Land&Liberty is a quarterly magazine of popular political economics: its focus is the relationship between land and natural resource rights and 21st century economic policy. Published in the UK it covers international affairs and events from a global perspective.
The magazine contains major features, editorial and comment, news and reports, reviews, interviews and readers' letters.
Nature and focus of the magazine
Land&Liberty has no political alignment in the conventional sense. However the magazine is not editorially neutral on issues. Land&Liberty's key concern is how the global common wealth should be used, and it aims to demonstrate that this question is key to effective and just public policy—to the sustainable bridging of private life, the public sector and common resources.[1]Land&Liberty's focus therefore is radical justice in property rights and taxation.
Modern global influence
Land&Liberty forecast the 2008 global crisis and housing crash. In the middle of the economic optimism of 2004, it wrote: "There’s trouble ahead. A housing crash is coming."[2] Its 'Crash' cover story issue was published in the first week of September 2007, just days before the events at Northern Rock that caught the economic establishment unawares.[3]
Since the 1980s Land&Liberty has been an influence on the political opposition within Zimbabwe.[4] In August 2008, the Movement for Democratic Change presented their political programme for the coalition government that they had entered into with the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. It included a policy for raising public revenue from a tax on land values, as advocated by Land&Liberty: "the MDC will through an Act of Parliament establish a Land Commission whose mandate is to…[i]ntroduce an equitable Land Tax".[5] The party’s Policy Coordinator General, Eddie Cross, wrote in a 2009 article in Land&Liberty that his party’s new policies would help ensure that "secure communities will become free communities with the capacity to confront and control those in charge of the state".[6]
History
Land&Liberty is the world's longest-running periodical advocating the social reform advanced by Henry George[7]—of whom Albert Einstein once said: "one cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice".[8]
Land&Liberty was launched in June 1894 under the title The Single Tax, published as "The Organ of the Scottish Land Restoration Union".[9] Perhaps foreseeing George Bernard Shaw’s later remark, in 1928, that "the Single Taxers are not wrong in principle; but they are behind the times",[10] the periodical changed its title in 1902 to Land Values and subsequently in 1919 to Land&Liberty.[11]
Origin
The periodical was initially the campaigning voice of the Scottish Land Restoration Union.[12] The Union and its antecedents were a contemporary political force in Scotland, launching the career of Keir Hardie,[13] the first socialist elected to the UK Parliament, who went on to become the Labour Party's first leader. Inspired by Henry George, the Union's activism helped deliver—through its publication The Single Tax: "an American impulse behind the Scottish labor movement, which became historic in making the modern Labour party, and in forging the character of twentieth-century Britain."[14] Yet within its first year—recording historic shudders in the evolution of British socialism and the birth of the Labour party—the magazine was writing: "what have the Labour Party to offer us? Anything or everything but the single tax.".[15]
The magazine published its correspondence from around the world, such as from New Zealand's Patrick O'Regan,[22] and enjoyed secondary publishing rights from writers and thinkers such as Mark Twain[23] and Herbert Spencer.[24]
The twentieth century
Through the years Land&Liberty has reported on and contributed to the debate on major world events. It has provided analyses of, among other things, the 'Irish Problem', the Scottish crofting movement and the Highland Clearances, the genesis of two World Wars, the creation of the United Nations and the other global institutions, the formulation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Europe's withdrawal from empire’s colonial project, and the middle east conflict.
The paper reported extensively the events surrounding the 1909 UK People's Budget, and the resultant House of Lords reform—contributing a major voice in the contemporary public debate. The paper's reporters recorded a unique archive of speeches by Lloyd George,[25] Churchill,[26] Asquith[27] and Campbell-Bannerman[28] among others, as they toured the country in support of their cause.
Land&Liberty is published by the Henry George Foundation of Great Britain,[42] an independent economic and social justice think tank and public education group. The Foundation and its immediate organisational predecessors have been proprietors since 1907, before which the magazine was owned by Scottish land reform groups.
^Land&Liberty, vol. 116, no. 1224, summer 2009, p. 10-11
^"Land and Liberty is now the longest-lived Georgist project in history, but still it struggles to gain the attention of an unheeding world." The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 62, 2003, p. 615
^
Bernard Shaw, George (1928). The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (p.127). London: Constable and Company Ltd. p. 496.
^Land&Liberty, vol. XX, no. 301, London and Glasgow, June 1919, p. 136
^The ‘‘Scottish Land Restoration Union’’ was established in 1890 [‘‘The Single Tax’’, vol. IV, no. 48, May 1898, p. 8. "The eighth annual meeting of the Scottish Land Restoration Union was held on 22 April 1898…. in Glasgow"] out of the complex reorganisation that year of the Scottish Land Restoration League [’The Story of Land Values’ by John Paul, in Land Values, vol. XVII, no. 253, June 1915, p. 10.] The family tree of the Scottish land reform movement in this period is complex, and here, inter alia, the author concedes: "In my experience the Glasgow group of Single Taxers were never much addicted to formalities…." Republished, with further material, on the death of John Paul [Land&Liberty, vol. 40, no. 468-469, May–June 1933, p. 219-220]. The 1890 reorganisation also spawned the Scottish League for the Taxation of Land Values, which later was to take over the magazine.
^
Barker, Charles Albro (1955). Henry George (p. 401). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 700.
^
Barker, Charles Albro (1955). Henry George (p. 402). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 700.
^"The Labour Party and The Single Tax", The Single Tax, vol. I, no. 5, October 1894, p.4
^"The Right to Work" by Henry George, The Single Tax, vol. I, no. 2, July 1894, p. 1-2
^"Letter to Joseph Legget", The Single Tax, vol. III, no. 27, August 1897
^"Do the Government Mean Business?" by Arthur Withy, The Single Tax, vol. I, no. 8, January 1895
^"Can the tax be shifted?" The Single Tax, vol. I, no. 9, February 1895
^"Eco-taxes, the land value tax and Treasury priorities" by James Robertson, Land&Liberty, vol. 108, no. 1198, spring 2001, p. 4, and "Sustainable development: The role of rent" by James Robertson, Land&Liberty Winter 1998, p. 7–11
^"Eco-taxes, the land value tax and Treasury priorities" by Charles Secrett, Land&Liberty, vol. 108, no. 1198, spring 2001, p. 4
^"Salvation on the streets" by John Bird, Land&Liberty, vol. 108, no. 1200, autumn 2001, p. 3
^"Bob Kiley eyes land tax for his tool box", Land&Liberty, vol. 108, no. 1200 (published erroneously as no. 1200), winter 2001/02, p. 4-5
^"Trapped in the downward spiral", Land&Liberty, vol. 109, no. 1203, summer 2002, p. 8-12
^"Livingstone rival links local democracy and land value", Land&Liberty, vol. 109, no. 1203, summer 2002, p. 5
^‘Ralph Borsodi’s Principles for Homesteaders’ by Mildred Loomis, Land & Liberty, vol. LXXV, no. 1015, December 1978, in
Davis, John Emmeus (2010). The Community Land Trust Reader: Roots and Branches of the CLT Movement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. p. 450.
^Joseph Edwards, ed. (21 July 1909). Land and Real Tariff Reform. The Land Reformers’ Handbook (First Edition of First Issue ed.). London: Joseph Edwards with The Clarion Press, LD and ILP, New Age Press TCP. pp. 73–75.