NATIONALIZATION AND THE LIQUOR TRADE. ETo THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.")
Six,—Mr. Batty's letter is an extraordinary mixture of analo
gies. He, in the first instance, invites us to " try the experiment of substituting intoxicants where coal is mentioned" in Ma. y-ustiee Sankey's Re-port, and tells us very rightly that "the result is remarkable." He himself, however, reserves a second string to his bow. He substitutes " intoxicants" when it suits his purpose, and when it does not he substitutes "temperance." " If coal," says Mr. Batty, " be a ` principal national asset' so is "—not drink, but—" temperance "; and yet a few lines further on he substitutes not "temperance " but "the liquor monopoly," which he says "can only be dealt with by ' paying just compensation to the owners,' " and so on through his letter.
Mr. Batty is driven to this course because he knows perfectly
well that there is no analogy -between coal and intoxicants, as he practically admits towards the close of his letter; nor is there any real analogy between the nationalization of the Coal Trade and the nationalization of the Liquor Traffic, or, as our American friends term it, the " Booze Business." This is made more clear if we take, for example, Mr. Lloyd George's description of coal in his speech on Monday week, and, adopting Mr. Batty's suggestion, substitute "drink " for " coal " in the Premier's references. Here is the passage with that change made :—
" Take [drink], which enters into almost every production and manufacture. There can be no more serious blow at the business and trade of this country than the diminution in the output of [drink]. Our trade depends more upon [drink] than upon any other commodity. It fetches food and raw materials, and it pays for them. . . . Where there is a diminution in the production of [drink] it means food and raw materials must go up in price; it means 'our shipping will be hit, and our international trade will be ruined. There can be no more serious fact in the whole of our international trade than the depression in the [drink] output."
Such a substitution, in its obvious absurdity, only emphasizes the essential contrast between coal and drink. What is true of one cannot be true of the other. Coal is a helper; drink is a hinderer—" the Trade that burdens every other trade." Coal increases the efficiency of the national machine; drink notoriously diminishes-it. Mr. Batty, quoting Mr. Justice Sankey, says that " the object to be arrived at under State ownership is 'national oo-ordination of effort in respect of the produotion of the national asset.' " Mr. Batty does not substitute drink here for coal— but temperance, because in such a connexion drink would be absurd; but Mr. Batty cannot have it both ways. He is advocating the nationalization of drink, not of temperance, and you cannot promote temperance by selling drink, even if your customers, as at Carlisle, drink it sitting on chairs which have the Royal monogram " G.R." upon them.
There are, of course, great industries which are at present under public control, or which might with some show of reason• be brought under such control. All these industries are essential to the social and commercial well-being of a present-day community; and so essential that the profits derived from them practically amount to a tax on living and business. They expand •much more by reason of the expansion of the nation than by the skill of the trader, and it is therefore not unnatural that the unearned increment, and the means for securing it, should be claimed for the State. The Liquor Traffic confers no benefit of any kind on the community. The manufacture of drink diminishes the national assets. It is not the conversion of the useless or less useful into the more useful —as in the coal trade; it is the transformation of the useful into the useless or dangerous. All materials and all labour employed in it are worse than wasted. The gross revenue or profits derived from it yield no net revenue—the cost of collection, the loss of human life, health, happiness, efficiency, and useful labour far outweighs any apparent gain. As Mr. Asquith said last autumn " There were businesses, somaof which had been placed under Government control during the war, which might rightly, and probably would, be acquired and carried on by the State. But this business wee not a business of that character; it was a business the owning and carrying on of which as a business the State should not touch with its finger-tips."
Mr. Batty rightly deprecates the " political interference " connected with the Liquor Trade, but my reading of the events of the past two or three years convinces me that the pressure which has led to the present lifting of the sluices and consequent outpouring of drink has come quite as much from certain well-known agitators as from the Trade. The present Government would not have yielded less, but probably more, readily if the traffic had been nationalized, whilst the possibility of a. Government in straits using its control of the State liquor-shops for indirect electoral objects cannot be ignored by students of recent methods of political propaganda, to say nothing of electoral pressure by the•vast army of employees in the Trade.
Mr. Batty says that " the liquor monopoly can only be dealt with by ' paying just compensation to the owners,' " as Mr. Justice Sankey': Report proposes should be done in the matter of coal. The "oases are not on all fours, but, apart from that, Mn. Batty has forgotten that we have had a war. I venture to believe that no freely elected.Parliament will henceforth allow the so-called " vested interests " of the Trade to stand in the way of desired Temperance Reform. The Trade has forfeited by its war record the sympathy of the nation, and when so many businesses, which have heretofore benefited the nation, have been sacrificed on the altar of national necessity, it is very unlikely that a suffering and impoverished nation will consent to pay vast, or any, sums for the right to cancel a monopoly, grossly abused by its holders, in a trade where the monopoly is its own compensation. The example of the United States cannot be encouraging to the Trade. Prohibition across the Atlantic has never been subject to compensation; for American law says that you do a man no wrong when you deprive. him of the power to use his property for noxious purposes: Mr. Batty "deplores the attitude of indiscriminate opposition which the United Kingdom Alliance officially maintains" to nationalization. If by the use of the word "official" he means to suggest that the Alliance as a body does not support the public declaration of its officers, it is quite easy for him to test the question again as he did two years ago when the General. Council—even after hearing Mr. Batty's arguments at great length—by a vote of over 500 to 7 rejected his proposals. Mr. Batty must bring more logical arguments than heretofore if he hopes to induce the United Kingdom Alliance to revoke its foundation principle that
"'the traffic in intoxicating liquors, as common beverages, is inimical to the true interests of individuals, and destructive to the order and welfare of society, and ought, therefore, to be prohibited:" —I am, Sir, Gizmos B. Wrison.
The United Kingdom Alliance,
1 Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W. ft
Previous page
