BRITAIN: The Politics of Selling Off

To keep local munitions workers sober during the Great War, the government of Lloyd George expropriated a brewery in the north of England and severely restricted drinking in its chain of 450 pubs. When a British travel firm's Belgian parent company was seized by the Nazis in World War II, the government of Winston Churchill assumed title to Thomas Cook & Son. By now, Britain's march toward nationalization has led to a state-owned industrial complex of brobdingnagian proportions. One-tenth of the country's labor force works for government enterprises, including railways, docks, airlines,...

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