The End of Management

London’s Houses of Parliament, the Gothic revivalist creation of Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, were built for a period when the spoken word carried far more influence than it does today. Pugin’s magnificent interiors, with their bold William Morris prints, are a constant reminder of the history embedded in the building’s walls. It has a humbling, majestic, and sometimes intimidating atmosphere, and it was here, in committee room 15 in January, 1995, that fifty-nine-year-old Cedric Brown, the head of one of the UK’s largest companies, faced charges placed before him in the gravest tones by his parliamentary inquisitors. Brown, the then chief executive of British Gas, was accused of making too much money, of agreeing to a pay raise that was wholly unacceptable.