The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

XXIV FOREWORD

Industry. It would be an enormous relief merely to get rid of the stale and musty issue of ‘‘ The Peers versus the People.”’

Secondly, the creation of a House of Industry, with the powers and functions it is proposed to invest it with, is in line with Trade Union and Socialist policy looking in the direction of an Industrial Parliament or National Economic Council. Advocates of this policy have been too much influenced by parliamentary ideology and the idiom of our political party system. They have conceived of their Parliament or Council as the forum of debate between the representatives of employers and workpeople, in which differences on matters of policy are to be hammered out in peaceable discussion rather than letting them be fought out in the arena of class conflict provided by the present-day organisation of capitalist industry. Butthe principle is sound that economic and industrial matters should be dealt with by a properly constituted chamber in which all the interests are represented, on the basis of functional representation, with power not merely to settle differences but to plan, co-ordinate and unify economic and industrial policy over the whole field of production, distribution, finance and trade. The House of Industry will do this; but it is quite certain a Cabinet of Ministers charged with heavy political responsibilities cannot do this, even with the assistance of an advisory council of capitalist employers, financiers, trade