PUBLIC ENTERPRISE in- GREAT BRITAIN

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 261, 31 July 1937, Page 7 (Supplement)

PUBLIC ENTERPRISE inGREAT BRITAIN

‘'Public Enterprise,” a study of developments in social ownership and control in Great Britain, edited by William A. Robson (London: Allen and Unwin). To operate public utilities or to regulate vast industries, a number of independent or semi-independent public boards have been established recently in England. They constitute the most important step in political develoi>ment and economic organisation which has been taken in that country during recent decades. Hitherto these boards have received only the most cursory examination, but in the timely appearance of “Public Enterprise,” edited by Mr. William A. Robson, there are presented for the first time detailed and informative studies of the the London Passenger Transport Board, the Central Electricity Board and the Electricity Commission, the Coal Mines Reorganisation Commission, the Forestry Commission, the Agricultural Marketing Boards, the Port of London Authority, the Public Service Board, together with chapters on the older forms of collective enterprise represented by the Post Office and the Consumers’ Cooperative movement. Under these titles —each written by acknowledged authorities — developments in social ownership and control in Great Britain are constructively criticised, explored, and discussed. The volume is presented quite frankly as the work of a group of investigators holding certain basic ideas in common and sharing more or less the same assumptions of what is and what is not desirable. This common outlook makes the book not less but more useful than it would otherwise be. To the solution of an interesting problem in England, to practical politicians of all parties, to teachers and students in the social sciences, to administrative officials in the public service, the local government service, and on the boards themselves, and to the intelligent general reader, “Public Enterprise” is a valuable work containing definite, constructive contflugiong.