The Radical and Socialist Tradition in British Planning: From Puritan Colonies to Garden Cities by Duncan Bowie

Author:Duncan Bowie [Bowie, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, City Planning & Urban Development, Political Science
ISBN: 9781317018346
Google: iouuDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-03-12T13:08:32+00:00

Socialists, Fabians, the radical clubs and land nationalisation

Many of the O’Brienites and other veterans of the IWMA and the Land and Labour League were to take their views on land nationalisation into the new socialist organisations founded in the early 1880s. The most significant of these new organisations was the Democratic Federation founded by Henry Hyndman in 1881, which was to become the Social Democratic Federation in 1884. The Democratic Federation was a combination of a wide range of radical traditions – the radical conservatism of Hyndman and his fellow Tory MP, Butler Johnston; positivists such as E S Beesly and Henry Crompton; Joseph Cowen, the Newcastle advanced Liberal MP; the veteran Owenite and Christian socialist, Lloyd Jones; the German and Austrian exile republicans such as Adam Weiler, Andreas Scheu and Herman Jung; the London O’Brienites, members of London radical and republican clubs such as Edwin Dunn, John Williams and J Lord; ultra radicals and land campaigners such as the journalist Morrison Davidson, Gavin Clark and Helen Taylor, who was Mill’s step-daughter; radicals from the Magna Charter association; the Irish nationalist Justin McCarthy; the ethicist Herbert Burrows; the secularist Annie Besant and the disillusioned Liberal, William Morris. Dunn and Lord both had key roles in setting up the original meetings with Hyndman and in writing the Democratic Federation manifesto. Given the role of the O’Brienites and land reformers in establishing the Democratic Federation, it is not surprising that the land issue was prominent in the organisation’s programme, despite the fact that Hyndman, following Marx, had little interest in the issue, nor did William Morris.

It should be noted that the East End radicals maintained their own organisational base. In 1882, Ambrose Barker, Joseph Lane, Frank Kitz and Tom Lemon of the Stratford Radical and Dialectical Club established the Labour Emancipation League, based at Mile End, which included nationalisation of land, mines and transport in its programme, before joining the renamed Social Democratic Federation in 1884, which then adopted key elements of its programme.

The founding document of the Democratic Federation was Hyndman’s England for All, copies of which the author handed out to the attendees of the first meeting. The first chapter was entitled ‘The Land’. Most of the chapter is historical. It does however conclude with a programme:

Reform of the law of settlement and entail, putting an end to the existing system altogether.

Compulsory registration of title, so as to make transfer of land as easy as it is in America.

Extension of the powers of local bodies to acquire land for all purposes and lease it in small portions.

Compensated expropriation of property-owners in large cities.

This programme is accompanied by a footnote:

‘Nationalisation’ of the land is, of course, the only logical outcome of any thorough suggestion for reform; but this, unless accompanied by nationalisation of railways and of capital, would be of little use to the mass of the workers of the country. Meanwhile, however, the only safe course is to work in the direction of steadily restricting the rights of private property in land.

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