Item 162 - Letter from G. D. H. Cole to F. W. Pethick-Lawrence

1 single sheet

7 Parsifal Road, Hampstead, N.W.6.—Defends his plan of nationalising the joint-stock banks, but acknowledges that, as the Policy Sub-Committee has now reported, the controversy must be turned elsewhere.

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Transcript

7 Parsifal Road, Hampstead, N.W.6
10/6/32

Dear Pethick Lawrence,

I don’t expect you expected to convince me: at any rate you have not. I should propose to take over the ownership of the J.S.B’s, without for the time disturbing their separate existence, or necessarily changing their managerial personnel, except at the very top. I don’t see any insuperable difficulty in controlling their operations, provided the banks pass as going concerns under public ownership; but I do see quite appalling difficulties in running a Socialist plan for industry in face of the independence and possible hostility of the Joint Stock Banks. However, I understand that your Sub-Committee has now done its report: so that the controversy has now to be transferred elsewhere. I shall hope yet to have a chance of convincing you that I am right—if we mean real Socialism now. Of course, if the Party does not mean that, but only another Government pretty much like the last, that alters the whole thing. In that event, I am afraid I shall not be the only person who will lose interest.

Yours sincerely
G. D. H. Cole

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2020.