I had remembered seeing an old WWI Punch cartoon showing someone freezing in front of a coal fire in winter clothing and wanted to post a link but oculd not find it. I did find some hstorical article saying in WWI the distribution of coal was nationlized in UK and following article:

http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:KbCkL4gF3iIJ:www.pbs.org/wgbh/comma...

Link is a bit long I must say...

In 1918, the Labor Party had adopted a constitution containing what became the famousClause IV, which, in language written by Sidney Webb, called for "common ownership of themeans of production, distribution, and exchange." But what were these words to mean inpractical terms? The answer came during World War II. One evening in 1944, a retired railwayworker named Will Cannon, drawn back into the workforce to help in the marshaling yard,happened to drop by a local union meeting in Reading, not far from London. In the course ofthe meeting he decided to propose a motion calling for "nationalization," which was approvedby the local. The motion won national attention, and the Labor Party ended up adopting it inDecember 1944. Will Cannon's motion would have a powerful global echo.In July 1945, Labor came into power totally committed to nationalization and determined toconquer the "commanding heights" of the economy, having borrowed the term from Lenin bythe mid-1930s. In their quest for control of the commanding heights after World War II, theLaborites nationalized the fragmented coal industry, which provided 90 percent of Britain'senergy at the time. They did the same to iron and steel, railroads, utilities, and internationaltelecommunications. There was some precedent for this even in the British system; after all, itwas Winston Churchill himself who, as first lord of the Admiralty in 1911, had purchased acontrolling government stake in what became British Petroleum in order to ensure oil supplyfor the Royal Navy. Churchill's rationale had been security, military power, and the Anglo-German naval race.The premise of nationalization in the 1940s was quite different—that as private businesses,these industries had underinvested, been inefficient, and lacked scale. As nationalized firms,they would mobilize resources and adapt new technologies, they would be far more efficient,and they would ensure the achievement of the national objectives of economic developmentand growth, full employment, and justice and equality. They would be the engine of theoverall economy, drawing it toward modernization and greater redistribution of income.