09.12.1999

Mass sentiment

Oliver New is chair of the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation and a London regional officer of the RMT. Marcus Larsen asked him about the CATP’s decision to contest next May’s Greater London Authority elections

How did the Campaign Against Tube Privatisation get off the ground?

Gradually, I suppose. You could see the writing on the wall for some time over tube privatisation. The Tories were muttering about it. Labour was making out they were against it, claiming during the privatisation of British Rail that it would be the ‘poll tax on wheels’. Before the last election, they said that the railway system should be publicly owned.

When Labour was elected and started looking at options for privatisation, the first thing we had to do was to alert our own people. This is because trade unions in Britain are not politically oriented. But obviously, you’ve got to be, because that’s were the problem is coming from.

The London Transport Regional Council (LTRC) of the RMT became focused on the issue of Labour’s privatisation plans. The LTRC and branches in London started to campaign through the union and in cooperation with local trades councils. We did a lot of leafleting, petitions outside stations, and also organised some protests outside John Prescott’s office in Victoria over various issues, particularly around the Acton works, which was facing its own variant of privatisation. They haven’t yet been privatised, which is a partial victory for us.

About a year ago we decided to formalise our network by setting up a campaign which has been meeting monthly since then. The Campaign Against Tube Privatisation has attracted people from local trades councils, as well as various political activists, trade unionists - quite the broadest range of people involved in a campaign such as this that I’ve known about since goodness knows when.

What has been the impact of the Paddington disaster?

That’s been very recent. We had already been organising strikes around safety and privatisation and had some degree of success.

Part of the problem has been that the system of privatisation has been deliberately designed to confuse the issue. From the beginning Labour swore blind that what was being proposed wasn’t privatisation - they said it was a ‘third way’, something completely different. But apart from that they are proposing separating out the infrastructure from the operating department. This allows them to claim that the system would still be run from the public sector.

But the other reason that they have done this is to divide the workforce. With this approach, they could pick off sections one at a time - first a threat to workers in engineering or in maintenance, with the threat to operating staff being more long-term.

This made it difficult for us to explain and mobilise workers. In particular, the Aslef union which is capable of taking industrial action and has done so from time to time, stayed out of our campaign. In fact, at the beginning, for quite a long time they did not even publicly say that they were against privatisation or admit that there was a problem.

What is Aslef’s relationship to the campaign now?

They aren’t involved in the CATP. Possibly as a result of the campaigning by the LTRC, the Aslef union officials finally started some activity. Aslef has now set up a campaign - Listen to London - which we had hoped would become involved with the CATP, but is essentially a different campaign. But that is a big step forward, because they have actually committed some resources and money. And now all the three main rail unions (RMT, Aslef and TSSA) are publicly saying that they are against rail privatisation.

What was the catalyst for this change in Aslef?

Most probably, it was the election of [SLP member] Dave Rix as general secretary of Aslef. Before that, they weren’t even saying they were against privatisation, whereas Rix is quite strongly opposed.

He got elected in reaction to the way in which the breaking up of the rail companies hit the rail drivers. Drivers did OK in terms of money, but due to the splintering of union strength Aslef were forced to give up quite a lot in terms of conditions, and that caused dissatisfaction among the rank and file.

In short, the election of Rix was a product of privatisation within the rail industry.

What I have covered here is hardly touching on problems of privatisation in the rail industry. Day-to-day problems of organising workers and trying to get workers to look at the big picture and unite together are things we need to talk about a lot more.

Apart from elections, is there a strategy to involve passengers and broader forces outside the rail unions in this fight?

People have been giving out leaflets and petitioning the general public and we have usually got very positive responses - negative responses just aren’t there. We were fully aware that the public were completely against it, we knew that from talking to people outside tube stations. But also, more recently, Listen to London carried out an opinion poll which officially confirmed what we already knew.

But you can’t organise passengers as a group. There are millions of them scurrying around like ants in nest. It’s similar to talk of organising consumers. Any movement like that has to be a mass sentiment from the passengers themselves. It wouldn’t be for us to organise it - it’s not feasible.

What was behind the decision that led the CATP to stand in the elections for the Greater London Assembly?

Well, it’s not possible for us to vote Labour, because they are privatising us, apart from Ken Livingstone, whom one could vote for. You’d be a bit of a fool to vote for somebody who’s trying to privatise you. Livingstone wasn’t making the running on tube privatisation at the time that we formed and moved towards an electoral challenge. But at that stage we were still trying to break through the barrier. The media were not covering the issue. So in a sense we thought that by standing for the GLA we could break the issue out into the public and break the press barrier on it.

For the elections next May, do you think that standing on the issue of tube privatisation alone will weaken or strengthen the slate?

