Nationalisation The Leveller
The function, normally reserved to death, of making all equal in dust and ashes, has lately been usurped in part by the nationalised industries. But there cannot have been many more depressing examples of the impartial destruction wrought by the new leveller than the sweeping away of the co-partnership scheme which worked successfully for over sixty years in the South Metropolitan Gas 'Company. This scheme, originally introduced in an attempt to prevent the recurrence of a disas- trous strike, worked so well that !iy 1946 the employees of the Company held over £3,000,000 of its stock. They also nominated three of its nine directors, and set an example of harmonious relations with their employers. But the scheme did not fit into the plan of nationalisation, and so it was ended. Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor pointed out during the Lords' debate on the subject on Tuesday, that the Gas Council, in consultation with the trade unions, did not recommend its continuance. " That," he said, " is the only reason why the co-partnership scheme has been discontinued." And that, he appears to have thought, was enough. All the practical advantages of the scheme were as nothing to those Socialist Peers to whom the word of the Gas Council is the last word. All the richness of variety, so insistently put forward in the Festival orations and exhibi- tions as part of the very essence of Britain, was turned aside. Lorcl Macdonald pinned his faith not to the national genius but to the National and Area Joint Industrial Councils and the National and Area Joint Council for Gas Staffs (one of which is actually working), and to Section 57 of the Gas Act. There was something symbolic in the fact that the Government was defeated on this issue, raised by Lord Cecil of Chelwood, on the day that the House of Lords returned to its proper Chamber.
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