Socialists

More than public ownership 1 A f ttnthony Crosland talks to Llew Gardner

Permission of Thames Television, we print below extracts from the interview to be screenod " Thursday, April 18, in the series, 'People and Politics.'

; Crosland: I've always thought that socialism ' Was fundamentally about greater equality, I and by greater equality I don't mean simply I More equality ofopportunities, so that the i Strong can get to the top more easily; I don't ! mean simply more equality of income, i crucially important though that is. I mean a I ' Wider social equality which would also cover the distribution of property, which would I cover the educational system, educational • cIPPortunities, and which would cover rela' tionships in industry. , Gardner: Do you differ fundamentally from . sclne of your colleagues in your definition of ! sr?cialism?

, cr'osiand: I think I differ in my definition of

' rcialism, yes, and have indeed differed since

„ wrote The Future of Socialism almost `Wenty years ago. I think the public ownership is not a sufficient definition of socialism: if it were, we would have to say i 'at Soviet Russia and all the communist '-astern European countries, simply because they have public ownership of the means of Production, were socialist countries. I don't , consider that they are because they combine i PUblic ownership with a very high degree of Privilege and inequality in all the things that matter to me. I think that public ownership is °Ile of a number of possible methods of thieving greater equality but I think it's only 1 0ne among possible methods. Gardner: Where I think some people would . disagree with you is that you see socialism as a radical and total change in society, in relat,ionships within society and as being about 1 Who controls the commanding heights of the , economy.' Crosland: Yes, the trouble is that a change in °Wnership was not always a very radical !ransformation. We can nationalise a lot of . industries and make them into the National Cr,hemical Board, or the National This Board, ur the National all the other corporation, rather like the railways, or the Coal Board, or ,the Electricity Board, or the Gas Boards `„cbc, ay, but it's possible to do an awful amount °I. this without moving toward socialism. In 1 Other words I think this concentration on the °rganisation of industry, and the machinery °,,f industry isn't the most crucial thing at all. -iardner: But is it not about power? ,Clos/and: I think it is about power, yes. But k 'lie question is whether you think that the l'eai power in the community resides amongst 1

the leaders of industry, for example. I don't believe that at all.

Gardner: Where do you think it does lie? Crosland: It lies fundamentally with government. The government has the power to impose its will on industry if it wishes. Gardner: Your ideal of greater equality — the wiping out of poverty — it seems to me would be shared by most reasonable people. Harold Macmillan told us many times how he himself was moved by the poverty and unemployment of the North-East. Where do you differ from say a liberal-minded Conservative like Lord 'Boyle? Crosland: You get a lot of agreement in people of all parties that it is desirable to eliminate poverty. Now, the difference between the parties would come in the priority which they were respectively prepared to give to this objective of getting rid of poverty. I think that a left-wing party would always give a higher priority to it than a right-wing party. On equality I regard this as the fundamental dividing line. It comes up in terms of taxation, it comes up in terms of attitudes to property speculation, and it comes up in terms of comprehensive reorganisation versus retaining grammar schools. There is a very, very big difference between everybody in the Labour Party on this issue, and virtually everybody in the Conservative Party. Gardner: Why did you join the Labour Party, Mr Crosland?

Crosland: I can only say I haven't got my psychoanalyst present, so there may be a reason of which I'm not aware, but as far as the reasons of which I am aware are concerned, I can only say that.since I can remember I thought there was a lot that was wrong with our society, even more wrong in the 1930s than now. I was starting to be a political animal and it has simply never occurred to me to be in any other party than the Labour Party.

Gardner: A Labour Government largely committed to your theory of socialism has come and gone and your own admission is that inequality and poverty still exist. Has this not caused you to reflect that perhaps you were wrong in the first place? Crosland: No. It has caused me to reflect that if you want more equality, you've got to accept that this is an objective which covers all your policies, and the 1964-70 Labour Government, which is in fact much maligned

now, did a great deal more than people now often suppose that it did. I think that a central failure, apart from the economic problems that it faced, was that it did not say in each of these separate spheres whether it's taxation, whether it's housing, whether it's education, whatever, that in each of these spheres the objective of a socialist party is to obtain more equality, so that the whole programme that we had then was rather a collection of bits and pieces.

