The Power In The Land. Fred Harrison
Had Marx remained consistent, and pursued to its logical conclusion the evidence which he had accumulated, he would have been led to affirm the virtues of the free market unconstrained by land monopoly.25 His work in Britain would have complemented Henry George’s in America, and modern history would have been dramatically transformed.
But this did not happen, and so we now have to reappraise the historical evidence from the beginning in order to acquire a new appreciation of why events unfolded as they did, and how different they might have been if the land monopolist had been removed from the outset. With the new insights, we can then re-evaluate the strategy of the modern economy in the hope of establishing that system of natural harmony and justice to which Adam Smith claimed that he aspired.
Notes
1 W. Sombert, ‘Capitalism’, in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. III, New York: Macmillan, 1930, p. 198.
2 C. Clark, ‘Prospects for Future Collaboration — the Universities’ Contribution’, in New Horizons on Land and Property Values, RICS Technical Information Service, March 1966. For a statement on the paucity of data on real estate in Britain, see comments by Sir Jasper Hollom, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Kngland, Chartered Surveyor, March 1977, p. 257. More recently, one of Britain’s leading fiscal experts, A. R. Prest, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, roundly condemned ‘the disgraceful inadequacy of information about landownership’. A. R. Prest, The Taxation of Urban Land, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981, p. 187.
3 From 1804 stockbrokers met in a special building, the Stock Exchange, which they erected close to the Bank of England out of funds raised by subscription from the profession.
4 F. M. L. Thompson, ‘The Land Market in the Nineteenth Century’, in W. E. Minchinton, Essays in Agrarian History, Vol. II, Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1968, pp. 31-32, 40-41.
5 J. H. Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain, 1850-1886, Vol. II, p. 254. The absence of a nation-wide compendium of property information led the London-based Estates Times to launch its quarterly Deals Digest in 1981 to provide ‘the vital, local information you need for fast, confident decision making in valuations, lettings and other deals’.
6 R. Vicker, ‘Real Estate’, The Wall Street Journal, 17.6.81.
7 W. Petty, Political Arithmetick, London, 1690, pp. 27-28.
8 C. Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1969, p.221.
9 Hansard, 25.10.76, col. 235.
10 John Burrows surveyed idle city land for his M.Sc degree at the University of London. He reported in The Times (26.2.77): ‘On average, between three per cent and five per cent of city land is vacant, with one half to two-thirds of the total outside the inner areas. Within the inner areas, the remaining vacant land forms Five per cent to 12 per cent of the area. The inner areas of Glasgow and Liverpool and some East End London boroughs have over 10 per cent of their land vacant representing some 300 to 400 hectares in each case’.
11 Urban Wasteland, London: Civic Trust, 1977.
12 An examination was undertaken into Britain’s agricultural land in the 1970s. See Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Acquisition and Occupancy of Agricultural Land (chairman: Lord Northfield), London: HMSO, Cmnd. 7599, 1979. Its value can be judged from the fact that (a) most properties in Britain are urban, and (b) as the committee noted — p. 109, para 259 — ‘Throughout our work we were hampered by the lack of detailed information on many of the topics we studied. It is disturbing that so little is known about the pattern of acquisition, ownership and occupancy of agricultural land...’ In sharp contrast, however, selective data was available — where it was needed to facilitate agricultural support policy (p. 113, para. 272).
13 ‘The future of the valuation surveyor’, Chartered Surveyor, Dec. 1977, p. 135.
14 Annual Reports Awards Committee, 1981 Report, Bromley: The Society of Investment Analysts, Nov. 1981, pp. 40-42.
15 C. Walls, ‘Property and the Operation of the Financial Markets’, speech on July 1, 1982, to a conference of The Department of Land Economy, Cambridge University, and The Cambridge University Land Society, London: Simon & Coates, July 1982, p.5.
16 Ibid., p.4.
17 There is an exception to this rule, but it has been a transitory phenomenon. Landlords who let out accommodation in the housing market were a target of socialist rent control policy. These controls did cause financial hardship. But the majority of the original owners have long since vanished, and they have been replaced by speculators who paid low prices for rent-controlled properties. They speculate on the death of occupants (and in some notorious cases, they have used illegal bully-boy tactics to rid themselves of their tenants); their intention is to cash-in by selling their properties at de-controlled prices. Rent controls have reduced the rented sector and thus imposed the hardships on tenants, who have not been able to find the accommodation that they need, and on the economy (the shortage of houses to let has been a critical factor in the immobility of labour).
18 J. S. Nicholson, History of the English Corn Laws, London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1904, p. 52.
19 W. Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903, Part II, p.841.
20 H. Hoyt, ‘The Urban Real Estate Cycle — Performances and Prospects’, Urban Land Institute Technical Bulletin No. 38, p. 15.
21 Britain's Industrial Future, the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry (1928), 2nd edn., 1977, London: Ernest Benn, p.295.
22 Fora description of such activity in Britain in the 1950s, see G. Bull and A. Vice, Bid for Power, 1958. Jim Slater was one of the most successful asset strippers of the 1960s. For an account of one operation, in which his company, Slater Walker, made a profit of over £7m. by buying Forestal and selling its lands in Africa, South America and Britain, see A. Vice, The Strategy of Takeovers, Maidenhead: McGraw Hill, 1971, Ch. 1.