Clare Doyle, Hackney and Islington Socialist Party
The water industry is crying out for renationalisation. Almost every capitalist newspaper has been exposing the scandal of polluted rivers, lakes and beaches and campaigning for action. The Greens included nationalisation in their manifesto, but, despite 7 in 10 people supporting the policy, Labour did not.
On 13 July, Sky News carried an excoriating diatribe against the money-grabbing water companies by Feargal Sharkey, the former lead singer of The Undertones. Southern Water, he railed, recently responsible for the massive outbreak of E-coli in its area, increased its bills by 60%. Thames Water increased them by 35% while paying its chief executive a £195,000 bonus for three months’ ‘work’.
“For 33 years, they have been paying out hundreds of millions in bonuses and dividends… They should not receive another penny from the public!… Nationalise them for less than a penny tomorrow!”
These water companies have polluted every one of Britain’s rivers and major lakes by allowing hundreds of thousands of sewage outflows per year. Nor, since privatisation in 1989, have they begun building even one new reservoir to ensure safe drinking water is provided to every home in the country.
An editorial in the Guardian newspaper, ahead of the election, pointed out that 90% of countries in the world run water provision as a state-owned operation. “Hundreds of thousands of pounds paid in bonuses to the bosses of Severn Trent and South West Water’s parent company, despite the companies pumping sewage into Britain’s rivers, seems a textbook example of rent-seeking oligopolistic capital. Rather than invest in infrastructure to deal with a growing population, the country’s private water monopolies, which began life with no debt, borrowed £64 billion over the past three decades and paid more than £78 billion in dividends to their owners.”
Socialists do not just argue for taking the whole of the water industry back into public ownership, with no money for the wealthy owners. Compensation should only be given where there is proven need, to safeguard workers’ pensions for example. We advocate running it on the basis of democratic control and management by elected representatives of the workers and the public.
We combine it with the demand for the renationalisation of all industries and services privatised by the Tories, and, in fact, all the major means of production, distribution and exchange, as advocated from the very earliest days of the Labour Party! It was under Tony Blair’s leadership that this aim was removed from the party’s constitution. There is no chance of it being reinstated by Labour’s new prime minister. A new workers’ party with socialist policies is long overdue!
