The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

30

to the
finance capitalists. This of course is a further integration for the landed
class, this time with the City,
focusing on ‘institutional’ shareholdings. Insurance
companies traditionally held their assets in the
form of government securities and
company debentures, but the higher yield which could be earned on
ordinary
shares encouraged insurance companies in this century to shift the balance of their
investments
towards such equity holdings. Insurance companies were soon taking
a large proportion of new share issues and
dominated the market in corporate
securities. As a result, the proportion of the population which held shares
has
become progressively smaller. The “squeezing out of individual shareholders is a
result of the
increased buying by the various institutional shareholders. Initially,
the insurance companies bought into
the largest companies, and by 1942 they
held about a half of the issued shares of the 30 largest
companies.”41

The trend
towards institutional ownership is also reflected on the land. For
example, by the 1970’s the major
‘institutional’ holders of land were the City
institutions. They owned more land than those
‘institutions’ such as the Chuch of
England and ancient universities which owned agricultural,
commercial and
housing land as well as company shares. “This growth in landownership by
financial
enterprises continuedthrough the 1970’s, and became a particularly
important aspect of large-scale
landownership. This created a move away from
owner-occupation and towards a modernised version of the
traditional
landlord/tenant relationship. An increasingly popular pattern is for a financial
company to
buy land and then to sell bonds and shares in the land to insurance
companies and pension funds which stand
in the same relation to farming as they
do to other businesses.”42
Within these ‘agribusiness’ enterprises the actual
farming is delegated to subordinate executives
whose managerial style has more
in common with manufacturing executives than it has with the old-style
farmers.

Those who
hold substantial numbers of company shares and those who
own the larger landed estates have been brought
together into a close unity by the

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