ABSTRACT
The conclusion notes how land reform occupied a central place in the political programmes of mainstream party politics before 1914 to an extent that public opinion would find difficult to understand today. This is especially true of the aim to recover the ‘unearned increment’ to pay for increasing government spending, as a possible substitute for other forms of taxation (the single tax), and as an answer to a wide range of economic and social problems affecting both rural and urban areas. It argues that the spread of owner-occupation and the decline in the political influence of the landed aristocracy defused the potency of the land question after 1918, especially the traditional policy of rating of site values. Furthermore, it argues that the impact of the Second World War and the onset of property speculation in the 1960s revived political interest in the land question but as a question of town planning, compensation and betterment, rather than rating of site values. Ideological differences over the rights of landed property account for the failure of attempts by Labour governments to recover ‘the unearned increment for the community’, such as the Land Commission (1960s) and the Community Land Act (1970s). Neoliberal policies after 1979 account for the triumph of private property and the failure of land reform in England.
