Socialist Standard
August 2005
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LABOUR PARTY
PROGRAMME FOR THE YEAR 2000
The idea of encouraging the donkey forward dangling a carrot a short
distance in front of his nose an ancient one but even the oldest tricks
can changed and Mr. Albu, Labour M.P. for Edmonton, has discovered a
startling variation.
Like other Labour M.P.s he has had to realise that the Labour electoral
carrot offered to the voters in the recent General Election was not
successful in enticing
them to the polling booth for 1,500,000 of former Labour voters this
time refused to go in and put their cross. So Mr. Albu, who is a member
of the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society, has been thinking up
a new programme for Labour. He spoke about it meeting of the Central
London Fabian Society June 29. He said:-
"There should be adequate incentives, but property ownership should be
reduced by estate duties and a capital gains tax so that by the year
2000 the distribution of inherited wealth would be similar that of
taxed income today." (Manchester Guardian,
30 June, '55)
Mr. Albu is not proposing that inequality accumulated wealth be
eliminated but only that it should be lessened, so that it would not
exceed the smaller, but still very great, difference between the annual
income of the rich man and the wages of the poor.
So we progress!
Many years ago the Fabian Society, and later the Labour Party, planned
to something "immediately" about this inequality. Now Mr. Albu suggests
postponing the completion of half plan until a date 45 years ahead, by
which time most the present generation will be dead.
From The Socialist Standard, August 1955
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