NATIONALISED INDUSTRIES
The centralising tyranny of London
MERVYN JONES (THE GAS)
Parliament must soon decide the proper future structure of the nationalised gas industry. The Gas Act 1948 set up twelve area boards for Scotland, Wales and each of the ten regions of England on which as the Hayworth Commission had unanimously advised in 1946 responsibility for running the industry was fairly and squarely placed; with a Gas Council, composed of their chairmen and its own chairman and deputy chairman and no others, responsible for certain specific functions throughout the UK like Research, Labour Relations and any other matters of common interest put to it by the Boards. The Act of 1965 gave Gas Council certain specific powers. The Gas Bill presented to Parliament a year ago but never passed into law would have given it far more and made it a total overlord of the Boards. Albeit without bene- fit of law the Gas Council now so acts and gas structure has ceased to be federal and become unitary, not to say monolithic.
The first twenty years
The need for one single coherent constant compulsory policy on the vital issues in the gas, as any other, industry in Britain is entirely agreed. To create, to state, to carry out such policy must be the motive and object of structure, organisation and all therein. This was achieved by the Council and the Boards with the present structure, inter alia, in all industrial relations matters, in research, in development of new gas making processes, intake of natural gas from other countries, in revivifying the decayed image of gas, and in planning and part executing-the take, transmission, and market- ing throughout Great Britain of North Sea gas. In these matters and many others the gas industry proved itself a keen, closely knit, unified organisation. In other matters, where uniformity was not essential, and diversity desirable, Boards have gone their separate ways, and this to the national benefit.
The urge to centralise on London for gas, as any other industry public or private, has always been there. Within the industry it was always the alibi of the less distinguished and competent. Outside it, many in the less suc- cessful centralised public industries, and almost all London civil servants, to whom any devolution of decision-making is ana- thema, combined on every possible occasion to deride it. Those within and without the gas industry—all London-based--wished to destroy the gas federal structure in favour of a monolithic centralised London-based structure. They gave us their final reason, one North Sea, one responsible central body.
Their argument was as facile as it was false. The federal structure, it can be said, saved the gas industry by its efficacy, and will yet save Britain, her Government and all her other industries by its example.
In mid-1967 the Chairman of the Gas Council Sir Henry Jones prepared a memo- randum stating the case for greater London centralisation and control. McKinsey's were retained to sustain it. The press were fed with inspired comment on the need for greater Gas Council powers. Minister of Power Richard Marsh favoured these and fewer Boards. On the morning he first consulted with Area Board Chairmen he was moved to Transport. His successor Ray Gunter 're- prieved' Area Boards and more humanly favoured the continuance of their authority. Possibly he and others read and noted my memorandum in March 1968 on the 'admir- able' present structure, my Times letter of 10 May and a contribution I made at the annual conference of Gas Engineers at Scar- borough, May 1968, on the continuing vital importance of Area Boards, which elicited strong support within the industry. Certainly the centralisers and particularly the Chair- man of the Gas Council himself never for- gave me for daring to express my views and standing in the way of concentration of power and all patronage in Sir Henry Jones's hands. Minister Roy Mason was won over and in January 1969 I was told by him that my appointment as Wales Chairman would be renewed for two years only, not the cus- tomary five. Sir Henry Jones had told me the previous day that only on the giving of assur- ances as to my thinking would I continue at all.
These events and non-events in the gas industry sadly are of significance generally today. These recent moves to establish a centralised structure must cause us all the gravest concern. They are a challenge to law and constitutional propriety. The Gas Coun- cil now without authority acts as overlord in approving, or otherwise, the Board's invest- ment programmes, its nominees are sent to sit on Boards' appointing committees, etc. The Gas Bill 1969 which would have made this legal was not passed by the last Parlia- ment. It would have given the Council inter alia the right (i) to direct Area Boards (ii) wholly to take them over (both without refer- erence to Minister of Parliament) (iii) by such in terrorem powers, to destroy the Boards' effective authority. The same Bill had the ridiculous provision giving the Gas Council powers to sell petrol and products of discovered oil—parliamentary poker play- ing. I hope our new Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, John Davies, and his Minister, Sir John Eden, by this will have interred the whole miserable measure. The Wales Gas investment programme, for example, until 1969 was approved or other- wise in practice by Ministry officers, includ- ing their senior officer in Wales. Because of this, regard was had to the real economy of Wales, the need to maintain utilities in the country and resort towns, so as to make viable new industry, tourism, the like. Now they are excluded, and Gas Council London members out of touch with Wales and its economy now take over, Wales, and I suspect Scotland and the ten English regions, already have too much of the debris of public indus- try decisions taken by the remote in London. Board chairmen were publicly thanked by a Minister in a shocking 'provided' speech for 'anticipating the provisions of the Gas Bill,
1969'. What would they, the centralising Establishment, have said had those in favour of further devolution and greater authority, say to Wales, 'anticipated legislation' and taken the law into their own hands? Respect for the law of the land is a behaviour incurn. bent not only on the young and `way-out' but also and still more so on those in respou. sible authority.
