For Lord Aberconway the collapse of the Labour government, with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald now surrounded by thorough-going Conservatives in the National Government cabinet, there appeared a real chance that the ‘Met’ would once again escape the net of amalgamation and continue on in its previous idiosyncratic way. Though a staunchly independent and gifted General Manger Robert H. Selbie had recently died in May 1930, his fellow board member Dudley Docker was one of the most powerful British businessmen of the period, with his taste for double dealing and political intrigue making him a formidable adversary in any future negotiations. With Docker in the ring, the Metropolitan Railway Company now had a fighting chance of survival.
Viewed with deep suspicion by Conservative members, the London Passenger Transport Board was now attacked from the backbenches as ‘creeping socialism’ and in response under the new Government some of its more obvious socialistic features were therefore now diluted to secure the main objective in legislation. For example, the famous road vehicle company (AEC), part of the ‘Combine’ under Lord Ashfield, along with the UCC, were originally to have been the manufacturing wings of the new board. Further, the North Metropolitan Power Company, or ‘NorthMet’, was not absorbed though a special dispensation was made for Lord Ashfield who, as new LPTB chairman, was still allowed to keep his shareholding in the now completely separate company, it being felt that there was no major conflict of interest for Ashfield. The Metropolitan, true to its nature, fought a rearguard action which came close to wrecking the scheme.
Herbert Morrison was fully aware of the opposition of Baker Street and in a memorandum to cabinet on 23rd July 1931 he dwelt on the Met’s true motivation. “The Metropolitan demanded cash and contended strongly they were a main line railway and should be treated like the main line railways.” Morrison, in his book of 1932 Socialisation and Transport, would display his general contempt for shareholders, stating that while the state was extremely cautious in providing unemployment relief to the working classes, rich shareholders’ interests were to be protected at all costs and that “Conservative minded capitalists can hardly, therefore, object if I, who as not an unkindly person, desire to enforce reasonably strict safeguards for the public interest when we are compensating private undertakings about to be socialised.”
Throughout the Parliamentary sessions of 1931 and 1932, Conservative backwoodsmen in the Commons and Lords and close to Baker Street would seek to talk down the hybrid Bill, or attempt to amend it out of all recognition, most notably Sir William Ray, MP for Richmond, and Captain Edward North, MP for Nuneaton. Devoid of his original radical impulses, Winston Churchill MP was also now a willing participant in the delaying tactics from the back benches. The situation was serious enough for a normally placid Sir Cyril Hurcomb to write in genuine anger about the activities of Conservative MPs who now threatened to talk out the whole scheme from the floor of the Commons. In particular both The Spectator and The Economist remained highly sceptical of the benefits of public ownership throughout the passage of the Bill through Parliament until April 1933.
There was a real fear that the legislation would be dismembered
