophies that had been
practiced and refined over the past 18 years in London. Participation
in the government now allowed socialist agitators to take one more step in
the permeation of British politics that had begun at the municipal level and
infected all the major parties, they argued. The London Municipal
Notes, an organ of the LMS, wrote of Burns,
“In spite of his protest that ‘from him private enterprise would
get fair play and just treatment,’ it is certain that, as a Socialist,
he will do everything in his power to extinguish private enterprise and replace
it by Municipal or State Socialism.”
It appeared to many Conservatives that the party had little to offer as an
effective counterweight to Labour and ‘new’ Liberalism. Although most
members of the Labour Party had been only marginally influenced by Marxist doctrine,
Conservatives saw in their new parliamentary presence the beginning of an inevitable
process by which individualism and private property would be undermined by an
expanding state. In addition, Conservatives believed that Liberals were
caving in to the temptation of public policy designed simply to appease the masses. Since
the 1880s, the Liberals had been increasingly influenced by philosophic and political
thought which championed the necessity of collective action by the state to ensure
a just society. In the guise of ‘new’ Liberalism, it was promoted
by David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and others after 1906 and represented
a fundamental shift in the liberal philosophies of limited government and laissez-faire
economics promoted by the Liberal Party in the mid-nineteenth century.
In London, Moderates and members of the Conservative Party concentrated
their efforts on the borough council elections of November 1, 1906. Throughout
the summer and early fall, the LMS worked diligently to publicize the issue
of high rates through pamphlets and public lectures. Pamphlet titles
included “High Rates and the Working Man,” and “Who Pays
the Rates?.” Meanwhile, the LMS secretary W.G. Towler delivered
a lecture on the “LCC and the Tramways”
and Sir Melvill Beachcroft delivered one on “LCC Finance.” A program of municipal reform
(likely associated with the Moderate Party which was now styling itself the
‘Municipal Reform’ Party) encouraged limits on LCC expenditure,
a delegation of further power to the borough councils, and an auditing of all
municipal trading accounts. The persistence
of the new ‘Municipal Reformers’ paid off. In 1903, Progressives
had controlled 15 municipal borough councils to the Moderates’ (or Municipal
Reformers’) 13. After the 1906 election, the Municipal Reformers
controlled some 26 to the Progressives’ two. The ‘Moderate’ opposition
in London finally seemed to have scored an important victory, though the experiences
of 1895 and afterward demonstrated that Progressive arguments in favor of municipal
expansion would not be easily defeated.
Municipal socialism was at the front and center of the LCC campaign
of March 1907. The auditor John Holt Schooling published a politically-charged
analysis and critique of the Council’s finances in January, 1907, which
offered Municipal Reformers fuel for their campaign. The London Municipal
Notes wrote, “The careful and accurate
researches of the trained mind supplies material which is in itself the most
damning indictment that could possibly be brought against the Progressive administration
of London’s Municipal affairs.” More
distanced from the campaign rhetoric which surrounded municipal trading, the Quarterly
Review wrote that the Progressive LCC only tenuously adhered
to the principles of proper book-keeping and knowingly published flawed balance
sheets:
This archaic pretence is kept up for the sake of the weaker brethren
who are habituated to debtor and creditor accounts and all the other categories
of commercial accountancy…The municipal socialist…regards profit
as a fraud on th community…Clearly the aspirations of those whose minds
are possessed by the new Evangel have led them to disregard the ordinary
tests of commercial success.
Gibbon and Bell write that the election of 1907 “was contested
with a vigour and violence of emotion unmatched in the history of the Council.” They note that the Progressives
had been weakened by the absence of some of their best councilors who entered
Parliament as part of the Liberal majority. In addition, they contend
that the financial state of the city was ripe for a ratepayer backlash. County
rates had continued to rise since 1889 and while the net debt in 1893 totaled
just over £18,000,000, by 1903 it had risen to £28,000,000. The Council took over the loans
of the London School Board in 1904, but in addition made capital investments
in trams and other improvements that raised the debt to over £48,000,000
in 1907. Gibbon and Bell also note that
some of the fire seemed to have gone out of the Progressive platform. The
creation of 28 metropolitan borough councils had dulled enthusiasm for greater
centralization of government and the creation of the Metropolitan Water Board
had nixed the Progressive goal of a county-wide water supply. Though
the party continued to fight for a regional plan for the provision of electricity
that would serve metropolitan London, they took a good deal of criticism for
the mishaps that had attended the municipal provision of steamboats on the
Thames. Gibbon and Bell write:
Electioneering artifice was lavishly employed. Cartoons deriding
the extravagance of the Council flooded the newspapers. Posters on almost
every hoarding conveyed to the elector all modes of appeal, from subtle humour
to forceful crudity. Vans paraded the streets bearing tableaux
of tumbledown “Progressive” houses and “Progressive” steamers foundering
in the Thames. The story was even circulated that the crews of those
luckless vessels had orders to come on deck when passing under the bridges,
so that it might appear that there were passengers on board!
