ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 reviews the politics of land reform in the interwar period and notes how the Labour Party inherited a tradition of radical agrarianism. The chapter describes the lack of radical engagement in the way in which property law was reformed in 1925, and the missed opportunity this represented to achieve the registration of title, based on a long-standing demand for free trade in land. It traces the way in which support for a more economic approach to agriculture was adopted in the face of foreign competition and the way in which smallholdings were slowly replaced by a more state-interventionist approach to protect agriculture. Furthermore, it describes the way in which the rating of site values was eclipsed by growing support for land nationalisation, as part of an ideological move towards more centralised state planning. The chapter explores how stronger town and country planning started to gain support as a means of protecting the countryside from urban despoliation and addressing the problems of the distressed areas. Finally, it notes how ‘the-back-to-the-land’ policies of pre-war land reform were slowly replaced by other types of land reform; but this did not reduce the cultural idealisation of the countryside as an escape from the worst features of industrial and urban life.
