Remembrance of policies past - 7 comments

Reading Paul Anderson's wonderful collection of George Orwell's writings for Tribune - surely essential reading for political bloggers - and the comments here, got me thinking once more about a venerable Labour Party policy, namely nationalisation of the land.

It's mentioned in Election Manifestos as early as 1900, and as late as 1964 (in a fairly vague kind of way), before disappearing in 1966. The policy has similarly failed to make the cut in the New Labour years. Here's what we used to say, back in 1918:

The Labour Party means to introduce large schemes of land reorganisation, and it is fully aware that this can only be done in the teeth of the most powerful vested interests. land nationalisation is a vital necessity; the land is the people's and must be developed so as to afford a high standard of life to a growing rural population not be subsidies or tariffs, but by scientific methods, and the freeing of the soil from landlordism and reaction.

Reading the whole thing is definitely worth five minutes of your time - and in 1945:

Labour believes in land nationalisation and will work towards it, but as a first step the State and the local authorities must have wider and speedier powers to acquire land for public purposes wherever the public interest so requires. In this regard and for the purposes of controlling land use under town and country planning, we will provide for fair compensation; but we will also provide for a revenue for public funds from "betterment".

So I'm interested to know:

1. Whether there's still any enthusiasm for a policy like this.
2. Whether support is any greater on the far-left than on the (Labour) right.
3. What your views are - wherever you are on the political compass.