Power and the people: a history of British energy since 1810
LSEHoughton Street
Tue 17 Nov · 18:30 · Free
About this event
Join us for the book launch of Power and the People, the new book by Arthur Downing. 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. Privatisation 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.
Follow the thread
A different kind of night
Not the same tradition as the lineage above — a genuinely different thread to pull, if you want one.