ABSTRACT
Electricity privatization built on the experience of previous asset sales and as such is a convenient lens through which to view the strategy as a whole. One of the challenges of electricity privatization was that it existed in the state sector as a series of regional monopolies. The British Electricity Authority (BEA) was formed in 1948 when it amalgamated over 600 small companies into 14 regional bodies and one central authority, the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), responsible for generation. It formed part of the wider programme of nationalization by the Attlee government. The primacy of property rights tied in with other neoliberal themes: Public Choice theory and theories of monopoly. A repeated criticism of privatization was that it simply shifted a monopoly from public to private sector. The British Electricity industry was finally privatized after the 1989 Electricity Act, following Cecil Parkinson's 1988 White Paper.
