Control

Abstract

Crosland was a selective nationaliser with a lifelong commitment to a substantial public sector. His early statement on pay-settlements well illustrates how much in sympathy he was with the Left’s advocacy of an owning State: ‘What is required is not a literal 100 per cent degree of socialisation, but a degree such (and it can hardly be less than 50 per cent.) that it is the public and not the private sector which sets in these matters the general tone.’1 The public sector was to be the pacemaker and the model - and to exert the leverage it had to be large.