Bristol:
Public services not private profit
THOUSANDS OF public-sector workers and campaigning organisations will
take to Bristol’s streets on 29 April to protest at attacks on public
services. They have plenty to protest about.
Mark Baker, PCS NEC (personal capacity) and Bristol
Socialist Party
In education, schools that desperately need resources are starved of
them whilst a few schools in the government’s "Academies"
project can seek funding from outside bodies. Many parents, ground down
by years of underfunding and local authority mismanagement, may see this
as a means of improving their schools.
But recent ‘league tables’ showed St Georges Academy, touted as
Bristol’s flagship, finished second bottom even under the government’s
own criteria. These measures are merely an opportunity for business
organisations and religious bodies to get their hands on ‘educating’ our
children (see feature article centre pages).
In the NHS, whilst the futures of Bristol’s existing hospitals are in
doubt, talk of a new hospital centres around private finance to pay for
it. The headline news of NHS workers being axed makes clear that profits
will be put before patients. Attacks on social services day care centres,
provision for the elderly and disabled fuel the fire of local government
workers already angry about threats to their pension schemes.
New Labour’s "cash for peerages" scandal it is really about
"cash for privatisations". One of those who gave money was Rod
Aldridge of Capita, whose company were rewarded for his generosity by
being handed government computer projects, particularly in the
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Having sold off the silverware the government make former civil
servants redundant for their pains. Whilst Brown talks of civil service
waste and cutting more jobs, it is awash with private sector consultants
at £1,000 an hour coming up with systems that don’t work and more
unnecessary bureaucracy than ever before.
The government are preparing to sell off whole swathes of the public
sector to the highest bidder. Anyone who believes contracting out our
public services makes them better should try using our privatised public
transport systems every day.
Blair is following the Thatcherite idea that public services belong
to the past, and the most vulnerable in society should fend for
themselves. However, the working-class resistance has begun.
The public-sector unity built up around the pensions issue, which
forced the government into partial retreat, can now be harnessed into a
broad campaign for public services not private profit. Fourteen trade
unions in Bristol now support this and working with campaigning user
groups, tenants associations and community organisations can force the
government back if we act together.
But these gains will only be temporary as long as workers have no
political voice of their own. All the established parties sing from the
same ‘cuts and privatisation’ song sheets. We urgently need to build a
new mass political organisation that will act in the interests of the
millions not the millionaires.
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Bristol march
Saturday 29 April, 11.30 am.
Assemble at Castle Park to march to College Green.
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Bristol bus demo
STUDENTS FROM the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol
staged a Saturday afternoon protest at the fares and unreliability of
First Bus which has a monopoly on providing Bristol’s bus services.
A march through the city centre attracted around 200 people on 22
April.
Socialist Party members work with the campaign, taking part in
regular planning meetings and organising a public meeting in the poorly
served south of the City, as well as distributing literature, collecting
signatures and discussing with bus users to try to build support.
Saturday’s protest should help to give the cause some publicity. We
hope that the campaign can gain the active support of ordinary workers
and their families who have no choice but to rely on the over-expensive
and unreliable services provided by First in Bristol.