thereby ensuring that the country’s key strategic industries would receive the huge
level of investment they needed in the immediate post-Second World War period. Looking back at this point in history, it seems fair to suggest that economic justifications
also added considerable weight to the government’s political predispositions. Apart
from the question of safeguarding vital industries and ensuring much-needed investment,
nationalisation appeared to provide a means of guaranteeing that the general
public would benefit from the huge economies of scale available to what were effectively
natural monopolies. Through public ownership,