The Politics of Selling Off

To keep local munitions workers sober during the Great War, the government of Lloyd George expropriated a brewery in the north of England and severely restricted drinking in its chain of 450 pubs. When a British travel firm's Belgian parent company was seized by the Nazis in World War II, the government of Winston Churchill assumed title to Thomas Cook & Son. By now, Britain's march toward nationalization has led to a state-owned industrial complex of brobdingnagian proportions. One-tenth of the country's labor force works for government enterprises, including railways, docks, airlines, bus lines, hotels, steel mills, electric plants, and telephone, trucking and container firms. Today, however, Edward Heath's Conservative government wants to sell off some of the Crown's more profitable but less strategic companies. From the opposition that is developing, it would appear that Heath was trying to pawn the Crown jewels.

Last week Lord Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board, gave up his job in protest over government plans to partly dismantle his $2 billion-a-year fuel conglomerate, which is the world's largest coal company. The Tories want to strip off some of the Coal Board's many nonmining sidelines, like chemicals, brickmaking and North Sea gas ex ploration. Robens, a hearty Yorkshireman known among miners as "Alf," did not care to preside over the dismantling. "Taking profitable areas away from the National Coal Board," he warned, "would make it more difficult for the coal industry to be viable."

Poor Virgin. Even so, Ted Heath's government has announced a policy of state "disengagement" from industry. Hoping to stimulate free enterprise and cut back on public expenditure, Heath intends to sell some state operations to private companies and seek partnerships with private investors in others. His campaign became apparent in November when he fired Viscount Hall, chairman of the Post Office Corporation. Hall was opposed to attempts to tinker with his 500,000-man empire, especially its enterprising nonpostal activities: computer sharing, a savings bank and a personal-loan service. A former Labor member of Parliament, Hall called his sacking "a monstrous rape of the corporation by force. I feel like a virgin girl who has been thoroughly raped." The chief executives in the 16 other major nationalized industries are nervously awaiting Heath's next move.

Nationalization has long been a political soccer ball in Britain. When the Labor Party took office in 1945, it wasted little time taking over coal mining, railroads, trucking, electric power, steel and the London transit system. When the Conservatives rebounded to power in 1951, they set about denationalizing steel and trucking, and decentralizing some of the other state monopolies. Labor came back under Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1964 and returned steel and trucking to government ownership. Before the Conservatives took over last June, nationalized industries had grown and diversified into a group that has $25 billion in assets and accounts for 11% of Britain's gross domestic product. In addition to the enterprises the government owns outright, there are others--like British Petroleum and BOAC--that are 51% or 49% government-owned.

Attractive Holdings. Heath does not plan to dismantle the state industrial machine completely. Operations that amount to public utilities--like gas, electricity and transportation--are not targets for denationalization, though the Tories will try to attract private investment to some companies in those fields. At present, nationalized firms must look to the government for roughly half their loan capital--a $1 billion-plus annual drain on the treasury. While a few state-owned industries, like gas, electricity and the airlines, occasionally turn a profit, most others are perennial losers. The Coal Board has piled up $34.5 million in deficits, despite Lord Robens' moves to reduce costs and increase productivity. Heath may have a hard time trying to interest private investors in such poor performers.

To whet investors' appetites, the government will probably sell off entirely two of its most attractive holdings: Thomas Cook & Son, which last year earned $2,900,000, and Pickfords, a healthy freight forwarder. Profitable sidelines of the major nationalized firms would come next. Indeed, the government is due to begin talks with British Steel this month. One plan suggested by a few hard-lining Tories is to strip the company of its three most promising divisions--chemicals, special steels and construction engineering--and leave it with three less profitable branches. Pessimists in Harold Wilson's Labor Party are already talking about a return to the "bad old days," when just about the only firm in Britain that was accountable to the public was that brewery in the north.

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