Nationalisation and Bureaucracy
The spirited attack made by Lord Lindsay of Birker, speaking as a Labour peer, in the House of Lords on Tuesday on the passion for centralisation in the different nationalised industries was the more impressive in view of its relation to a fuller debate on the same subject in the same House a week earlier. That discussion was concerned mainly with the mining industry. Virtually every par- ticipant in it spoke out of an experience which commands respect, and every one of them emphasised, what indeed is a matter of common recognition, the disastrous effects of the incalculable dis- tance which separates the miner at the coal-face from the National Coal Board in London. The Lord Chancellor, replying for the Government, admitted the substantial truth of the charges, and declared that the Government was fully alive to the situation and had already effected improvements. That remains to• be demon- strated. The members of the Coal Board are individually able men, but if, in the vast organisation they are building up, the Civil Service tradition (real or imaginary) of " passed to you, please " takes root, then breakdown is inevitable. Lord Lindsay this week was dealing mainly with the new Transport Commission and the railways. What he himself said was driven home by Lord Swinton, whose criticism was that the six regional boards which are being created had no effective powers ; " they were to be regional functionaries, who were to do what they were told by Whitehall." Precisely how far this is true is immaterial. That it is broadly true no one doubts. A nationalised industry organised on enlightened lines may succeed as well as private enterprise ; over-centralised and directed from Whitehall it never can.
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