Land and Labour League
토지노동동맹
A British organisation formed in October 1869 by radical trade unionists affiliated to the International Working Men’s Association. It advocated the full nationalisation of land and was briefly the centre of a working-class republican network in London, with its own paper, The Republican. It petered out by 1873.
In depth
The League arose from the discussion of the land question at the Basle Congress of 1869. John Hales, a member of the General Council, proposed working with supporters of Bronterre O’Brien to create a Labour League to act as the International’s British section; Marx spoke against it, and a separate organisation was set up instead, named the Land and Labour League on Hales’s proposal.
Its president was the Irish trade unionist Patrick Hennessey, its secretaries Martin J. Boon and John Weston, and its treasurer Johann Georg Eccarius. Its executive included the republicans Charles Bradlaugh and George Odger, and Benjamin Lucraft served on its council. Lucraft joined it as the most advanced radical organisation in England.
Though it petered out by 1873, the League had some radicalising effect on John Stuart Mill’s Land Tenure Reform Association, which under its pressure adopted a policy of taxing the unearned increment on land value.