The Early Days

Abstract

On March 16 1979 — General Election year — the Daily Telegraph published an article by one of its most respected business correspondents, Roland Gribben. The first two paragraphs read as follows:

A wide-ranging shake-up involving denationalisation, hiving off parts of other state corporations and substantial cuts in the £2,500 million a year subsidies will form part of a Conservative Government’s industrial policy.

The National Freight Corporation is understood to be one of the candidates earmarked for selling to the private sector. Some other smaller state industries would be reduced to a ‘British Petroleum’ status, with the Government stake cut to 51 per cent.

That article caused considerable consternation at the Argosy House, London, headquarters of NFC. The same day, Brian Cottee, Head of Communication Services for the Corporation, spoke to Mr Gribben who, while naturally declining to name his source for the article, intimated that it was, in his view, totally reliable. Before the day was out Mr Cottee had circulated an internal memorandum to the Board and the executive committee which said, inter alia: ‘Should we not take steps to impress on all possible Tory sources the unsaleability of the NFC as an entity, and the “rump” problems of piecemeal sales?’ The hare was off and running on what was to prove to be a somewhat erratic course.

Our preferred solution … is to seek private investment in the NFC, and provide a corporation similar (although not necessarily identical) in make-up to British Petroleum.

Extract from the 1977 Conservative Party Document On Transport Policy ‘The Right Track’, by the then Shadow Transport Minister, Norman Fowler.