Rebuilding Britain Part 7

The following appear to be the most important and most urgent matters which require to be considered either during the War or immediately after peace is declared. All of them will involve some action on the part of the State, although in many cases that action will be to enable voluntary a.s.sociations or private individuals to take up the work and to aid them in doing so.

The list, though by no means complete, looks formidable:--

1. Restore const.i.tutional law and liberty.

2. Remove the fetters on trade, commerce and industry.

3. Demobilise the army and decide what naval and military forces will still have to be maintained, and what provision ought to be made in regard to military training in the future.

4. Reform the War Office.[9] Reconsider the const.i.tution and procedure of courts martial, and provide for really judicial inquiry into grievances. Revive and use the Territorial system.

5. Complete the arrangements for adequate pensions and develop means for giving such technical training and providing such openings for work as will enable partially disabled men to earn comfortable subsistence in addition.

6. Provide permanent homes and sanatoria for those who are more seriously injured, and find suitable light employment for those who can undertake it.

7. Arrange the best places and provide proper training for discharged soldiers and sailors (and others) who may be willing to settle on the land.

8. Consider how to restore the discharged men to their former places or accustomed work, and how to meet the needs of the temporary workers who will be displaced.

9. Curtail the vast expenditure on the departments organised for War work, reducing the staffs and finding other work for those who must be discharged. Dispense altogether with some of the new Ministries. The question of employment for women after the War will be most urgent.

10. Organise and correlate the various departments so as to secure more efficiency, and so a.s.sign and arrange the work of each as to avoid circ.u.mlocution, friction and waste.

11. Reconst.i.tute the Cabinet on clearer lines, and let competence for the work of each department, instead of recognition of party services, be the guide in appointing the Minister responsible for each.

12. Reform the procedure of the House of Commons to check verbosity and facilitate business.[10] Delegate certain powers and duties.

13. Find means for raising additional revenue and making the incidence of taxation fairer. In particular, revise the provisions as to income tax and death duties, so as to increase revenue without adding to the hards.h.i.+ps and burdens due to the present conditions. Some definite steps with that object are quite practicable.

14. Examine what industries, if any, are to be specially fostered as "key industries," and whether this can be done without injury to other industries or adding to the heavy cost borne by the consumer.

15. Arrange plans for enabling labour to co-operate fully in settling the conditions under which industry is to be carried on, and make provision for preventing disputes, increasing production, allocating profits fairly, and for reducing hours of work without diminis.h.i.+ng output.

16. Provide more and better housing, not only to secure the bare accommodation necessary for health and decency, but also to make attractive homes.

17. Increase the productivity of the land and promote agriculture, not only for financial reasons, but to maintain and induce the growth of a larger rural population. Stimulate education and research bearing on agriculture.

18. Develop industrial villages, and also land settlements and co-operative farming. Multiply allotments, both urban and rural, so far as economic conditions permit and there is a supply of people desirous and capable of working them.

19. Introduce methods enabling persons without ready capital to acquire their cottages or small holdings by paying instalments on reasonable terms. Why not an Ashbourne Act for England?

20. Control the liquor traffic, not with a view to injure the publican, but to promote temperance, remembering that the business of the licensed victualler should be to provide wholesome food as well as drink, not to act merely as manager of a licensed house for extending the trade, and enhancing the profits of a brewery or distillery.

21. Simplify the Land Laws and make transfer easier and less costly.

22. Amend the law relating to marriage, and also on some points affecting personal status and devolution of property on death.

23. Consolidate the Statute Law and amend and codify the Criminal Law.

Carry out the amendment of the Patent Law.

24. Aid the development of Education without destroying the liberty of teacher or scholar or the variety of methods by too much control, rigid system, or over-elaborate organisation.

25. Combat disease, encourage research in preventive medicine, and extend the application of its results. In particular carry on the campaign against infectious and contagious diseases, and especially against venereal disease.

26. Make better provision for playing-fields and open s.p.a.ces, preserve places of historic interest and natural beauty, and make them accessible for the enjoyment of those who really care for them.

