Technology, the nation’s strategic infrastructure, nationalised industries (and a sense of purpose)

Recently I stumbled upon a series on Talking Pictures TV called ‘Look at Life’ – a set of short films made by The Rank Organisation which were originally shown in UK cinemas.

The episode which caught my eye was called ‘The Tower Of Babble’ and was about the construction of the GPO (Post Office) Tower in London. This programme didn’t just cover the construction of the tower itself but explained why it was being built: to provide a key part of a new, modern, communications network for the whole of the UK, including TV communications as well as for the expanding telephone network.

This modern, thinking ahead, communications network, and the technology behind, it was designed by GPO engineers and researchers. The GPO even had its own long standing research establishment as Dollis Hill which was deeply involved in this modernisation programme. The ‘Look at Life’ programme even talked about the possibility in the future of sending communications by laser beams, which is of course what happens now with Fibre Optics and high speed broadband.

So, the modernisation of the UK’s communications network was designed and carried out by the publicly owned General Post Office (The GPO) – or as we used to say, the Nationalised GPO. They had their own research station at Dollis Hill, which was later moved to Martlesham Heath, and experts from the GPO’s Research Station enabled the first programmeable computers to be built for code breaking at Bletchley Park.

The publicy owned GPO and pre-privatisation British Telecom also developed a digital telephone switching system that went on to be used in telephone networks across the world to this day and is only now being replaced. This was done in conjunction with private sector companies, but the state owned GPO/British Telecom and its expert engineers enabled the development work to be carried out and the equipment to go from development to implementation.

That is not to say that the GPO and its staff and employees did everything. They didn’t build the concrete structure of the GPO Tower; they employed a construction company for that (Peter Lind and Co – which I was surprised to learn is still in existence). They also used private, commercial, companies to build the switch gear (of which the UK had a large and world leading industry at one time – even in my working life). But, we should note that the brain-work; the research, the strategic and technical thinking, the financial planning and technical planning, all went on within and by the publicly owned company, as did much of the technical work using its own directly employed staff and experts. They were in charge – they drove through the change and decided what was required; not some management consultant that disappeared leaving the client holding the undeliverable baby (or just as bad stayed on the scene continuing to be paid to sort out their own poor initial advice).

There are other ‘Look at Life’ programmes which also covered the modernisation of the UK’s infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s. I learnt that the UK built a processing and pipe network to land imported liquefied natural gas, and to handle and distribute this natural gas across the UK before we even had gas from the North Sea. Again, this was conceived, designed and delivered under the auspices of the public owned Gas Council working with the engineers of the local, publicly owned, gas boards.

These examples made me recall some of the other infrastructure modernisation the UK did between the end of the Second World War and the end of the 1970s, by our publicly owned industries. British Rail electrification and the end of steam trains happened under a Nationalised British Rail. At a slightly more mundane level, but no less important, was the modernisation of British Rail’s local distribution network when a largely horse based system was replaced by internal combustion engine powered lorries (yes, British Rail had its own lorry fleet to do local deliveries for goods which arrived in cities by rail).

The UK totally upgraded and increased the capacity of its electricity generation and distribution network, which we still depend on today, under Nationalised companies who completing the work in 10 years. This modernisation included the design and construction of a number of large power stations to replace smaller, local, power generation sites; and all of the high voltage grid with distributed the electricity across and around the UK. This programme included sets of massive concrete cooling towers, most of which have recently been demolished; which is mad as these cooling towers could have been repurposed for use in the new decarbonised energy and chemical industries. It seems that today we are incapable of delivering large new infrastructure programmes effectively and quickly, and can only demolish past infrastructure.

It is worth remembering that prior to being Nationalised after World War Two many of the local electricity generation power stations and their associated local distribution networks were actually set up and owned by Local Authorities. For example Stepney Council in London was proud to claim it supplied the cheapest electricity in London; and it entered the electricity generation industry in order to provide a service to its residents and to ensure that local industries had the electricity they needed to modernise and grow.

The UK’s Motorway Network was originally conceived and delivered by the public sector, under the control of the Ministry of Transport, albeit via private sector contractors doing the physical construction. But the Ministry was in control.

And we mustn’t forget the large number of Council Homes which were built from 1945 to the mid 1970s; they were commissioned by Local Authorities, often by contracting with the private sector construction industry but some Local Councils even had their own directly employed labour force that did the building. In other words Local Authorities acted as housing developers as well as construction companies (and had their own teams of architects).

If I spent a bit more time I could come up with more examples of new, and cutting edge, large scale infrastructure and investment programmes that were led and delivered by the Public Sector and Publicly Owned Industries (Nationalised as they were called). The UK was capable of doing this then and it could be capable of doing so again, given some time to gear up and acquire the knowledge and capacity in-house.

Of course moving back to how we used to do things that were in the public interest, and helped the strategic direction of the UK economy, would give us control – much more control than the fad of the past 40 or so years of sending ‘Market Signals’.

As I have often said, if you want to move a piece of rope to where you want it to go the most (or only) effective way of doing so is to pull the rope, not to push it! Equally futile is trying to get it to move by just talking to it! The UK economy and social policy, like all things that depend on people, is a complex system and if we want to do what we need it to do we have to control and direct things – we have to pull the ‘rope’ behind us, to take it where we want and desire it to go and to do, rather than to continue to push the rope and hope it goes where we want it to go.

If we are to have any chance of delivering the new infrastructure this country needs, we need to get back to direct public ownership and control with organisations led and managed by professional managers and engineers, with directly employed and well trained staff and employees with good wages and decent employment terms and working conditions. And training.

The public sector was at the cutting edge of UK industry, and just because it isn’t now doesn’t mean that it can’t be again. We can use it to get the society, economy, and environment we want and need. We must be in charge.