ABSTRACT
T h e six years of Labour government from 1 9 4 5 - 5 1 have a uni ty in retrospect that they did not possess at the t ime. By 1951 a mass of legislation had given effect to one after another of the proposals on which the party came into office. T h e Bank of England (and Cable and Wireless) had been b rough t into public ownership; coal, gas and electricity had all been nationalized; so had the railways, the airlines and a large part of road transport ; so, too , after a long struggle, had the steel industry. A score of light industries from cot ton to pot tery had been reported on by the W o r k i n g Parties set up by Sir Stafford Cripps and in four of them triparti te Development Councils or their equivalent had been set u p . A series of productivi ty teams had been dispatched to the Uni ted States to see for themselves the ways in which productive methods and techniques might be improved.