Gardner: Is it any different now? Crosland: I think if you take actions in the first few weeks of the new government,

there's a much more coherent theme behind them. Certainly there is in the things that concern my department, the Department of the Environment.

Gardner: You say that the principal failure of

the previous Labour Government was in its failure to achieve an adequate growth rate: Mr Healey's first budget is not one geared to growth, if anything it is mildly deflationary. Are we then set once again on the same path of failure?

Crosland: Oh no, I wouldn't think so. I don't think with respect -that's quite fair to Mr

Healey's budget. Whether it's mildly deflationary or not is a thing that's been a great deal argued. There are different opinions on this, but if it is, it's only absolutely at the margin.

Gardner: It's not geared to growth? Crosland: Certainly it's geared to growth as fast as recovery from the effects of short-time working and the fuel crisis permit.

Gardner: But is not economic thinking once again dominated by the need to correct the balance of payments to bring that into credit, or at least out of the red?

Crosland: Well you can't ignore the balance of payments totally. I would have thought we

adopted a very sensible attitude on the balance of payments, of saying that the deficit specifically caused by the rising oil prices is to be covered by borrowing, whereas the deficit that existed even before the energy crisis eventually has got to be covered by having more exports. I think this unavoidable for any government, however left wing, right wing, centre wing, whatever wing. I don't think one should criticise a budget on these grounds.We shan't get a great deal of growth this year, but that will be because of the combination of the energy crisis and the three day week persisting for so long. But I certainly think that after this transitional problem is over, we shall get growth at a significantly faster rate than we had in the last Labour Government.

Gardner: But isn't there within the Treasury, within nearly all orthodox economic thinking,

a tendency to regard the balance of payments as the god that must be satisfied above all else?

Crosland: I think there is a tendency to make it a god, the god, all that matters. I think

that's wrong. On the other hand you can't ignore it as a factor. What is wrong is putting the solution of the balance of payments problem as the single over-riding objective. In my view it's simply one of the number of objectives that you have in an economic policy.

Gardner: Do you argue like this within the Cabinet?

Crosland: Constantly, constantly.

Gardner: Are you listened to? Crosland: There's a good deal of support for this view.

Gardner: There runs throughout socialism now, and certainly in the future of socialism,

a sort of distinct scepticism. lquote from your book in which you say: "One should not ex pect too much from either more intervention or more nationalisation." But, Mr Crosland, this is a Labour Government committed to the

widest range of nationalisation of any Labour Government there has ever been. Isn't that a somewhat contradictory position for you? Crosland: No, I wouldn't have thought so. I'd

challenge your description of this as being the largest nationalisation programme ever, com pared with say 1945, but at any rate I won't make an issue of that. I think that it's perfectly possible to defend, as indeed I do in that book, individual acts of nationalisation which can be justified on particular grounds that are clearly explicable to the public and so I'm a strong supporter of the public acquisition of development land. I'm a strong supporter of municipal ownership of rented housing. I'm a strong supporter of nationalisation of ports, and the other individual things which are in the manifesto. But, although strongly supporting those, I do maintain the view which you quoted — that you mustn't expect miracles. Nationalisation is not a panacea. If we're converting the present organisation of the ports into a new organisation more like British Railways or something this isn't going to produce socialism overnight, Gardner: Many of your colleagues within the Labour Party, if they don't regard it as a panacea, certainly regard it as fundamental to the socialist faith, don't they?

Crosland: I think they do and in a sense this is what the ideological dispute has been about over the last twenty years. It's never been about individual pieces of nationalisation. It's always been about how critical a role nationalisation played in the entire strategy of the socialist party ...

Gardner: Haven't you rather lost that argument within the Labour Party?

Crosland: I wouldn't have thought so, this is frequently said, it depends very much on exactly how you define left, whether you're defining left and right entirely in terms of attitudes to nationalisation which I have never myself thought made any real sense. I have never argued against nationalisation in the sense of proposals to take into public ownership particular industries where an ob vious and overwhelming case would be made up, never argued against that. What I was arguing against previously and am arguing against now, is the idea that nationalisation constitutes socialism.

