Inventing Competition

Abstract

This chapter examines how the contours of a new electricity supply industry (ESI) structure began to emerge in Britain during 1987 and 1988. By the time of the 1987 General Election, a number of key state-owned corporations and nationalised industries, including British Telecom and British Gas, had already been privatised. But despite the political momentum behind the privatisation programme of the Thatcher governments, there remained a strongly held view that electricity was a ‘natural’ monopoly, requiring overall responsibility for ensuring the continuous operation of the system to be centralised within one body which had control over the major generators and the high-voltage transmission grid.