The Single Tax v World War One (2) July-August 1909
"Rehearsal of the Day of Judgment"
“We have now seen the point that should be aimed at, and the method by which it is to be reached.
There is another branch of the subject which practical men must consider: the political forces that may be marshaled; the political resistance that must be overcome.”
- Henry George, The Irish Land Question (1881)
Summer 1909: Parliament debates the Single Tax
“angel of retribution”
“… fundamentally modify the social and political conditions of life in Great Britain”
“It was the land taxes that provoked the fury of the Lords.”
- Iain McLean, The 1909 budget and the destruction of the unwritten constitution (2009)
Lord Rosebery, hereditary peer, former Prime Minister (Liberal):
“This is not a Budget, but a social and political revolution of the first magnitude.”
“this great national matter”
“The valuation is the only thing of value in it.”
“Valuation is the necessary foundation for the Taxation of Land Values”
Prime Minister Asquith: “A revolution is something more than an innovation.”
“flamboyant commentaries”
“an abuse of our English vocabulary”
The Times: “Site value … is a figment”
Spectator: “The Finance Bill [is] a deliberate attempt to introduce Mr Henry George’s theories”
Re: ominous rumblings in the City
“The electricity of battle is in the air”
“The battle royal has now begun”
“an impertinence and a shamelessness nothing short of colossal”
“the enthusiasts who believe the ‘single tax’ would be a panacea for all national ills”
America: “For the first time the single tax gains official recognition in Great Britain.”
“It is not mad.”
All night debates
Below: Asquith, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.
D.M. Cregier, in ‘Bounder from Wales’, Lloyd George’s career before the First World War (1976), states that the budget debate lasted 72 days, (including many all night sessions) and 554 divisions, both records. Summer recess was cancelled.
Alexander Ure came from the heart of the British Single Tax movement born in Scotland in the 1880s, after Henry George’s tours.
“we have now come to a parting of the ways”
‘Ripening’
Adam Smith: “put a specific tax on that peculiar property”
“The proposals are denounced in many odd ways”
Andrew Bonar Law (Conservative), future Prime Minister:
“… we are face to face in this country for the first time …”
“… destructive of the whole security of property.”
Lloyd George: “we are accused of being Georgites”
“If you quote Adam Smith, he is too slow for Dulwich, if you quote John Stuart Mill, he is too shallow for Preston.”
Conservatives have previously supported single tax principles
The Colonies are already implementing single tax principles
“Saint Henry George”
Mr Balfour: “Henry George was not a Socialist. He was something very much more foolish.”
Prime Minister Asquith: “Socialism … a barren controversy”
The interjection of a working man
The Budget League v The Budget Protest League
Churchill made his greatest speeches on Liberalism versus Socialism on campaign, leading the Budget League.
The Land Campaign in Hyde Park - “precise in meaning”
“There is something tragic in Mr. Balfour’s changing attitude”
“the abolition of all virtue”
“Why this hysteria?”
“The land question is the question of the deliverance of mankind from slavery”
Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was a prominent Georgist.
Sir Edward Grey: revolution or counter-revolution?
Five years later, as Foreign Secretary, he took the country to war.
Its land clauses made the People’s Budget of 1909 controversial. The House of Lords, the landowning class, was moving towards vetoing the budget.
“taxation of the unearned increment of land ... for years regarded as a truism”
Churchill: “Their taxation will make food dearer. Our taxation will make land cheaper.”
Land monopoly … the mother of all monopoly
His great Single Tax speech
“the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for himself”
“It is not the individual I attack, it is the system”
Lansdowne: “Lords not obliged to swallow the budget”
Churchill: “Parliament will be dissolved and we shall come to you in a moment of high consequence”
New media, 1909
“the subject of universal discussion”
Single Tax in the Park
As observed by Mr Balfour (see above)
“Every shade of Progressive thought”
“decorated with illuminated mottoes”
“But underlying this holiday aspect …”