The Moderates emerged from the election with a total of 79 seats while
the Progressives garnered 38. Municipal Reformers were to remain in control
of the LCC until 1934 when they were displaced by the new party of the left
– Labour. In the years immediately following the 1907 election
they did much to promote the new era of economy that they believed had dawned.Steps
were taken to end what they believed were the worst abuses of municipal socialism
– namely the LCC’s Works Department and the un-remunerative steamboat
service on the Thames. The deaths of both operations were lingering ones. The
steamboats had been in financial trouble ever since they had begun operation,
but the Council was at a loss as to how to dispose of the service’s boats
without a significant loss. The Works Department was steadily deprived
of work by the Council – helping to bring on financial crisis in the
operation – and was shut down in 1909. In theory, the agenda of
the Municipal Reformers was devoted to reversing key aspects of the Progressive
tradition, but never did it amount to a full repudiation of the practice of
municipal trading. The debates that surrounded most bills for the extension
of public services – including those for tramways and electricity – demonstrated
it was virtually impossible for the Municipal Reformers to reject the pivotal
role of municipal institutions in shaping or controlling collective services. Their
enthusiasm for reining in the spending practices of the Progressives was tempered
by a new understanding of the expected responsibilities of local government. They
continued to support the expansion of publicly operated tramways and some housing
schemes.
For their part, critics of municipal socialism outside of the Municipal Reform
party remained relatively quiet with regard to the LCC. The socialist menace
within the body now seemed under control. Anti-socialists remained active,
but they focused much more of their energy on fighting enemies at the national
level where the Liberal Party was embarking upon a host of state-centered reforms. At
the local level, Britain seemed to have firmly entered the collectivist era.
In coming years, London was faced with problems of traffic, housing,
and education, each of which required action by the LCC. Many of the
actions at the municipal level were at least in part dictated by the national
government. New understandings of municipal responsibility meant that
Municipal Reform supporters sought ways for the party to manage the responsibilities
of government rather than to simply reject its expansion. In October
1906, the Quarterly Review noted with
some dismay that the force of history seemed to reside, at least temporarily,
with the advocates of governmental expansion. One
of the strengths of the municipal argument was that it stood for protection
of the public against private monopolies, it reported. Yet, the journal
found that the avenue of offering private enterprise the right to compete for,
and secure control of, an area which tended toward monopoly might allow the
public to receive the advantages of both private enterprise and efficient service. This
idea was followed up by W.G. Towler in his 1909 work, Socialism in
Local Government in which he argued that the Local Government Board
had missed the opportunity to establish the parameters by which municipal control
could be exercised over private monopolies and thus had opened the door to
the larger menace of unmitigated socialism. Thus,
though one could give a qualified assent to the terms of individualism as opposed
to socialism, the individualist cry of, “Govern, not Trade,” was
unworkable and had to be infringed at some point. Towler wrote at some length
about the need to establish terms of municipal oversight, found some model
in the way that gas companies were currently regulated, and ended with a proposal
that a department of the Local Government Board be established to investigate
and make recommendations in situations involving public or private monopolies.
Georgism and the Taxation
of Land at the National Level
While the years after 1907 represented the end of impassioned debate
on the issue of municipal socialism, and both the gradual acceptance of local
governmental responsibilities and an accompanying awareness of the risks of
those responsibilities, the issue of land taxation was subjected to critical
debate at the national level. Increasingly, municipal efforts to enact
local land taxation became tied to the emerging Liberal consensus in support
of land values taxation. The National Liberal Federation had accepted
the principle of the land tax since 1889, but it was some time before the plan
became a part of the platform of the party, itself. The movement that had already
begun in Glasgow and London led to the calling of a national conference on
land values in London in 1895. Other conferences culminated in a demonstration
in London for the Land Values Assessment and rating Bill which in 1905 was
about to be voted on in Parliament. The Liberal Party responded by issuing
a whip to ensure that members of the party were in their seats to vote on the
bill. The
idea of land values taxation had gripped many in the Liberal Party since the
mid-1890s and drawn the support of old radical politicians such as John Morley
and younger ones such as Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The future prime minister,
Campbell-Bannerman, said, “nothing short…of the taxation of land
values will suffice to get at the root of urban over-crowding.” Nonetheless, he did not believe
in the operation of a single tax upon land and argued for a “moderate
application of the principle of site value taxation.” This
became the general view of the Liberal Party after the turn of the century,
and its departure from the core component of the ‘single-tax’ agenda
meant that the Georgist principle would never be followed in full. Indeed,
Liberals almost never connected the land tax issue to George for fear that
such a connection would rekindle claims that they sought confiscation.
