A Bit of Georgist British History

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, Vol. XXVIII, No.5, October 1928]

Land and Liberty, London, the monthly journal for Land Value Taxation and Free Trade, was first started in Glasgow Scotland, under the title The Single Tax. The twenty-first anniversary number in June, 1915, contained a leader by its first and present editor, Mr. John Paul, frankly acknowledging that "The idea of the paper was first mooted by Mr. J. O'Donnell Derrick, a young Glasgow Irishman," who for 20 years was United Irish League Organizer for Scotland, acting under the direction of Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., its president, and of the late Mr. John E. Redmond, M.P. Mr. Paul related "There were many conversations over the proposal to start the paper but no great enthusiasm for it." But Derrick was insistent. He was a man with a vision. He had made up his mind that the need of the movement was a monthly organ. The idea took complete possession of his mind and he made it the main topic of all discussion at the rooms or wherever he met anyone interested. In Derrick's eyes there was only one barrier to meet and overcome, and that was a reliable guarantee to the printer that his account would be paid. A special fund for the purpose was accordingly added to the financial obligations of the day."

There is the story in brief of how the paper now known as Land and Liberty came to be founded and Mr. Derrick in its first year collected the money to pay the printer's bill without fee or reward, all as a labor of love in the first year of its existence.

A word of explanation is due Land and Freedom readers. Mr. Derrick is now and for some years has been the correspondent for Scotland of The Irish News, a daily paper in Belfast, and of The Irish Weekly. He is not a member of any British political party. Consequently he is found acting as an independent Henry George man viewing political and economic questions always through Progress and Poverty spectacles. In Land and Freedom our readers found several critical letters addressed to Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., because of the latter's views on Surtax. In The Evening Citizen of Glasgow there appeared a sarcastic reference to Mr. Philip Snowden. Above the pen-name of Bootagh-Aughagower there appeared in the issue of The Citizen of date 31st May, the following letter from Mr. Derrick:

In Saturday's issue, page 4, you published a quotation in reference to site values, suggesting that Mr. Snowden, being a near neighbor of Mr. Lloyd George, pinched the latter's discarded Land Values breeches, and now proudly wears them. As a matter of historic fact, the Liberal ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer could not discard what neither he nor his Budget possessed. The greatest critics of the Budget were the Leagues for the Taxation of Land Values. That ill-conceived, fantastic Budget was easily breached by landowning interests. What Mr. Snowden is wearing is not Lloyd George's, but Henry George's breeches, which are unpuncturable, a splendid fit, and adorn the figure of a logical mind, harnessed to the great cause of making more jobs than men, through the simple taxation and rating expedient which will compel all the useful land of Britain to be fully developed.

Mr. Snowden was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the last British Labor Government and is looked on as likely to occupy again that position, if the Labor Party triumph at the General Election in Britain next year.

Recently in The Forward, Glasgow, the official weekly organ of the Labor Party, of which Mr. Thomas Johnstone, M.P., is editor, there was a statement from Mr. Snowden of

"Suggested aims as distinct from general objects for the lifetime of the next Labor Government." First place in that statement was "I see no reason why a Labor Government with four or five years of office, should not carry a great scheme of land reform including the taxation and rating of land values."

Single Taxers in Britain are praying and working for the return, mainly of the Labor Party to power at the next General Election. Their hopes are high that Philip Snowden and the Labor Government will fulfill their promise and Tax and Rate Land Values.

The coming year is the one where intensified Single Tax propaganda is most needed in Britain.

Progress is undoubtedly being made. Recently the Scottish Liberal Council passed a resolution in favor of the rating and taxation of land values. This progress has mainly been achieved by the activities of Henry George adherents in and outside of political parties and by men in every center conducting press propaganda by means of "Letters to Editors." The Land Value Taxation Leagues have these unpaid correspondents in every centre, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Inverness, Falkirk, Dublin, etc. And so the work goes on.