Briefly what was proposed was this. (1) The moribund existing companies—or such as could not see their way to amalgamation—were to be compulsorily bought out at a price to be fixed by judicial award. (2) The whole mass of obsolete local contracts now hampering Rotors should be codified under rules imposed by the Government; not only the efficient working of what is now a public interest, but the simplification of its management, made such a new policy necessary. Maximum charges for the use of power and for the lease of machines and meters were set down in the same instrument. The Trefusis brothers were pleased that Mr. Justice Honeybubble should preside over the award. The drafting of the rules was in the hands of a loyal committee whose chairman was Arthur Cannon. In such hands business men could be certain that all the reasonable claims of Henry Trefusis and his company would be safe.
All this was plain sailing: the real difficulty lay in the point of arranging a virtual monopoly.
Old prejudices die hard; and there lingers quite a respectable body of opinion, especially among our older public men who can remember the last days of King Edward VII. and were born in those of Queen Victoria, which has an unreasonable horror of monopoly unconnected with public ownership. Of public ownership there could, of course, be no question; that fad had, thank Heaven, been destroyed at the polls by an overwhelming majority of votes when Mrs. Fossilton’s party had gained its majority of thirty-six in a full House over that of her brother-in-law, Mr. Cowl. It was as certain as anything could be that the English people would never revive the old dead socialist formula of nationalization. Indeed, the last stronghold of that nonsense, the road system, was already in private hands, and the various branches of the postal service had followed the telephones, and had been given out to private contract half a dozen years ago. Only the northern municipalities still played with the moribund fetish of public control.
On the other hand, it was difficult to see how any effective competition could be established in the particular case of the Rotor; the nature of its transmission of power, the necessary standardization of the instruments, the existing strength of the Trefusis interests, all seemed to forbid it.
There were not a few upon the Board (and it included the best brain of them all after Trefusis—I mean Mary Gallop) were for letting things stand, with the codified B. O. T. rules as a sufficient sop to the constitutional Puritans.
The Company was in such a strong position that no competition, they said, was to be feared. To establish anything like a serious rival would have meant millions, not only in the comparatively unimportant point of buildings and plant, but on the political (and social) side as well.
And who was likely to enter such a field with Charles Trefusis in the Cabinet and a close group of his political friends associated with him in the high patriotic interest of Rotor development?
But the majority of the Board, and even Henry Trefusis himself, inclined to make things somewhat more secure. The difficulty was turned by the suggestion that, after the present Bill had gone through, and British Amalgamated Rotors could feel themselves reasonably safe for the future, The Admiralty, War Office, and I.A.F. should enter into contracts to purchase their material from the English Company to the exclusion of all others for at least thirty years; and as this would establish the standardized machines and their power in the ports, in the Imperial air transport system, and in all functions under the control of the Government, especially the Harbor Entries and new Public Wharfage, a virtual monopoly would follow. For it would be difficult for any hypothetical rival—and it seemed impossible at this time of day that such a rival should appear—to establish any permanent service; acting as he would be under an inability to link up with the public uses of what would soon come to be known as the official Rotor system. For instance, how could a boat make harbor in a difficult channel at night under a different and competing system controlling the rival patents? It could only pick up the guiding-ray with a Rotor attuned to the shore Rotor. Or how could the elevators (to take but one small detail, but a detail which applied to hundreds of ports throughout the British Empire) link up with termini in the holds unless both were on the same system?
Certain fields, notably the recently launched Tidal Power areas and their supply, Henry Trefusis decided not to touch. He doubted his power to capitalize so vast a new extension. On the other hand, he would not leave them in being as dangerous competitors. He would use his political connection to kill them, as railways had killed canals. Then indeed his monopoly, the monopoly of the British Amalgamated Rotors, of “B.A.R.” would be secure.
Such were the prospects of B.A.R.’s in this month of July, 1953, when Mr. Petre, rather perhaps by good fortune than by the talent which his contemporaries so freely ascribed to him, had just banked (and left on current account) the ready moneys of the Paddenham purchase.