The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

FOREWORD 1x

weapon as Labour’s shield and sword. Experience of two Labour Governments has inevitably brought home the knowledge that confronted with economic problems of great magnitude the political arm is powerless: powerless, be it observed, for economic purposes—but it assuredly does not follow that the political arm is therefore useless in the constitutional scheme. A thousand times have we, as trade unionists, been impatient with those thousand futile efforts of the politicians to tamper with the industrial situation. And a thousand times have we, in our haste, wished the whole political machine to the devil. But quiet reflection has brought counsel and we have realised how ultimately precious to our liberty is political democracy. But political democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to economic ends, and the conviction has been slowly driven in upon us that Labour’s only way of salvation is to separate the political from the economic functions, to give free play to each in its own appropriate sphere of action.

This is the attraction to us in Hobson’s proposal to transform the House of Lords into a House of Industry. It offers no new gospel. Though the practical proposal of a House of Industry, legally endowed with full powers of control and coordination of economic affairs, be new in the concrete shape sketched in this book, it is the logical outcome of generations painfully spent by Labour in its attempted conquest of economic power. Under various names, in diverse forms,