The Single Tax v World War One (16) January-May 1913
“People who fancy that the land business is ‘off’ make the mistake of their lives”
Arno Mayer and the British Decision for War: 1914
- Donald Lammers, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (May, 1973)
Historian Arno Mayer featured in part 1 of this series. His thesis states that the major combatants of 1914 faced prerevolutionary domestic situations before the war. Donald Lammers’ article sceptically reviews Mayer’s claims.
Despite the revolutionary aspect of the land issue, and despite the counter revolutionary responses we have witnessed, neither Mayer or Lammers address the subject: Mayer’s thesis would surely have been strengthened had he done so. Consider the following through the Single Tax lens we are employing.
The hypothesis that the Single Tax crisis was a cause of the war cannot avoid the fact that it was the Liberal party that declared war. The last sentence below is fascinating.
Likewise:
Lloyd George: “Search out every problem, look into these questions thoroughly, and the more thoroughly you look into them you will find that the land is at the root of most of them.”
“Young Liberals may sing their land songs” but Liberal landowners will block “drastic land reform”.
The Tories counterattack on “radical landowners”
This is curious, but it seems to give an insight into what the government’s land inquiry was asking.
“that curious inability of the British landowning class to distinguish between criticism of the land laws and an attack upon their noble selves”
“They dread and hate the coming Land Bill as they dread and hate nothing besides.”
“It is not possible to go before a popular audience and make out a case against Land reform.”
“this is the hour of the great inquisition of the people”
Lloyd George: “in order to have freedom to proclaim the Gospel of Land Taxation he was ready to resign his place in the Cabinet”
“They are going to make a great attack.”
“They will enter on such a swearing, tearing campaign as has not been known in English politics”
“People who fancy that the land business is ‘off’ make the mistake of their lives”
“We shall be ‘Back to the Land’ with a vengeance ere the next election”
Robert Outhwaite - Single Taxer
Land Values on sale.
Cartoon from the New York magazine Puck, depicting Henry George at the height of his political career in 1887.
Taxation: Ability to pay versus benefit received
“the nationalisation microbe”
Delay
“the argument, consciously or unconsciously, came back to the Land Question”
Joseph Chamberlain vs Henry George, 1883.
A Lord’s “deathblow to the foolish schemes of the land-taxers”
Land: “The supreme issue in domestic politics”
“Opposition that will not listen to argument cannot ignore facts.”
“Londoners are just beginning to wake to the fact that a raging Radical land tax campaign is being carried on in their midst”
“The cry of the Socialists is a contradictory one. It is for equal opportunity for all to make a living and also for State control. It is asking for freedom and slavery both.”
“The watchword of our friends, the Georgites, is ‘A Single Tax’. The true slogan is ‘Not a Single Tax’”
