If, for instance, a steamship company proposes to send out its ship under the conditions in which the Vestris of ill-fated memory sailed in the spring of 1929, I think the crew would be justified in striking in the public interest.
Harold J. Laski
The Public Record
Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions. After 1930, he began to emphasize the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation. Laski's position on democracy-threatening violence came under further attack from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 UK general election, and the Labour Party had to disavow Laski, its own chairman.
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There are several reasons of primary importance for retaining the right to strike so long as private ownership continues in this sphere.
No one, surely, can examine the record of the coal industry either in England or in America and say that the motives which underlie its ownership by private interest are compatible with the view that an uninterrupted service to the…
It must, I think, make a difference whether the industry is primarily operated for private profit or no; for only in the latter case is its quality as both vital and public fully recognized.
But I do not think the denial of the right to strike obtains this end in any of them; and I do not believe that the same considerations apply to every sort of vital public service.
When that occurs, no one can hope for the enjoyment of political freedom.
Sooner or later, in this condition, the Army, like the Praetorian guard, determines the personality of the state.
No one would endorse the Russian principle that a soldier’s quality is a function of his agreement with the political faith of the government; yet once relations are established between the politician and the Army a movement towards this…
The proper conduct of political life is clearly impossible, if the armed forces of the state are free to take a definite part in its formation.
There are American cities where the relations between big business and the police mean that the authority of the latter is certain to be abused in an industrial dispute.
For unless this liberty is restrained, their allegiance becomes the possession of a party and they cannot give that neutral service which is the basic principle of their existence.
The state is justified, in the interest of the community, in placing an absolute embargo upon the political activities of all their members.
Since experience makes it evident that a spoils system is incompatible with either honest or efficient administration, a restriction upon the liberty of public officials is, I would argue, justified.
Unless government can be assured that its chief officials are aloof from political ties, it cannot trust them; and all the considerations which create a “spoils system” will then come into play.
Those engaged in the making of policy must, in my judgment, accept a self-denying ordinance in this regard.
I see no reason, either, to expect any deleterious consequence if civil servants below what we call in England the executive class are allowed ordinary political rights, so long as a decent discretion in their exercise is observed.
I see no reason why all the industrial employees of the government, postmen, for instance, or shipwrights in a national dockyard, should not enjoy all ordinary civil rights.
There is, that is to say, a class of civil service work the very nature and associations of which involves exclusion from political life; and if those engaged therein desire a political career, they must terminate their connexion with the…
If a high official of the Foreign Office in England could be elected to Parliament, spend a term there in bitter criticism of the Foreign Secretary and then, on defeat, return to work with the minister whom he had sought to destroy, the…
Certainly there are few rights for which the rank and file of officials press so strongly as for this; and they regard the limitation of their political opportunities as an invasion of civic liberty at once unnecessary and unjustifiable.
The civil servant is not merely an employee of government; he is also a citizen.
History shows that it is just as likely as anyone else to abuse an unlimited authority.
We must not be led away by false claims to a special majesty born of its sovereign character to regard the state as entitled to a peculiar and uncontrolled power over its servants.
The more labour conditions in government service are determined finally by an independent authority, the more reasonable they are likely to be.
It is just as likely as any private employer to extract the most it can get for the least it needs to give; and it is no more fit than any other employer to be left uncontrolled in this field.
Politicians like Harold J. Laski
