seriously the problems involved in nationalization. At the Scottish TUC in April 1924, the disputes and rivalries among trade
unions were cited as obstacles to nationalization. At the ILP
Summer School in August, William Graham worried out loud
over the problem of meeting wage demands in nationalized
industries; if recent wage demands at the Mint had been met,
valuable foreign and private contracts would have been lost.
After the Government's fall, the Socialist Review reflected upon
the increased knowledge of the technical processes of production and marketing that Labour would have to acquire to make
nationalization a success.42Some critics, notably Clifford Allen, Chairman of the ILP,
deplored the fact that the Cabinet had not put its control of the
Goverment machinery to work filling the gaps in Labour's
programme, laying the foundations for later nationalization by
setting up administrative inquiries into the application of
socialism to key industries.43 And yet at times it must have
seemed to harassed Ministers as if they had quite enough to do
merely to stay afloat in the troubled waters of minority government, without being asked to make much headway towards the
far shore of socialism.NOTES
| 1. | National Joint Council, Labour's Great Record ( London, 1924), p. 16. |
| 2. | Susan Lawrence, The New Spirit in Education, # 2 in "Can Labour Rule?" series ( London, 1924), p. 5; C. P. Trevelyan in Labour Magazine, Mar. 1924, pp. 486-7. |
| 3. | P. C. Hoffman, M.P., in TUC Annual Report, 1924, pp. 419-20. |
| 4. | Philip Snowden, Autobiography ( London, 1934), II, 622-3; 169 H.C. Deb., 5 s., 1971-2. |
| 5. | 169 H.C. Deb., 5 s., 1971, 2114-56 ( 21 Feb. 1924); 171: 325-402 ( 18 Mar. 1924); Labour Magazine, Apr. 1924, p. 559. |
| 6. | The Times, 5 Mar. 1924; Labour Magazine, Apr. 1924, p. 559, and May 1924, p. 30. |
| 7. | Sir Frederick Maurice, Life of Viscount Haldane, Vol. II, Haldane 1915-28 ( London, 1939), pp. 145-9, 154 and 158-60. |
| 8. | The Times, 22 Feb. 1924. |
| 9. | ibid., 27 Feb. 1924; Forward, 8 Mar. 1924; ILP Report, 1924, pp. 114-16. |
| 10. | The Times, 24 Jan. 1924; New Leader, 31 Oct. 1924, pp. 2-3. |
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