Power and the People

A History of British Energy

Arthur Downing

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781836741022
• Subtopic: Environmental Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The energy crisis of the early 2020s exposed the true nature of Britain's energy system: fragile, fragmented, comically complicated, and hopelessly dependent on imported fossil fuels. How did it come to this? Power and the People uncovers the hidden history of British energy from the Victorians to the present.

The book tells the story of the private and publicly owned organisations that built the energy system, from local municipal electricity companies in the early twentieth century, to state-owned enterprises that built infrastructure at a massive scale and breakneck speed from 1926 to 1979. The frenzied construction bonanza changed the landscape of Britain and fabric of everyday life for citizens.

From the 1980s the electricity and gas industries were broken apart and sold off. Privatization worked for a short time but then the model started to break down. Climate change introduced a new problem. In response, the privatised model was gradually adapted and over decades became a complex and contradictory system that is crumbling. Today, we're living under a zombie system that lurches from crisis to crisis. But there is hope. Arthur Downing offers an alternative future of what is possible, based on lessons from our own past.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Localised Energy, 1810–1920
• 2. Rationalised Energy, 1920–1945
• 3. Nationalised Energy, 1945–1979
• 4. Privatised Energy, 1979–2010
• 5. The Idea of an Energy Revolution, 1988–2010
• 6. Zombie Privatisation, 2010–2024
• 7. The Future of British Energy
• Notes