Book Reviews : Politics and Trade Policy. By JOE R. WILKINSON. (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1960. Pp. vi, 151. $3.75.)

• Date: 01 September 1961
• Author: Charles A. Le Guin
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296101400344
• Published date: 01 September 1961
• Subject Matter: Articles

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hope to please all students of the subject; and this volume is particularly dis-
tinguished by its provocative and challenging hypotheses making it required
reading.
DAVID T. CATTELL
University of California, Los Angeles
British Labor and Public Ownership. By HERBERT E. WEINER. (Washington,
D.C.: Public Affairs Press. 1960. Pp. xii, 111. $3.25.)
This is a brief monograph documented chiefly from the records of TUC
(Trades Union Congress), the Labour party, and official records of the Labour
Government, 1945-51. Dr. Weiner tries to demonstrate the maturity and re-
sponsibility of the English labor movement in both its trade-union and political
branches and is not concerned with the issue of public ownership itself. He
shows that in labor conferences and reports the British labor movement is flex-
ible and moderate rather than doctrinaire and revolutionary. He thinks Labour
can win elections only by not advocating any major nationalization projects. If
this thesis is correct, it would seem to me that a second election at which na-
tionalization was an issue would be required by British constitutional tradition
before any major additional nationalization could be accomplished. Only the
nationalization of steel, some segments of road transport, and machine tools are
now advocated by British Labour according to Dr. Weiner.
He gives brief treatment to the attitude of British Labour toward national-
ization during the period before World War I, and during the period between
the two wars (1919-39). He gives a fuller treatment of the progress of nation-
alization from 1926 to 1945. He describes the &dquo;Peaceful Revolution&dquo; which
brought extensive nationalization under the Attlee Labour Government from
1945 to 1951. He describes the change in the attitude of British Labour toward
nationalization which he sees as a result of the greater maturity of English labor,
the dynamic changes in British economy, and the electoral defeats of the Labour
party in 1951, 1955,...