The Liberal Party supported the land tax in its 1906 campaign, issuing
pamphlets that stated land would be available for use at lower prices and that
the tax was connected with the party’s support of free trade. To
free traders, in particular, the land tax offered a means of making up the
fiscal deficit that would come as duties on imports were eliminated. Liberal politics
were also informed by the need to acknowledge the claims of urban and agricultural
workers in an electoral landscape in which organized labor was gaining an independent
political footing. Conservative groups, including the Liberty and Property
Defence League, were more willing to identify land tax proposals with Henry
George and readily associated the tax with the Liberal Party’s willingness
to engage in ‘confiscation.’ Lawrence, however, writes that
the Conservative Party as a whole remained relatively quiet regarding the issue
of land – likely as a result of the plethora of groups that supported
the proposal in some form running up to the 1906 election and the party’s
unwillingness to alienate them. After
1906, however, when the Liberal Party had taken the reins of government and
the prospect that the enactment of even a modest tax upon land could eventually
mean a complete tax (20 shillings on the pound), the Conservative Party found
its footing, ultimately leading to a showdown over the People’s Budget
of 1909.
Once in office, the Liberals found that much of their program – aimed
at satisfying a host of radical interests shaped over the course of the last
20 years – was blocked by the House of Lords. The Lords had become
a bastion of Conservative power and the political check upon the Liberal-dominated
House of Commons. After successive vetoes, the Land Values (Scotland)
Bill was accepted but altered beyond recognition by the Lords in 1908. The failure to surmount the
power of the Lords only added to Liberal disappointments on issues including
education, Welsh Disestablishment and Irish Home Rule. The Liberals decided
that the time to do battle had come and planned for the inclusion of land taxes
in a budget bill; budget bills by tradition were beyond the reach of a House
of Lords veto. If the Lords, who were now worried about the potential
threat of land taxation, rejected the budget bill, the Liberals would garner
widespread support for reform of the House of Lords.
The Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George had been inspired
by the ideas of Henry George, Chamberlain and others as a young politician and
now introduced the budget of 1909 complete with taxes on land. His
terms were modest: twenty percent on the unearned increment drawn from the sale
of land (set on a baseline 1909 evaluation) and a half-penny on the pound tax
on the capital value of undeveloped land and minerals (agricultural land not
to be included). The ‘People’s Budget,’ as
it would become known, offered the Liberals a means of financing both their old-age
pensions and the escalating naval race with Germany. The ensuing debate
over the bill was a political cauldron within which the Liberal government argued
that a narrow-minded aristocracy in the Lords ought not to have control over
the fate of the nation. That same aristocracy charged the Government with
having introduced the first in a series of measures that would ultimately destroy
all rights in landed and capital property in Britain. George and his ideas
were either ridiculed or praised in Commons debate. After the Lords rejected
the bill, a parliamentary election in early 1910 reaffirmed the Liberals’ support
in the nation (though by a thin margin) and the Budget was passed. The
political crisis spawned by the ‘People’s Budget’ was not over,
however, and after the passing of one monarch and another election in late 1910,
the Parliament Act of 1911 reduced the remaining veto power of the House of Lords
to at maximum a two-year suspended veto.
Land taxes had played a critical role in one of the decisive moments in twentieth-century
British political history and were now a part of the nation’s financial
policy. Yet, for many supporters of both municipal activity and Georgist
taxation, there was much more to be done – namely the continued expansion
of national land tax initiatives and the transfer of local tax burdens from improvements
(buildings, factories, etc.) to land itself. In addition, municipal supporters
sought an immediate increase in the national government’s support of local
responsibilities including education and poor relief. In April, 1911, the
Treasury announced the creation of the Departmental Committee on Local Taxation
to study questions related to local finance. Land
tax proponents were heartened that a number of committee members were supporters
of land taxes, but continued to put pressure on both Lloyd George and the prime
minister, Henry Herbert Asquith, to throw their support behind expanded land
taxation. In its Annual Report of 1911-1912, the United Committee for the
Taxation of Land Values reported favorably on a visit a deputation had made to
Lloyd George and Asquith regarding land values taxation. In June of 1912, Lloyd George
formed a Land Enquiry Committee to study issues including land valuation and
housing.
