Chapter X. What is to be done?

Far from calling the L.P.T.B. a “capitalist soviet”, as he had called the model from which it was copied, Mr. Morrison declared in an article in the Evening Standard (15 November, 1933), that it was “socialisation”. “Socialism has come”, he wrote.

Thus the Labour Party has changed its line and is walking in step with capitalist interests such as those whose spokesman is the Times. “It is a sound principle that, whenever competition is ousted by monopoly, the monopoly must come under Government control – though certainly not under Government management – either through a public utility corporation or by other means appropriate to the differing circumstances of different businesses” (Times Editorial, 19 September, 1942).

Now the Labour Party’s rejection of its own earlier views has gone a stage further and Mr. Morrison has, during the past year or two, elaborated the idea that there is not one solution but several solutions, which he described at Leeds on 3 April, 1943, as “a practical mixture of genuine Socialism and genuine free enterprise” (Manchester Guardian, 5 April, 1943).

“One group of monopolies”, he said, “are the so-called ‘natural’ monopolies like gas, electricity and (in effect) transport, which are also, like coal, common service industries and, like it, are ripe – or over-ripe – for public ownership and management. Another group consists of fully fledged trusts, of most of which the same thing might be said.”

Then he referred to the “great assortment of cartels, price rings, federations, price-fixing combines, and so forth.” These, he said, are not necessarily “in an appropriate state for full public ownership in the early post-war period” ; and for them Mr. Morrison proposed that they be subjected to “stimulating public control”.

Under the guidance of State officers these monopolies “can be made true servants of the public need, true factors in an expanding prosperity.”

The keynote of the speech was Mr. Morrison’s statement that “neither the slogan of all-round nationalisation nor the slogan of all-round decontrol . . . are, as such, the slightest use to the country” ; and he mentioned in the course of his remarks that “a case can be made for private enterprise in appropriate fields.”

A later speech by Mr. Morrison was summarised as follows in a Times Editorial: - “It is Mr. Morrison’s contention that the great combinations controlling key economic positions must be controlled by the State, if only because they will otherwise themselves be in a position to control the whole life of the community. But he recognises that there are wide areas of enterprise which will fall outside this control – notably the small manufacturer and still more the small retail distributor” (Times, 1 November, 1943).

Again, on 4 March, 1944, Mr. Morrison, in a speech at Mexborough, said : - “For some time to come we shall in Britain be working out a form of partnership between the State and large-scale industry. We shall be experimenting with the different types and degrees of State power over industry, varying all the way from full public ownership and operation to a limited degree of control of prices and practices exercised from outside. How this experiment will work out, how far the factor of private initiative may prove itself able to survive and may justify itself in terms of the public interest, I would not like to say” (Times, 6 March, 1944).

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