The Banks for the People. By John Strachey. (Gollancz. is.
6d.)
MR. STRACHEY has been unlucky ; this lively little manifesto is Sitzkrieg, not Blitzkrieg, literature ; and events both at home and abroad over the last few weeks have put it sadly out of date. His programme for control of the banking system looks very small beer beside the measures of siege economics which have become law since then ; his vehemence against a prolonged war of attrition has an antediluvian flavour ; and his diatribes against "the Government" follow quaintly on the Labour party and T.U.C. votes in support of that Government's successor. It may be—it very likely is—his opinion that the entire Labour movement is being led in chains up the garden path ; but his readers will probably need, on this point, much convincing which he naturally does not give them here. The Banks for the People is good standard Strachey, familiar to all readers of Programme for Progress and its predecessors. It puts forward, with punch, vim, and plentiful abuse of opponents, a condensed programme of six acts ; to nationalise banking, prevent' the flight of capital, soak the rich, set up a National Housing Corporation, provide
adequate pensions, and initiate State family allowances. (The fate of Europe, meanwhile, is apparently to be settled by Russia ; at least, that is the only inference tentatively to be drawn from the impassioned negatives which are all Mr. Strachey allows us.) Mr. Strachey believes overwhelming popular support can be mustered behind his proposals. Perhaps it can ; but just now his potential supporters have other fish to fry.
Previous page
