126 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



All farmers who are maintaining a high 

 standard of cultivation, and all small holders 

 who cultivate their holdings properly, should 

 remain in occupation as tenants. Even when 

 all land is nationalised, it may be in the 

 interest of the nation to leave such farmers 

 in occupation as tenants. 



Yet as private enterprise has failed us so 

 lamentably, and as private enterprise, even 

 when spurred to extra activity in the national 

 interest under the inspectorship of the friendly 

 eye of the farming brotherhood, has failed to 

 keep land from falling out of cultivation, it is 

 evident that we must pursue a forward policy 

 of acquiring as much land as possible to be 

 worked in the interests of the farm workers 

 and of the community. The community is 

 not going to be content to take over and 

 cultivate the worst cultivated land as it did 

 in war-time. If it can farm with advantage 

 estates which have been badly managed, it can 

 farm good land to better advantage. 



What we want to do is to make every 

 worker in the agricultural industry happy, and 

 to contrive a method of copartnership which 

 will make him feel a pride in his work so that 

 he puts his very best self into it. It is quite 

 natural that under a competitive system, a 

 system which only develops in man a cunning 

 of an anti-social kind, that farmers should 

 resent any form of inspectorship. If a cow is 



