Public Administrators and Private Politicians

The First World War had altered the political geometry of Britain. Initially, conservative nationalism was able oust liberal cosmopolitanism, but over the longer term the war also meant that different visions of socialism enjoyed increased influence via the Labour Party and the trade union movement. At face value, this might have seemed threatening to large corporations such as the one the Lord Ashfield was trying to make out of London’s transport. But in fact, organised labour and large corporations had considerable common interests, and the eventual shape and form of London Transport were largely the product of a common outlook between the London Traffic Combine and Transport and General Workers’ Union which was forged in the 1920s. The losers in this process were the municipal institutions of local government, and the residual political commitment to the free market, both Victorian liberal ideas. By the late 1920s, the idea of a unified organisation running London’s transport had been fully accepted, and it was left to Herbert Morrison to make one last stand for the legitimacy of a civic municipal service before the forces of capital and labour secured their own solution.