When the gas industry came into public ownership in May 1949, this terminated over ten years of debate about the most effective form of organisation for a utility which had evolved as an essentially localised service. The atomistic nature of gas supply and its ownership structure, intensive competition from electricity, socialist doctrine, the need for an integrated national fuel policy, and a feeling that the wartime planning techniques ought to be retained once victory had been achieved were all factors of significance in this debate. In analysing why the industry was nationalised we need to assess what role they played in affecting the final decisions. Essentially, we shall be trying to distinguish between the orthodox view that nationalisation was driven by ideological forces, as opposed to questions of industrial organisation as emphasised by Millward (chapter 1 above, also 1991), by tracing the main events in a story which reveals a variety of influences determining the final outcome.

In identifying the main reasons why gas supply was nationalised, it is important to discuss Millward's (1991, p. 19) interpretation of the reasons for the late 1940s move towards public ownership of network industries. Millward is less concerned with ideological influences, stressing instead inter-war attempts at state-assisted rationalisation, the ineffectiveness of arms-length government regulation of utilities, and the need for post-war reconstruction, revealing what he claims to be ‘a political consensus for the reorganisation of the undertakings in the network industries into large business units’.