Labour Management under Public Ownership

The electricity supply industry was pre-eminently capital- rather than labour-intensive: it accounted for 8 per cent of UK investment but employed well under 1 per cent of the national workforce. Many engineers and managers naturally devoted their primary energies to the technical and financial policies which were the major touchstones of the industry’s performance. Yet the importance of good industrial relations had also traditionally been recognised, since it was vital (not only to the industry but to the British economy generally) that the plant they operated be maintained in continuous operation free of strikes. On nationalisation, the industry also became an important test case for the Labour Party’s somewhat imprecise commitment to the control of industry by ‘the workers by hand and by brain’. Citrine, though he insisted on participation in the engineering and financial areas in which his deputy chairmen had responsibility for developing policy, devoted his own energies most firmly and consistently to the improvements he considered necessary in the area of labour management. It was evident to his colleagues from the beginning that he would insist on a high priority for labour questions, and that on some central issues on which he felt strongly he would brook no opposition.