Ownership

Abstract

The Constitution of the Labour Party committed the Party to public ownership. The relevant undertaking may be found in Clause IV (Section 4). Drafted by Sidney Webb in 1918, the passage is uncompromisingly collectivist in its endorsement of the following objective: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.’ The Gaitskellites failed in their attempts (most notably in 1959-60) to secure a reworking of a Clause that they regarded as redundant, doctrinaire and dated: ‘Changing a sacred text’, Roy Jenkins recalls, ‘proved more trouble than it was worth. Crosland and I thought Gaitskell ought to have cut his losses earlier.’1 The moderates failed and the Clause remained. Crosland throughout his political life was the representative of a Party, however undogmatic its leadership in practice, that had committed itself on paper to the complete and total nationalisation of the whole capitalistic enterprise. Clause IV (Section 4) was still being printed on them Labour Party membership-card at the time of Crosland’s death in 1977. The commitment had become a tradition and an article of faith.