Basic Revolution

Britain's Labor Government this week proposed a revolutionary act--in its implications the most sweeping act since the Soviet Government's decree of forced collectivization of the peasants (1929). It was the "Town & Country Planning Bill, 1947" drawn up by Lewis Silkin, Minister of Town & Country Planning.

Accompanying the bill was a White Paper.

Three weeks earlier the Government had published its sweeping, rigorous Farm Control Bill. With these measures--certain to be hotly debated and as certain to be passed--owners and users of Britain's land and everything "in, on, under or over the land" knew what they were up against, and it was plenty. Hereafter, a great saying fraught with the British instinct for freedom would read: "An Englishman's home is his Government's." Planners had captured the Englishman's castle.

These bills do not nationalize urban or rural land outright. But they finally and firmly assert prior Government interest in all land and its uses, and subordinate all private interest to the Government. Silkin's bill revolutionizes the whole basis of tenure and use of British land. Private individuals may continue to own property and use it for profit (unless and until the national or local Government chooses to take it from them, at a price set by the Government). But from the day when Silkin's bill takes effect, private owners may not alter its present use or sell it for any other use without Government permission. If permission is granted and property value is thereby increased, the Government (not the owner) gets the profit "in whole or in part."

If any Government planning measure-- or simply a Government refusal to permit any change in the use or ownership of a given property--reduces the value of the land in question, the owner is not entitled to compensation by the Government. Any compensation he may get comes to him not as a vested right but as a favor from an indulgent government. Only if the Government takes land for planned use or compels a property owner to demolish buildings or otherwise alter the use of his property in ways which lessen its current value is compensation granted as a matter of right--and then 'only in amounts determined by the Government.

Planner's Bill. The Government's purpose is frankly stated in the White Paper: 1) to abolish at one stroke all "speculative increase" in private land values and to freeze all land values at those based on the present use of the land; 2) thereby to remove what the White Paper querulously calls "the main obstacle to good planning at present." Said the Economist this week: "It is a planner's bill." Everything in it has one aim--to facilitate national planning of all land use for national purposes.

The word "land," as used in the bill, really means "property," whether it be one of the Duke of Westminster's vast London holdings or some small farmer's plot in the path of a new satellite town. If the duke wants to turn one of his rented private houses into a more valuable lodging house, he can do so only with his Government's permission. If he gets it, he must pay, or guarantee to pay, the Government a sum equal to the predetermined resultant increase in his property's value before he begins alterations. It will be the same if the owner is a cockney landlady in Wapping or a Welsh farmer. A similar bill for Scotland will be introduced separately.

In effect, the Silkin bill replaces a series of previous acts which progressively recognized national interest in planning, but, as a brake on Government centralization, largely left the responsibility to local authorities. Silkin's bill goes far (but not all the way) toward centralization by 1) giving the Minister final responsibility for, and (if he chooses to exercise it) specific authority and veto powers over, all local or regional planning; 2) making county planning authorities (rather than the present urban and rural district authorities) initially responsible for land planning. Silkin's bill also allows regional planning by two or more county authorities grouped as one. Local authorities may execute plans in detail, but they will no longer make the plans.

These provisions are intended to meet Labor's objections to the 1944 Churchill coalition measure which largely localized land planning. Under Silkin's bill all county authorities will be required to complete the initial inclusive county plan within three years. Then all county or regional plans will be reviewed by the National Ministry and, theoretically at least, will be integrated into one national plan. This vast plan and its county components will then be subject to review and revision every five years. At any stage the National Minister may intervene and .take literally any step he pleases.

Staggering Cost. The cost of all this will be staggering, but the White Paper makes no overall estimate, and says that none is possible. Total compensation to be paid property owners, whose land value is decreased by Government planning or restrictions, is arbitrarily set at a measly -L-300,000,000. Silkin's planners expect revenue from land "betterment" charges (mandatorily paid the Government by owners) to total many times this sum.

The bill generously provides that private interests may finance and carry out developments planned by Government authorities when & if that seems fitting to the Government. Government-owned lands, like the recently nationalized million acres of coal lands, are exempt. Furthermore, compensation will be paid to injured owners in Government bonds. Owners must pay the Government in cash. No coldhearted free enterpriser ever enforced a colder bargain.

Owners can still buy & sell without restriction provided no change of use or increase in the property's capital value is entailed and the property is not in a "planned" area. The Minister or subordinate authorities may "designate" areas due for development within the following ten years. Any transactions in such areas are at the buyer's and seller's peril, and they are debarred from any compensation. One of the few breaks for owners is the provision that owners who can prove injury either by Government action or refusal of Government permission to use or dispose profitably of property can "require" Government authorities to purchase land--at a Government price.

Britons took the new bills with less surprise and more complacency than most Americans were likely to do. This was not entirely due to traditional British calm. More than half of Britain's electorate were getting what they wanted; they had voted for such acts when they voted the Labor Party into office in 1945. London's Tory Daily Express, which remained sensationally calm, summed up the Silkin Bill with a quote from As You Like It:

Thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine

Worth seizure do we seize into our hands.

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