Attempts to ‘Modernize'

“These measures of ours are not theoretical trimmings. They are the essential part of a planned economy that we are introducing into this country”: Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s justification of the nationalization of 20% of British industry (Attlee 1947, 42). His rhetorical confidence in physical planning was matched by Hugh Dalton, Labour’s first postwar Chancellor, but it was to conflict with other Labour politicians’ visions for ‘socializing’ industry. Some of Attlee’s ministers held quite different views, faithful to a potent amalgam of liberal Keynesian that originated primarily with the economist James Meade and his colleagues in the Cabinet Office’s Economic Section. Douglas Jay and Hugh Gaitskell, who both served in the Treasury under Attlee, are good examples of this concept’s devotees (Toye 2003, 196, 225). “We are seeking a combination of public ownership, public accountability and business management for business ends,” Attlee’s deputy, Herbert Morrison, had written in his 1933 Socialisation and Transport: hardly the same ends as his immediate superior envisaged in 1946 (Hennessy 1992, 197–198, 185–186; Marquand 1996, 7, 12).