The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

FOREWORD xxi

restrictive and repressive legislation in the form of the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act, 1927. On the other hand, under Labour rule, Parliament multiplies the number of extra-parliamentary organs of economic government, in such shape as the London passenger transport authority. In other words, Parliament is alternately engaged in asserting its supremacy over these independent bodies which have acquired power to decide the course of industrial evolution, and in creating new independent bodies invested with extraordinary authority to be exercised without reference to Parliament at all. This contradiction is inherent in the present system of parliamentary government, with its two-party confrontation and its amateurish economic and industrial experience. And the House of Industry alone is capable of straightening out this conflict of tendency. It will maintain the supremacy of Parliament, when Parliament is reformed by the transformation of the House of Lords into a second chamber charged with responsibility for economic planning and the co-ordination and regulation of industry; it will bring under a properly constituted authority the various organs of economic governance, and foster their development in harmony with a clear-cut and coherent policy of economic and industrial reorganisation ; it will assign to each of them its place in the general scheme; and it will relieve the political parties of their jealous suspicions of anything and everything which encroaches upon the sovereignty of Parliament and the