One of the most important tasks of socialists in the 1960s is to redefine and restate the inherent illogicalities and contradictions in the managerial capitalist system as it is developing within the social structure of contemporary Britain. Much of the doctrine of Victorian Marxism is no longer applicable to a different set of fundamental illogicalities in a different age. The future roles and functions of public ownership and social policy will be more clearly seen if they are analysed in terms of the problems of today and tomorrow.

Not least in importance in this approach to the future will be the study of the changing concentrations of economic and financial power. In R.H. Tawney’s phrase (1934), who behind the “decorous drapery of political democracy” has power, who really governs, who is and will be making the critical decisions that will influence the design and texture of social and economic life in the 1960s? It is part of the purpose here to indicate something of the nature of these problems in one sector of the economy. As an illustration, the private insurance sector is examined in a limited fashion. Similar and more far-reaching questions need to be asked in other sectors where combination and concentration may threaten the rights and liberties of the subject to choose the values and decide the social priorities that will shape his society.

Richard Crossman, in a notable Fabian pamphlet (1955), examined the problem of monopolistic privilege and restated the need to expose the growth of irresponsible power, private and public. Since then, rising standards of living, the accumulation of the great tax-free fortunes of the 1950s, the growth of monopoly and other factors, have all served to endorse the need to scrutinise these threatening concentrations of power and privilege.

As the power of the insurance interests (in combination with other financial and commercial interests) continues to grow, they will, whether they consciously welcome it or not, increasingly become the arbiters of welfare and amenity for larger sections of the community. Their directors, managers and professionally trained advisers will be making, in their own eyes and in the eyes of many other people, sober, profitable and responsible decisions.