None of this generally Conservative opposition could halt or even check a Labor government that had been voted into power in 1945 with 393 seats in the House of Commons as opposed to 216 for the Conservatives and 12 for the Liberals. The Tories were out, the new day had dawned, and the Labor Party, in full control of the government for the first time in its history, set out to remake Britain.
No one in Britain could plead ignorance of what the Labor Party was about to do. Since 1918 it had been committed to extensive nationalization of industry and redistribution of income. Moreover, it came to power at a moment when the old patterns of industrial power and political alignments had been ruptured by war and when voters other than those who habitually voted Labor were acknowledging the need for change.
The 1945 policy statement of the Labor Party was called "Let Us Face the Future." It dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's in Labor's program.
The statement began with a good word for freedom, always highly esteemed by political parties seeking power. But it added an interesting comment. "There are certain so-called freedoms that Labor will not tolerate; freedom to exploit other people; freedom to pay poor wages and to push up prices for selfish profits; freedom to deprive the people of the means of living full, happy, healthy lives."
The statement went on to promise full employment, to be achieved through the nationalization of industry; the fullest use of national resources; higher wages; social services and insurance; a new tax policy; and planned investment. There was to be extensive replanning of the national economic effort and a "firm constructive government hand on our whole productive machinery." The Labor Party's ultimate purpose at home was "the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain—free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public spirited, its material resources organized in the services of the British people."
In 1948 Harold Laski, the Labor Party's ideological mentor, said in the course of the Fabian Society Lectures that the party was "trying to transform a profoundly bourgeois society, mainly composed of what Bagehot called 'deferential' citizens, allergic to theory because long centuries of success have trained it to distrust of philosophic speculation, and acquiescent in the empiricist's dogma that somehow something is bound to turn up, a society, moreover, in which all the major criteria of social values have been imposed by a long indoctrination for whose aid all the power of church and school, of press and cinema, have been very skillfully mobilized; we have got to transform this bourgeois society into a socialist society, with foundations not less secure than those it seeks to renovate."
Doubtless these ominous words failed to penetrate into the clubs and boardrooms that were the sanctums of the former ruling class. But it was hardly necessary that they should. The businessmen and the Conservative politicians understood Harold Laski's objectives.
Nationalization of industry is the most widely advertised economic result of Labor policies between 1945 and 1951. In assessing its effect on the changes in Britain since 1939, we must remember that neither was it so new nor is it so extensive as Americans believe. The British Broadcasting Corporation was created as a public corporation as long ago as 1927. Today most manufacturing in Britain remains in the control of private enterprise.
Between 1945 and 1951, however, the Labor government's policy of nationalization created corporations that today operate or control industries or services. In two industries, steel and road transport, the trend toward nationalization has been reversed. But the following list shows the extent of nationalization in Britain today.
Coal: The Coal Industry Nationalization Act received the Royal Assent in May of 1946, and on January 1, 1947, the assets of the industry were vested in the National Coal Board appointed by the Minister of Fuel and Power and responsible for the management of the industry. For a century coal was king in Britain, and British coal dominated the world market until 1910. Coal production is around 225,000,000 tons annually—the peak was reached in 1913 with 287,000,000 tons—and the industry employs just over 700,000 people.