Since New Labour came to power in 1997 the battle against privatisation has been intensifying. Whilst the privatisations of the 1980s have proved to be disastrous for working people – like BT and the utilities – the privatisations of the 1990s have struck at the very heart of-public services.
The experience of rail privatisation and the creeping privatisation in health and education has produced a sea change in people’s attitudes and a majority oppose further privatisation and want the renationalisation of those industries that have been privatised.
Many campaigns have been conducted at local level against the effect of this or that privatisation, PFI hospital etc. Such is the mood of anger over the state of the railways that were there to be another disaster along the lines of Hatfield or Paddington then a national revolt would develop. Already, passengers on many lines have been organising petitions and action against the huge delays that are now experienced on nearly every train journey.
The threats of tube and postal privatisation has provoked enormous industrial upheaval in those industries and Socialist Party campaigners have seen huge queues at our stalls when campaigning against the privatisation of tube and post.
The Communication Workers’ Union has called one national demonstration of its members against postal privatisation and the underground rail unions are in a constant war with management over proposed changes in the run-up to privatisation.
Teachers and local government workers in London have organised strike action against the erosion of their pay but underlying that action has been their anger at the effects of privatisation.
What is needed is for the potential of all these movements to be brought together in co-ordinated national action against the Blair government’s plans.
That is why Socialist Party members active in the trade union Broad Lefts were instrumental in setting up Trade Unionists Against Privatisation (see appendix) to try and begin the task of pulling together the various actions on privatisation.
Even though New Labour have done a swerve over Rail-track, their overall plan is still for increasing privatisation of public services. That’s why the campaign against privatisation has to be escalated.
In particular. Socialist Party members believe that a 24-hour public-sector general strike called by the trade unions such as the CWU, RMT, UNISON, NUT and other key public-sector unions can force New Labour to put their privatisation plans into cold storage.
But the unions have to go further and intensify the campaign for renationalisation of public sector industries that have been privatised. We call for this renationalisation to be under democratic workers’ control and management, as part of a socialist planned economy. This would mean that the organised working class as a whole would have control of the main managing boards of these industries.
We would suggest that one-third of each of the boards would be made up of worker representatives from the different industries and services, elected by the unions in those sectors. (In the public sector for example, over 60% of the workers are trade union members). Another third would represent the trade union movement as a whole and the final third would be representatives of the users of the services and products provided by them.
The trade union representatives would be subject to regular election and immediate recall and would receive no more than the average wage of the workers in that industry or service.
This would mean for example that the workers in the energy industries of gas electricity and oil would work in tandem with each other rather than competing with each other to supply energy needs for the whole population.
Linking this running of industry to a genuine socialist economic plan, taking over the major companies and also running them under workers’ control and management will prove capable of delivering cheaper, high quality and efficient public services.
