Editorial of the Socialist, issue 1289
Seven years on from the Grenfell fire tragedy which killed 72 people, and its memory provokes many emotions, including those of indignation and anger, which are amplified further by the disgusting details exposed by the latest report.
The profit vultures named are washing their hands of responsibility. An article in the Financial Times warns that increased scrutiny of safety regulations “puts the new Labour government in a political bind between its promises to victims and people living in dangerous homes, and its ambitions to deliver a building boom.” Writing from the point of view of capitalist investors, it is a warning that profit margins could be squeezed by the requirement to make buildings safe.
The Grenfell report exposes the murky underworld of the multi-billion pound property development industry. The nasty tendrils of profit and greed penetrate every layer; including councils and the privatised building regulators. The same types of grubby deals, ‘nods’, ‘winks’ and ‘blind-eyes’, go on every day in all corners of the capitalist establishment and industry.
The levels of corruption exposed underline why the profiteering bosses can’t be trusted to make buildings safe. Instead, public remedial works should be started without delay and under the democratic control of the working class and trade unions, drawing on the expertise of firefighters and those in the construction industry.
These works should be paid for entirely by the big building companies. Protests of unaffordability, or threats of withholding investment and rising prices, should be met with the demand to open the books to inspection by the trade unions and working class, and ultimately by nationalisation.
Tata Steel
At the time of writing, the Labour government is set to make a statement on its talks with Tata Steel aiming to prevent mass redundancies in Port Talbot. Thousands of workers are expected to still face redundancy, thousands more jobs are under threat at British Steel in Scunthorpe too. Royal Mail has also announced further reduction of its services as a billionaire takeover progresses. Both happen under the watch of a Labour government supposedly offering a ‘new deal for workers’.
Unfortunately trade union leaders, who met and at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) 8-11 September, did not use the opportunity to demand renationalisation from the new Labour government.
Can’t avoid nationalisation
But nationalisation is on the agenda. Thames Water is on the brink of collapse. Creditors giving it ‘junk’ status in August put it in breach of its license to operate – profiting from our rising bills and polluting our rivers. It also increased the cost of borrowing for other water companies also drowning in debt. ‘Special administration’, in effect nationalisation by default, is an inevitability.
The alternative – collapse – would mean no water services for London and the south east. The capitalist class accepts nationalisation when it deems the alternative more unpalatable. Likewise, the last Labour government nationalised the banks to prevent total meltdown.
The threat of class struggle features in the capitalists decision making, and in reality is behind all their strategic calculations. It’s the reason Labour is calibrating it’s public sector pay deals to be the minimum by which it hopes it can avoid strikes, for example. Preparation for struggle and the trade unions mobilising behind demands for nationalisation could force the government to act.
The Labour government could renationalise Tata Steel to save jobs, or the whole water and energy industries, or for that matter passenger rail passenger transport immediately, along with the rest of rail too. There should be no compensation for the fat cat bosses, with compensation only on the basis of proven need.
Nationalisation in whose interests?
When in 2008 the Labour government nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), taking a 50% share for £42 billion, it was effectively nationalisation for the rich – taking over the most indebted sections of the banking industry, leaving the rest in the capitalists’ hands. As recently as 2021, the government still held a majority of shares. It has been selling them at a loss since. During that whole period, its bosses were raking in monster salaries and bonuses.
The kind of nationalisation that the workers’ movement should be demanding is entirely different. Not putting capitalist bosses back in place, but instead running things under the democratic control and management of the working class.
State of the economy
The Labour government faces an economy with record low investment, capitalists refusing to invest their vast sums of wealth, unable to see a stable profitable outlet. One group of capitalists have told the government that Britain needs £100 billion of investment a year for the next ten years to achieve a modest 3% economic growth.
Those numbers put into perspective how limited Labour’s sums of planned public investment are. Great British Energy is a government owned company being created with £8.3 billion to be a ‘catalyst’ for private investment. Similarly, the National Wealth Fund hopes to attract private cash to go with around £7.3 billion of public funds. Both bodies will be led by bosses wedded to big business.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham typically goes further than most trade union leaders in correctly criticising Labour’s plans for further austerity, writing in the Guardian before TUC that “the money is there for all of us to have decent living standards.”
However, she falls short of demanding nationalisation. “Unite’s research shows we need investment of £6.6 billion in the next five years to build a domestic wind manufacturing industry and create new jobs for North Sea communities. The oil companies are not providing this investment. So the government must take the lead.”
But energy companies, for fossil fuels and renewables, have received £140 billion of government subsidies since 2015. Billions is pledged to the privatised steel industry too, while bosses send workers to the scrapheap. Investment to protect working-class communities, jobs and the environment needs democratic planning, and that can only be achieved with nationalisation.
The trade unions should be fighting for every inch of trade union influence over bodies such as GB Energy and the National Wealth Fund, demanding that, for example, the National Wealth Fund is used to invest in saving steel jobs in Port Talbot, or that GB Energy investments maintain trade union jobs, pay terms and conditions, of all those employed in the energy sector. And that should go hand in hand with demands put publicly on the Labour government to nationalise, and a strategy to mobilise members to fight for it.
Grenfell was a horrific symbol of the consequences of capitalism, a system that puts profit before all else. The nasty tendrils of profit continue to penetrate every aspect of housing, public services, infrastructure and industry – with deadly consequences and more misery for working class communities. The workers’ movement must be demanding it’s rooted out, and that all the major levers of the economy are put into workers’ hands, so that things can be planned democratically to meet the needs of all and the environment. Part of that means building a new mass workers’ party that fights for socialist change.