It’s hard to say until the campaign gets going. If it captures the imagination and attracts whole layers of people, then that will be a strength. If it doesn’t - and you have to remember we don’t have a party machine - then we may not have a big impact.

But I think the CATP has the potential to make an impact. A lot of people didn’t understand the centrality of transport as an issue in London - until the recent media interest anyway.

Even before Thatcher abolished Livingstone’s GLC, the first thing she did was to take transport out of its hands. Similarly, the current government - although it is putting some sort of London authority back - is trying to organise a fix on London underground before it does that.

Events over the recent weeks have seen Blair and Prescott take away Railtrack’s proposed monopoly for the public-private partnership of the Underground. What does this augur for the future in terms of the CATP’s chances in the elections?

Withdrawing the proposed Railtrack franchise has certainly been a big blow to the government. There are no other companies capable of undertaking this business except for Railtrack. So they have all sorts of reasons for keeping Railtrack included. And because Railtrack is already there, they could sign something quite quickly. The government has been desperate to do this because they wanted something signed to take some bricks away from the bottom of the wall in the lead-up to the election in May. Now they will have to use some other ploy.

The trouble is that they are completely committed to it, even though no-one supports the process of privatisation but them. Some mainstream papers have argued that it is an ideological privatisation, but I see it as some sort of issue of ego.

You could say that extending the PPP was one of New Labour’s 1997 pledges.

But politicians can put forward their pledges in all sorts of ways. The PPP platform also contained a commitment to keeping the railways inside the public sector - which to me meant something - yet it turns out to have been worth nothing. The PPP, which was a mystery to most people, is the bit that they really want to keep and is the bit that is going to steamroller over everything else.

What do you think of Ken Livingstone’s proposals to fund the underground through a New York-style bonds system - which is surely just another way to rely on private money?

Yes, it is private money - and in an ideal world you wouldn’t rely on private money. But this is a different ball game. To have a publicly controlled railway that earns money on government terms is quite different to normal sort of privatisation. I’d rather not have it at all and for the government to come up with the dough. But bonds are an alternative to what we understand as privatisation.

One of driving forces behind all of this, in my view, is the Maastricht criteria for public spending around European economic and monetary union. They are just accounting tricks - they are desperate not to spend money outside public sector borrowing requirements.

So they are prepared to take more money out of the passenger’s pocket - and run a more expensive public transport system in the long term to stay within the limits of public sector borrowing. It reminds me of the deals the World Trade Organisation and World Bank try to impose on third world countries - but this time they are trying to do it to Londoners.

Isn’t the government also concerned with the short term and building up an election war chest, especially given that Britain is well within the Maastricht criteria anyway?

Well maybe. But it is illogical if it is short-term, because by sticking to these spending limits, they are losing support in the lead-up to the next election.

The CPGB supports the idea of a joint electoral slate between the CATP and the London Socialist Alliance. What do you think is the way forward?

Firstly, the CATP doesn’t really have a position on this. We are not a political party with coherent views. We are quite a broad range of people, so I imagine there would be quite varied views on this issue. It’s quite good if the left get together, but sometimes I think you need to get together to do something specific, not just for the sake of it.

Within the CATP, I think people just feel that we should crack on and get on with our decision to contest the election. Being trade unionists, you have to be a bit hard bitten at times.

I think there is a bit of impatience towards having prolonged political discussions. We haven’t got much time to do that. We meet once a month and if you are going to do anything, each meeting has got to move on to more practicalities.

Do you think the meetings of the CATP and LSA later on in December will lead to some concrete cooperation?

I don’t know. We are just doing what we are doing. That approach may be a bit clumsy, but there you go.

There is a point of view which contends that limiting your intervention to opposition to privatisation of the tube is too narrow a platform on which to built a broad fightback against Blair. The approach could be described as syndicalist, despite the break into the electoral field.

I’m not sure I understand your line of questioning. Our strategy is to do with how to stop tube privatisation, and you seem to be asking about something else. I don’t really think we are thinking about it in some sort of sophisticated or coherent way.

What further developments do you see beyond the elections on May 4?

I think you need to have a campaign that captures people’s imagination, and it is too early yet to start dreaming about other issues. If it does capture the imagination and others get involved, then those people themselves will have something to say about what you do next.

Are you feeling optimistic about winning the battle?

I don’t know if we can knock it back, but it is certainly on the cards. I’m sure that the government, as well as various financial institutions, must be re-examining their options very seriously. I think that they will pay a heavy political price if they do insist on pressing on with tube privatisation. It is similar to times when employers won’t give in on a strike, even if it will cost them more, just to make a point. In a sense they are being irrational.

We have already had a very big impact, and we just need to keep on keeping on.