27. Develop fisheries.

28. Undertake afforestation systematically.

29. Improve and cheapen internal transport, especially by reviving waterways.

A fairly long programme, but it might be added to. Some of it is essential, all of it useful; some of it wants carefully guarding; none of it is beyond the sphere of practical politics. We cannot afford to neglect any of the items. All the activities of the Government, of the Legislature, and of private effort will be needed. It is worth notice that there is not a single question in the whole list that need divide Parliament or the country on party lines.

This list deals only with strictly home matters. Concurrently it will be necessary to deal with international questions, such as the formation of the League for securing peace, the const.i.tution and regulation of tribunals for settling disputes, the resuscitation of International Law and reconsideration of its rules. An attempt should be made towards a.s.similating, by arrangement, the laws of the mother country and the colonies and also of different nations, affecting commerce, and also as regards personal status--nationality, naturalisation, and the validity of marriages.

The whole subject of co-operation between different parts of the Empire in determining its policy and dealing with matters affecting the whole demands earnest and immediate attention. The totally different question of the devolution of powers to any parts of the United Kingdom has yet to be settled. The claims of national sentiment have to be recognised while the welfare and safety of the whole are secured. What are the units to be on which powers can be conferred, and what should be their extent? Who exactly are those whose national claims are being a.s.serted, and how far are they at unity among themselves? All these questions must be treated as matters for constructive statesmans.h.i.+p, not as p.a.w.ns in party contests. They must be dealt with as practical problems having regard to the special circ.u.mstances of each case, not as opportunities for embodying some general political theory. There is a commendable opportunism which knows how to take "occasion by the hand," to do the wisest thing under the conditions subsisting at the time, as well as a blameworthy one, which looks out how to use them for personal advantage.

There will be need, too, for the "trimmer on principle"--the man who, when the boat is going over on one side, deliberately and quickly transfers his weight to the other, or the steers-man who tacks when the wind is contrary in order to bring his s.h.i.+p to the port where his pa.s.sengers desire to land. Such a man, as was said of Lord Halifax in the time of Charles II, "must not be confounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades, for though like them he pa.s.sed from side to side, his transition was always in the _direction opposite to theirs_. The party to which he belonged was the party which at that moment he liked least, because it was the party of which he had the nearest view. He was, therefore, always severe upon his violent a.s.sociates, and was always in friendly relation with his moderate opponents."

It is obviously impossible to discuss all these questions in a volume, still less to propound in detail the steps to be taken in dealing with them. Most of the more pressing ones will be touched upon and some suggestions made with regard to them; a few worked out rather more fully as examples. In some cases the remedies are obvious, and could be applied without difficulty, in others they require great special knowledge and careful thought, and their application will involve serious risks unless very great care and skill are used. To appear dogmatic in speaking of these subjects is inevitable if one would be definite; mistakes may be made, but "truth emerges from error more readily than from confusion."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: The last report of the Select Committee on Expenditure shows some of the grounds why this is urgent, and that very strong resolution will be needed to effect reform. The Prime Minister's determined action in insisting on unity of command for the Allied forces has already saved the country from enormous losses and done more than any other action of the Government to bring victory nearer. Any layman of average intelligence could see that the step was necessary; where did the opposition come from? There are politicians who would use their country's troubles to secure a party triumph.]

[Footnote 10: The abuse of the power of asking questions in Parliament has become a scandal. There are a few persistent persons whose desire to embarra.s.s a Government they dislike, in carrying on the War, makes them indifferent to the injury they may do to the national cause. Some check is necessary. The right to question Ministers is one of the most important safeguards against improper action by the executive, but the House of Commons is discredited by the manner in which that right has often been exercised of late. A report of proceedings in question-time constantly brings to mind a scene in "Alice in Wonderland," and the retort made to the arch-interrogator, "Why do you waste time asking questions to which there is no answer?"]

CHAPTER XVII

RESTORATION OF LAW AND LIBERTY

_What is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated._--EDMUND BURKE.

