Cricket, Brexit and The Rules of The Game

1. Roger Lewis
   January 20, 2016 ·
   Of the 415 M. P.’s on the Conservative side in 1938, 44 percent (or 181) were
   corporation directors, and these held 775 directorships. As a result, almost every
   important corporation had a director who was a Conservative M. P. These M. P.’s did not
   hesitate to reward themselves, their companies, and their associates with political favors.
   In eight years (1931-1939) thirteen directors of the “Big Five banks” and two directors of
   the Bank of England were raised to the peerage by the Conservative government. Of
   ninety peers created in seven years (1931-1938), thirty-five were directors of insurance
   companies. In 1935 Walter Runciman, as president of the Board of Trade, introduced a
   bill to grant a subsidy of £2 million to tramp merchant vessels. He administered this fund,
   and in two years gave £92,567 to his father’s company (Moor Line, Ltd.) in which he held
   21,000 shares of stock himself. When his father died in 1937 he left a fortune of
   £2,388,453. There is relatively little objection to activities of this kind in England. Once
   having accepted the fact that politicians are the direct representatives of economic
   interests, there would be little point in objecting when politicians act in accordance with
   their economic interests. In 1926 Prime Minister Baldwin had a direct personal interest in
   the outcome of the coal strike and of the General Strike, since he held 194,526 ordinary
   shares and 37,591 preferred shares of Baldwin’s, Ltd., which owned great collieries.
   The situation of 1938 was not much different from the situation of forty years earlier
   in 1898 except that, at the earlier date, the Conservative Party was subject to an even
   more centralized control, and the influence of industrial wealth was subordinated to the
   influence of landed wealth. p.400 Tragedy and hope. History rhyming again ?

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