All Passion Spent B LAND acceptance of things as they are
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is a characteristic of modern times. We equally avoid enthusiasm and disillusion. The effects achieved with paint by a chimpanzee, or even by the treadmarks of a bicycle tyre, seem as significant as the work of the academicians. If we are no longer horrified by the contents of our subconscious, we can hardly say that we are pleased.
A state of mind that is prepared to acceptalmost anything, and to leave it at that, is essential for any rational
consideration of the subject of nationalization. In an almost frenzied mood, and with the approval of the electorate, the Labour party took over several major industries in a few years following the war. The Conservatives were as keen to restore private enterprise, but found they could do very little about it, except with iron and steel, which had not gone far along the road to nationalization, and with road haulage, where considerable pains were taken to sell back 20,000 vehicles.
On every count, the best survey of this stormy episode in political history is likely to be one made from a neutral point of view. Mr. R. Kelf-Cohen, whose book " Nationalization in Britain" has just been published, is admirably equipped to write on the subject. In his younger days he was a supporter of nationalization. For the 10 important years from 1945 to 1955 he was doing work as a civil servant that brought him into close association with the nationalized industries. Somewhere in that period disillusion set in, and now in retirement he can take the necessary dispassionate view.
Without having the same opportunities to study the subject, many other people have gone through the same mental process as Mr. Kelf-Cohen. It would be admirable if an industry could be organized with the sole object of giving the best possible service to the nation, any surplus revenue being handed over to the Exchequer. The profit motive, let us face it, is vulgar; we can only regret that it seems to be indispensable. "
Captain a Industry
The starry-eyed idealist is still with us. Maj.-Gen.. G. N. Russell, general manager of British Road Services, in his presidential address to the Institute of Transport, put forward a revealing list of the qualities he thought desirable in a captain of industry. The ideal leader, he said, should have courage, will-power, judgment, knowledge and flexibility of mind. As an essential backcloth to these attributes, he should also possess integrity, which Maj.-Gen. Russell described as "a combination of the moral qualities, uprightness, honesty, sincerity and loyalty—perhaps just unselfishness, thinking and caring for other people before himself."
There are, I have no doubt, many people in industry and in B.R.S. endowed with the gifts that Maj.-Gen. Russell would like them to have. They may be, as he says, eminently qualified to lead, but they will rarely be found at the top if they lack a certain ruthlessness, the will to succeed. Maj.-Gen. Russell is presenting only one side of _ the picture.
An interesting comparison may be made with a passage in Mr. Kelf-Cohen's book. There was, he says, a "vague optimism " among the theorists of Socialism that, with the transfer from private to public ownership, a complete change would come over the outlook of all those engaged in an industry. They would become devoted to the public good. Sordid motives would disappear with the a22 disappearance of the capitalist. "A selfless race of managers would appear, whose object would be to manage the industry for the benefit of the nation." ft is to the breeding of this selfless race. that Maj.-Gen. Russell seems still to be devoting himself.
Most people who would once have agreed with the theorists have now, like Mr. Kelf-Cohen, passed through a stage of disillusion to reach a state of resignation. They are conservatives (not necessarily in the political sense) in spite of themselves. They have found that nationalization has done much more harm than good. They see there is no point in trying to put the clock back, and that the only hope is to keep the rot from spreading.
Mr. Kelf-Cohen traces the story from the beginnings of Socialism in this country. He notes the importance of the books written by Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. They proposed, in clear and apparently well reasoned language, the ultimate nationalization of practically every important industry. The ills that the Webbs diagnosed in the existing system would be cured as if by magic, and the boards and corporations set up to control the new order would find no difficulty in establishing the best type of organization.
"Incredible Belief"
So strong was the spell of the Webbs that the Labour Party seem to have planned hardly at all in advance. Mr. Kelf-Cohen speaks of the "incredible belief" of the Socialist ministers in the virtues of their" chosen instrument" .for 'nationalizing transport, and gives some telling quotations from the second reading of the Transport Bill in the House of Commons in December, 1946.
Mr. Alfred Barnes, then Minister of Transport, said confidently that he was relying on the British Transport Commission to give a universal transport service even where it was not yet available; to make travel a pleasure rather than something disagreeable; and to provide the most efficient, comfortable, speedy and cheap system of transport in the world. Later, with what the author describes as deep confusion of thought," Mr. Barnes envisaged the B.T.C. as "a small body with time to think and plan."
At the end of the debate, Mr. Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council, promised that the Commission would begin to make improvements "right from the beginning." Mr. Kelf-Cohen comments that both ministers were well aware of the state in which the railways found themselves after the war, and could hardly expect an immediate revolution just from a change of ownership. "What are we to think," he says, "of the responsibility of ministers who carry out a drastic scheme of nationalization, based on vague hopes and without adequate preparation?
The plan for transport he describes as "the most ambitious effort of the Labour Government." The Commission were to be the most complete and all-embracing transport monopoly in the world. The consequent upheaval added to the difficulties. Whereas with London Transport in 1933 the effect of change of ownership was trivial because there was no change in management, it was the drastic changes in management that created most of the problems of the Commission. By bringing all forms of transport under one ownership, the Socialists " created " problems of organization that delayed for years essential post-war re-equipment. " However able the Commission," Mr, Kelf-Cohen adds, "it is very doubtful whether they could have moved faster, because their undertaking was so vast that it could hardly be managed at air