The Programme Contracts

Abstract

During the whole of the time from the end of October 1954 to May 1955, whilst the events that have been described were occurring, continuous negotiations were taking place about the provisions of the contracts between the Authority and the first four companies. Fraser wrote on 1 May:

We had nothing to guide us — except the Act, of course. No one had ever made this sort of contract before: there was no precedent, nothing to look up. The job was one of creative legal thinking and of skilful negotiation. Our final document is of course much better than our first draft: it has been very salutary for us to have to argue things out with the contractors, even if the multilateral nature of the negotiations has made progress seem sometimes tediously slow.¹