Over the next two years, the Liberal leadership would be anything but firm
in its commitment to expanded land taxes. Asquith and Lloyd George denied
the Conservative accusation that they supported a ‘single tax,’ and
sought to portray themselves as seeking land taxes not to confiscate land, but
to alleviate suffering. Nonetheless,
land tax supporters held out hope that the Liberal Party would boldly embrace
a program of land taxation. Their presence could hardly be overlooked when
E.G. Hemmerde and R.L. Outhwaite won Liberal seats as land tax supporters in
1912. The
rhetoric of land tax supporters was sharply rebuked by Conservative politicians
who argued their case through The Land Union, an organization dedicated to defending
landowners against, “Fabians, Henry Georgites, Socialists, and others.” They attacked any failings
they witnessed in the valuation then underway to meet the terms of the 1909-1910
act, and accused Lloyd George of taking yet another step in the direction of
full-fledged socialism. The process of land valuation was indeed only partially
complete by June of 1912 and its opponents readily combined attacks on the efficiency
of administration with attacks on the ‘Georgist’ underpinnings of
the policy. In reporting on the annual meeting of the United Committee
for the Taxation of Land Values, the anti-socialist London Municipal Society
wrote in one of its publications:
That the gospel taught is still the gospel of Henry George, of which the modern
Mahomet is Mr. Lloyd George, is demonstrated in the Report, which refers (inter
alia) to “the ever-fresh and stirring lectures by
Henry George,” and to the fact that more than 750 students ‘under
capable teachers have learned the truths so clearly stated in ‘Progress
and Poverty.’”
Despite the Government’s reluctance to make its stand on land values clear,
Georgist supporters in the House of Commons drew up a ‘Memorial’ in
1910 which pressed the Government to make revenue from land values available
for public purposes, to release industry from the burden of taxation, and to
work to bring more land in to cultivation while ending various duties on food. The
‘Memorial’ garnered widespread support including that of the National
Liberal Federation and the Scottish Liberal Council. Nonetheless,
there seems to have been some trepidation about the direction of land values
taxation, and its probable effects upon urban areas, among municipal supporters. The
Municipal Journal, traditionally a strong
supporter of the endeavors of municipal government, wrote in July of 1912 that
there seemed to be a danger that municipal bodies would lose control of the
value they had helped to create if certain proposals for land values taxation
were enacted. It pointed specifically to statements Hemmerde had made
during his parliamentary campaign in which he said that taxes collected locally
might be used for services of a national character such as education, asylums,
poor relief etc. The Journal took no issue that these services, traditionally paid
for by local funds, were of a national character, yet it objected to the notion
that the administration of funds could be removed from local control. Such disputes were indicative
that significant battles over land values taxation were now often fought over
administrative issues.
In March of 1913, The Municipal Journal lamented
that even as the financial pressures upon local government increased, Lloyd George
dragged his feet in offering a remedy. After
a substantial wait, Lloyd George finally set forth governmental policy regarding
land in a speech in October of 1913, but did not make mention of the taxation
of land values at all. He made proposals that called for an end to the
monopoly on land and pressed for the improvement of the position of tenant farmers. In
addition, there was little that pertained to urban areas. Although state
power would be used in both the purchase of land and other financial undertakings
associated with the scheme, Lloyd George did not mention land taxes once. Lloyd
George took political heat from both Georgist supporters and their opponents
and until the outbreak of World War I, the Liberal Party would be rent by divisions
over the issue of land tax. In a speech in Scotland in February of 1914,
he acknowledged that land must be made to support social reform, but made no
specific policy pledge. A few months later in April,
however, he did seem prepared to engage a wider land values rating scheme as
he announced that the next Revenue Bill would clarify policies of land value
rating and that new provisions would be put in place for national support in
the relief of local rates. At the same
time the results of the Land Enquiry Committee, supporting land values taxation,
were made public.
World War I, however, was to end the hopes of all those who felt that Lloyd
George had now come to round to embracing their hopes for land tax support
of local government. Political support for land values taxation trailed off during
the war and in the context of the general electoral truce, supporters were only
able to fight defensive actions against conservative attempts to stymie the 1909-1910
provisions already in place. Instead of bringing new enthusiasm, as many
supporters had hoped, the end of the war only meant Lloyd George’s disavowal
of plans for further land value taxation. His postwar Liberal-Conservative
coalition government was dominated by Conservatives and the final defeat for
all attempts at land value taxation came on July 14, 1920. Clause 49 of
the Finance Bill of that year stated:
As from the commencement of the Act the Land Values Duties shall cease to be
chargeable, and the obligation of the commissioners of Inland Revenue, under
the section 26 of the Finance Act of 1910 to cause a valuation to be made of
all land in the United Kingdom, shall cease.
Thus, the drive by municipal authorities to institute land values taxation,
many of them having been inspired by the words of Henry George decades earlier,
collapsed after World |