It is hardly too much to say that English Const.i.tutional Law has been sc.r.a.pped since the War. Immediately after the establishment of Peace the first duty will be to restore the old Const.i.tutional Law which has been suspended to meet the new conditions due to the War, and to revive again the old safeguards for the liberty and rights of the subject against arbitrary action by the executive. The nation has rightly acquiesced in the exercise of powers by the executive during the War in a manner which nothing but the necessity of the time could justify. Powers to take a person's property at the will of some executive department without any definite principle or procedure even for a.s.sessing compensation ought at once to cease when there is no longer immediate urgency for using such powers to secure the safety of the country. Powers to deprive persons of their liberty on vague charges, or to try anyone except by ordinary course of law in the regular Courts, should be discontinued. The Reign of Law must be re-established to control the executive Government as well as the private citizen. Nothing is more infectious than a habit of subst.i.tuting arbitrary will for law. Tyranny breeds anarchy, and anarchy tyranny in regular succession, and "the authority of one man over another not regulated by fixed law or justified by absolute necessity is tyranny." With the advent of Peace "_Dora_ must disappear."

Even before the War there had been a tendency, on the one hand, to subst.i.tute administrative action for regular judicial procedure, and, on the other, to allow certain a.s.sociations to act without regard to law, to injure individuals and infringe their rights without remedy. That tendency must be checked or liberty will be destroyed. Law and liberty as well as law and order are correlative terms. A real control over expenditure must be re-established and made more effective than it was even before the necessities of war in our unprepared condition made the present hand-to-mouth procedure to some extent excusable. The happy-go-lucky way in which new Ministries and new departments with vague and ill-defined but enormous powers have been created must come to an end. We should have some definite and recognised method of authorising changes in the system of Government. To set aside the Cabinet which, although it had no legal position, had powers sanctioned and established by long const.i.tutional custom, and to concentrate authority in a small body selected and increased or diminished from time to time at the will of a Prime Minister, was probably necessary for successful prosecution of the War, but nothing else could justify some of the irregularities that have been committed.

Doctrines have been put forward sometimes in the Courts during the War by counsel representing the Crown--i.e., in effect some Ministry--which would have seemed questionable even in the days of the Stuarts. The whole of the special War Legislation, both Statutes and Orders of all kinds, will require to be revised and, unless there is strong reason to the contrary in any special cases, repealed. The burden of proof should be on those who think any of this exceptional legislation should be retained. Of course, care must be taken, especially in matters affecting commerce and industry, to give due notice of alterations and to change gradually so as not to prejudice arrangements already made and contracts in course of fulfilment.

Special attention will have to be given to the early removal of those restraints on trade--prohibition of exports and imports--which have been frequently necessary, either to retain in the country what is wanted to satisfy home requirements or to prevent goods from finding their way to the enemy, or to ensure that the limited tonnage available is used to bring the commodities which are vital to meet the pressing needs either of the forces engaged in War or of the civilian population. These restraints, however, are not only most hara.s.sing to merchants and involve much additional labour when labour is scarce, but if continued would prevent this country from carrying on the valuable entrepot trade for which its geographical position, its financial resources, and its command of s.h.i.+pping specially fit it. That trade at least depends on the maintenance of a policy of the open door both for coming in and going out. England is a good distributing centre--unless by artificial restrictions we destroy our opportunities. Merchants and manufacturers have been very patient as a rule under the fetters it has been thought necessary to impose to meet War conditions; these fetters should be removed as soon as possible. Unless this is done they will be fatally handicapped when Hamburg and Bremen again come into compet.i.tion with them as distributing centres for the countries now neutral, and even for those which have been in alliance with us.

There is sure to be a cry to protect certain industries; in some cases it may be necessary to do so for a time at least, but every such claim should be most jealously scrutinised. The interests of any powerful section of the community always find influential advocates. They can exercise strong pressure on any Government or on Members of Parliament.

The general interests of the people who have no trade organisation to support them will be likely to be overlooked. The restoration of freedom is the first reform that should attend the restoration of Peace.