ABSTRACT
A ‘monopoly’ exists when there is only one supplier of a service. Prior to the Conservative years (1979-97), many services were a state controlled monopoly. A free market economy, with its emphasis on the forces of supply and demand, cannot co-exist with monopolies. These state run monopolies were also seen within the context of increases in the role of the state, increases in the size of an inefficient public sector, increases in public spending and increases in the size and power of the bureaucracy. One policy which tackled at a stroke all of these problems for the free market was that of privatisation. Privatisation can take a number of forms. These range from the less obvious contracting of service provision to and the leasing of assets from the private sector, to the more publicised sale, through stock market flotations, of state owned and controlled assets. According to the advertising of the time, this form of ‘popular capitalism’, through the flotation of assets, which included the utilities of gas, water and electricity, the rail, coal and steel industries, British Telecom and British Airways, would allow citizens to become increasingly empowered through the purchase of shares in these industries. In reality, institutions purchased most shares. The ability of some citizens to purchase what they previously owned was either unaffordable or ideologically unacceptable.
