ABSTRACT
Apart from the iron and steel industry and road haulage which were denationalised after 1951, the Conservative Governments of the 1950s and 1960s accepted the nationalisations of the 1945-51 Labour administrations, albeit grudgingly. Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1957 to 1963, like many of his generation had been deeply affected by the unemployment of the 1930s. In 1938 he had published a volume called The Middle Way setting out a policy agenda between free market liberalism and the socialist state, in which he advocated policies such as compulsory industrial reorganisation and a National Investment Board.1 Macmillan kept the nationalisations that had occurred immediately after the War, although like others in his Party he opposed any extension of state ownership. The Party’s rank and file at annual Party conferences might criticise the stateowned industries but large-scale denationalisation seemed beyond practical politics. A Party Policy Committee on the Nationalised Industries, established in 1956 to examine the position of the nationalised industries in the economy and make recommendations, produced no major policy proposals.
