The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

106 APPENDIX

predecessors. It is only when economic problems enter that we have experienced checks, delays and bitter disappointments. The fault does not lie with the Labour Government, but with the Parliamentary system, which, from its earliest days, never contemplated, and so never organised itself, for the great fundamental changes in our industrial system, now plainly inevitable and equally desirable.

3. The historic truth is that the House of Commons was never intended to be and never has been an industrial authority. Its work always has been and must continue to be political. The theory of its constitution is to keep itself untouched by industrial interests, which were to be left to the private control—Iaissez-faire in short—and to concern itself with political principles and taxation. From the beginning of Parliament, even until to-day, it is the House of Lords that has kept watch and ward over the capitalist interests, which down to the last century were mainly agricultural. The fact that these industrial interests have been anti-Labour, depending for their continuance upon the wage-system and a standing army of unemployed, does not alter the main fact that there has always been a broad distinction, cleverly camouflaged, between the political work of the Commons and the economic police work of the Lords.

4. The outstanding fact to-day, easily read by him who runs, is that this particular function of the Lords, this task of safeguarding the capitalist system, has been taken from them by the trusts, and combines and trade associations that now industrially govern us. And this irresponsible and oppressive industrial government will continue until Labour re-organises the existing House of Lords, transforms it into a representative House of Industry, democratically elected on an industrial basis and to which shall be confided the control and co-ordination of industry.

5. Whether we like it or not, it is foolish or worse not to recognise the impending struggle for control of the House of Lords. The Tory Party do not conceal