Twentieth Century British History Advance Access originally published online on August 5, 2008
Twentieth Century British History 2008 19(3):314-343; doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwn016
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Labour and the Land: From Municipalization to the Land Commission, 1951–1971
Boston College
* weiler{at}bc.edu
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Abstract |
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This article examines the Labour Party's changing commitment to land reform in the 1950s and 1960s, a commitment that featured more prominently in the party's plans than historians have realized. In the 1950s Labour promised to ‘municipalize’ all rent-controlled dwellings, some six million houses and flats. After municipalization proved electorally unattractive in 1959 Labour turned to the idea of a Land Commission to purchase all commercially developable land at 30 per cent more than its ‘use value’. That land would then be leased to developers, thus realizing most of the ‘unearned increment’ for the state. Labour's promise to use the Land Commission to control land speculation and end rising prices in land contributed to Harold Wilson's victory in 1964, although in the event the Land Commission failed to realize its promise. In addition to adding a neglected dimension to the history of the Labour Party in these decades, this article argues that the issue of land reform shows the continued radicalism of the Labour Party, the continued strength of the ethical tradition in its socialism, and the continued hold on its members of a vision for social transformation.