I am quite certain that, from the angle of individual freedom, the less interference the state attempts, the better for everyone concerned; but, equally, I am clear that to some interference the state is fully entitled.
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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I should deny, for instance, the right of any voluntary association to inflict physical punishment or imprisonment upon its members; and I should argue that any state was justified in immediate and drastic interference to this end.
What are the rights of the state when a congress of trade unionists declares a general strike?
Are those rights different when the purpose of the strike is industrial from what they are if it is political?
What are the rights of combination among men employed in industries the nature of which makes the service they perform fundamental to the community?
What should be the attitude of the state to a society of men engaged in propaganda for a revolution by the use of physical force?
You will see that these are not merely academic questions; every one of them has been in the forefront of political discussion this last half-century, and all save the first have been vital themes of decision in the years since the war.
We have to assume, further, that they do not desire to force their particular way of life upon others; for some single realm of conduct, like the realm of marriage, they desire that they shall be left free from interference by the…
We know perfectly well that we cannot hope, by the external constraint of law, to abolish all conduct that comes within those terms.
I happen to think that it is a gross superstition to leave money to the Roman Catholic Church that masses may be said for the testator’s soul; but I should think it an unwarrantable interference with the relations between that Church and…
I see no evidence to suggest that the practice of polygamy is worse, in its nature, than a hundred other practices which organized society either directly permits, or wisely leaves alone, because it knows that rigorous control would be…
On the evidence of history, persecution will not be acceptable as proof; and it is not improbable that the only legal effect of prohibition has been to make furtive and dishonest what was, at first, open and avowed.
If a society of women, enthusiastic for the independence of their sex, formed themselves into an association to propagate and practise the (to them) ideal of children outside the tie of marriage, I should not think the state entitled to…
The state is not entitled to prohibit diffusion of such knowledge, or the practice of it.
When it does, it makes the family nothing more than an instrument of fecundity, and destroys the whole character of that right to privacy which is the foundation of harmonious sexual relationship.
I argue, therefore, that voluntary bodies are entitled outside the realm where their ideas and conduct are intended directly to alter the law, or to arrest the continuity of general social habits, to believe what they please and to…
This would not permit a body of burglars to take over from Proudhon the principle that property is theft and assume their right to restore it to themselves; but it would justify, to take the case of principles I personally abhor, a society…
Granted, therefore, the normal conditions of modern enterprise, only the existence of strong trade unions will ensure to the average worker just terms in his contract of service.
Strong trade unionism always means that public opinion can be made effective in an industrial dispute.
No limitation upon freedom to associate is, I urge, permissible unless it can be demonstrated that clear and decisive advantage to the community, including, be it remembered, trade unionists themselves, is likely to result.
No coercion of the government, direct or indirect, is legitimate.
If men want to obtain from government a solution other than government is willing to attempt, the way to that end is not by the use of industrial power, but through the ballot-box at a general election.
The general strike, even a large sympathetic strike, is in fact a revolutionary weapon.
As such, it is a threat to the Constitution and illegal as well as unjustifiable.
If it is said that the Trades Union Congress of Great Britain would not be justified in calling a general strike to compel the government to make Great Britain a federation, I should agree at once.
Politicians like Harold J. Laski