Gardner: One thing to which you are committed, I believe, is the nationalisation of land. Can you give us some idea how that would work?

Crosland: We are working very, very hard on it, it's an extremely complicated subject. I mean, in broad outlines we know what we want to do, but it rather depends on what aspect of it you're interested in. Gardner: Well there are the fears of householders, for instance, or farmers: do they have to fear nationalisation of land?

Crosland: No — we've made it perfectly clear that this excludes agricultural land, number one, and number two excludes the owner occupier. Gardner: And how do you define what is development land?

Crosland: Local authorities are now under an obligation to produce what are called struc ture plans, giving a broad planning view of what land is needed for what purposes in their area, and I think that what is likely is that we shall take these structure plans and say that the land which is included in these for development by the local authority itself, that that is what we define as development land. Gardner: Can you give us any idea of the timetable for this ..

Crosland: It's hard to say. It's like all attempts to deal with land, immensely complicated. I would hope that we can give a fairly clear idea of the broad outlines of what we have in mind by the summer, and as to a which will no doubt be 150 clauses or something, I would hope next winter. Government, I would choose a savagely penal Bill to curb the odious depredations of commercial property developers." Have you raised the subject of such a Bill in the cabinet?

Crosland: Well, in fact their depredations are being very rapidly curbed as it happens, for other causes, and their profits have gone down badly in the last few months, their share values are at a very low ebb indeed, there is a complete ban on the granting of office development permits in London where the worst problem arises so in fact the objective has been virtually fulfilled without the necessity for a Bill.

Gardner: On a larger scale you and the Labour Party are both committed to a wealth tax, are we really going to see this wealth tax or is it going to be shelved almost indefinitely. Crosland: I think we shall see it all right, but there are two important taxes on wealth. One is what is conventionally called the wealth tax, which is a small annual tax on wealth. The other, and far more important, which the Chancellor has said will be introduced before the wealth tax, is what we used to call a gift tax and is now called a capital transfers tax or something, I think that's much the more important of the two, in fact, in terms of producing a greater equality of property.

Gardner: And the wealth tax will come in when then in that case?

Crosland: The Chancellor has said as I recall lilac he will puoush a Green Paper on ii, 1 ,hink in the aottimn, but I'm subject to urrectioti l err'

Gardner: And no question of its being shelved?

Crosland: Oh no question. But I can't speak for him entirely.

Gardner: We're talking about the language of priorities: if we go for growth how do we balance that against the interests of the onvironment? Aren't they almost mutually &Intradictory? Crosland: No, I don't think they are. I think they are sometimes contradictory but certainly not always. For example, as I know to my cost, when we're arguing public expenditure, if you want a better environment you have to spend huge sums on water schemes, sewerage schemes, curing river pollution, curing air pollution and cutting down aircraft noise and the rest of it. All these are immensely expensive, many of them fall on public expenditure and there would be no hope of getting the necessary sums to minimise pollution in all these directions unless we had a decent rate of growth: so there sometimes is conflict and there are also many other ways in which a healthy rate of growth is a precondition of improving the environment. Gardner: Isn't there conflict in the most fundamental area of our economic future, the question of oil? The oil exploiters have already despoiled parts of North-East Scotland and the Shetlands and yet oil is essential to our economy. Isn't that a mutually contradictory situation?

Crosland: I don't know that part of Scotland but from everything I've heard, I would assume that there is a straight conflict in that case, and there frequently will be.

Gardner: And what are you as Minister of Environment going to do about that conflict? Crosland: Well that conflict comes under the Secretary of State for Scotland in fact, but where these conflicts do exist I've said always when we've argued about a reservoir on Dartmoor or mining in a national park or something or other on Snowdonia, that in these cases there was no absolute right or wrong, that it was never black and white, you couldn't either always go for the growth thing or for the conservation or the preservation aspect of the argument. Every one of these cases was a balance between frequently conflicting arguments, though in many other cases I think growth and a better environment are not only consistent with each other but the one depends on the other.