These recent moves are also a threat to enterprise, initiative and vitality--in the public industries. During the first twenty years of the gas industry, in the Boards themselves, within the Gas Council (and in at least one Board itself) there was a positive encouragement to experiment, to initiative; and in spite, indeed because, of this there was a greater vital unity in gas than in any other public industry—e.g., the first move- ment of natural gas across the seas of the world, and the total re-creation of the image and marketing of this old industry. This and so much else was achieved under the 1948 Act structure. Indeed we would say there has been no new fundamental thinking in the past two years coming out of the centralised Council.
These moves are a negation of wise and sensible selection of leaders in the public industries. Every Council member and Board chair appointment for the last few years has been the personal selection of the Chairman of the Gas Council. Of course we must at agree that his voice should be fully, indeed strongly heard in selection. But we cannot believe that sole selection by him alone, seen to be such, is either right or healthy. Our plea is that responsible Ministers, with their Permanent Secretaries, as the best of them used to do, Hugh Gaitskell and Richard Wood, should fully, personally acquaint and involve themselves in selecting Board chair- men and other Gas Council members. The public industries account for so great a part of the economy, particularly in Scotland and Wales, that their Secretaries of State and permanent advisers should be involved clearly. At the moment they seem to be 'warned .off' the nationalised industries field. The present Scottish Gas Board appointment was made from outside the gas industry be cause consultation with outgoing chairman stressed the importance of Scottish involve ment in the job. In Wales Gas there was no consultation whatsoever with the outgoing chairman or any other Wales-involved per. son. I gather departmental changes have since been made. Finally I would say that there should be brought in the Prino- pals of our staff and management college through whose hands there now pass an ever larger number of potential chairmen: be dustry in the private sector increasinglY resorts to them in selection. And isn't here too a proper sphere for the advice of the businessmen now being brought into govern- ment? We must welcome the studies ball made by the University of Sheffield and others on this all important matter. The private sector, by the way, has the great sanction of the appointor's financial interest in proper selection of the appointee—the public sector has not.
These recent moves are a challenge t.° government regional policy, particularly as It applies to Wales and Scotland. Had I de- dared myself as a London centraliser, flout: ing not following government regional economic development and devolution policy, then I would have been the n1051 secure—possibly honoured—of all in the industry. So in a word, the events of 1968 proclaim that to care about your career Os! mean to conform to London and central thinking in the gas industry today. The effect of this on the up and coming young men with family responsibilities is obvious. Because of the help of two Wales Ministers, we fought and won the battle to prevent Wales Gas computer being moved from Cardiff to Birmingham. After I left the de- cision was taken to withdraw the gas show- rooms from, with other market towns, Bhayader. This is the town which the government decided should be developed as part of a complex of Mid-Wales New Towns. The Gas Council London-based staff rapidly increases, in numbers and office cost, in face of all government exhortations to private in- dustry to get into development areas. Government policy surely is one and in- divisible, and, of all else, the public indus- tries should be the most loyal to it. The pri- vate sector is compelled to follow develop- ment area policy. Government departments and agencies, like the Mint, are ordered so to do. Are the nationalised industries specially exempt? It would be interesting to see the numbers of staff the Gas Council now have in London, compared with say five years ago, the cost, capital and revenue, of their offices, and the cost in grants of the equiva- lent number of new jobs started in develop- ment areas.
Finally, they are a challenge and an 'of- fence against' elementary human rights, decency and freedom. 'Jones the Wares Gas' may have been quite wrong in his thoughts. He would be the first to agree were it so proved to him. But such brains as the good God has given him convince him that he is right, and he is now being proved right. 'Yes- men' never created a great industry—`Yes- men' will never sustain it. How right was Prince Philip in saying that the creation of 'yes-men' is the greatest danger in indus- try and government today. The danger is there the more so because it is being suppres- sed. Jones the Gas was told by one Minister, senior civil servants and by Gas Council leaders, that it would be quite improper for him to tell Members of Parliament what had been done about him, and to tell the press would be near treachery, and the conse- quences for him would be most serious. All this surely is as great a threat to our demo- cratic way of life as the cruder means adopted in the avowedly dictatorship coun- tries.
Lord Chief Justice Hewart could warn of the New Despotism in the 1920s, the powers of the executive and civil service above both Parliament and the law; the Newest Despotism today comes from the London 'Establishments' in gas and possibly in other centralised nationalised industries. When last April the Chairman of the Gas Council had succeeded in getting overlord powers, albeit Without benefit of a new Gas Act, for the 1969 Bill never so became, his salary was up- graded to Category A at the highest level of £20,000 a year. Next year he will leave the industry on a pension calculated on a last Year's salary more than twice that of any Area Board chairman. When legally prirnus inter pares, as the still operating gas Act 1948 provides, he, and earlier chairmen and deputy chairmen were kept at the lower salary level; when he established himself as primus, and overlord, these material personal benefits were added. This cannot be right. 'Power tends to corrupt, absolute power. . .9 And with Acton, we quote a Welsh Cath- olic historian and writer, Giraldus Cambren- sis, 'Nothing so much excites the heart of an to probity as the spirit of liberty, noth- ng so much dejects it, as the oppression of
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