LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
COSTS UNDER NATIONALISATIDN
,SIR,—Mr. Morrison is reported to have said in Somerset on September 22nd in regard to nationalised industries that production had improved since nationalisation, and, referring to the British Electricity Authority to illustrate his contention, he mentioned that" sales were a record and up one-tenth on 19413 and had nearly doubled since 1938-9."
To make a fair comparison, sale of units to the public doubled between 1924 (five years after the end of the 1914 war) and 1929, and increased by more than To per cent, yearly after that until r939. Since the ad- vent of nationalisation, charges for electricity have generally risen progressively, though to be sure not so steeply as coal and passenger fares, the subjects of the other nationalised industries. :13efore the advent of the British Electrical Authority there was no shedding or cut-off except that due to enemy action. Under private enterprise the Clowe differential—i.e., the special increase in price for the four winter months, introduced in 1948, to which all the chairmen of the area boards objected, would have been impossible. Lord Citrine forced it on the industry at the behest of the Minister of Fuel and Power. At the Torquay conference in 1949 only Lord ,Citrine and his follower, Mr. Wilkinson, defended it, and in view of the devastating criticism of the independents it was dropped.
Mr. Morrison also referred to rural supplies. After the appointment of the rural conference by Lord Mount Temple in 1925, which met biennially until 1937, rural consumption increased threefold between 1926 and 1936. There was a slowing down after 1937. Lord Hurcomb, who became chairman of the Electricity Commissioners in 1938, refused to call a meeting of the rural conference, and this had an adverse effect on rural development. Rural -development has been slowed up under the B.E.A. owing to their subordination to the Ministry of Fuel. I remind your readers of these facts, not because some amalgamation of distribution was unnecessary—I advocated it in the Spectator in 1943, and later the Anderson Committee approved it—but because no good service is done to nationalised industries by systematic distortion as indulged in by Mr. Morrison. The only solid foundation for nation- alised industries, as for other industries, is realities.—Yours faithfully,
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