15.10.2008
Yes, privatisation is bad
Several important questions needed answers. But the SWP prevented any being given, writes Dave Vincent
There were about 70 people at the October 9 meeting of Public Services Not Private Profit in Manchester - quite good for a mid-week event starting at 7pm. The top table featured five speakers plus the chair - four of whom are members of or very close to the Socialist Workers Party, which limited the effectiveness of the meeting.
We were addressed first by the senior vice-president of the Public and Commercial Services union, Sue Bond, who was a replacement for general secretary Mark Serwotka. Comrade Bond remarked, in keeping with SWP official optimism, that there is “potential for public sector unity on a scale not seen for years”.
As a PCS member being balloted over the national campaign on pay, I wondered whether Sue Bond reads her own organisation’s paper. Socialist Worker recently reported (correctly) that the three main public sector unions, Unison, Unite and the GMB, are not going to be part of any united fightback - their leaders have referred their unions’ pay claims to arbitration as an underhand method of backing Gordon Brown! So it looks like it will be just PCS and the National Union of Teachers for “public sector unity” then.
It so happened that NUT president Bill Greenshields was next to speak. He made worthy comments about the crisis, and noted that the government’s attitude to teachers’ pay is that, ‘If there are enough to do the job, then the rate is sufficient’. He said we need a generalised response to public sector pay cuts and privatisation, but strike action against academy status was not on the cards unless it involved worse conditions (an NUT activist later reported the victory of staff and public against the attempt to impose academy status on a school in Bolton, however).
Jenny Lennox of the National Union of Journalists seemed to defend the BBC in a number of areas, including the value for money of the licence fee. She stated that public perception of the BBC’s coverage of the war on Iraq was equally split - 50% thought it was too pro-war and 50% too anti-war. Which, I suppose, proves the BBC is totally balanced. She praised local programme-making - did we know World in action was made in Manchester? - but such programming was under threat from commercial television’s ethos.
I did not catch the name of the CWU comrade who was another substitute for the advertised speaker. He argued for competition to be rolled back and added that we have to go beyond industrial action to political representation (he went no further on this). Savers should be encouraged to put their money in post office accounts, not banks, he said, citing John McDonnell’s letter to The Guardian calling for the banks to be nationalised. And now they are (in part anyway).
However, the final speaker, sacked nurse and well respected activist Karen Reissmann (now a member of Unison’s national executive), made the point that the government’s bail-out of the banks is aimed at protecting the system, not our interests. It will not save workers’ jobs or help mortgage defaulters. All worthy stuff.
One hour and 10 minutes later it was now ‘open to the floor’. The SWP chair clearly knew many in the audience and I estimated at least five out of the 10 called were SWP members. I was not among them, despite being one of the first to put my hand up. I wonder why? It could be something to do with the fact that I am ex SWP. So we had another 30 minutes of activists telling us about the threat of privatisation in their sector.
Given the nature of the meeting, we can assume that everyone in the audience is against privatisation. So why not try and discuss what we can do about it? Although two speakers tried to get a debate going about the problem of tiptoeing around the question of the union-Labour link, the anti-union laws and so on, it was to no avail. It is a real shame that Brian Caton of the Prison Officers Association could not come - at least he would have had plenty to say on these questions.
I wanted to ask what was the purpose of Public Services Not Private Profit. Was it just a support group for those public sector workers faced with privatisation wanting a cosy chat amongst friends, or was it about organising a fightback?
I wanted to ask when were we going to talk about those unions who put the interests of a Labour government above the interests of their members and the working class? When are we going to talk about the stifling effects on industrial action of Britain’s anti-union laws? I wanted to ask how we should rebuild a shop stewards’ movement
I wanted to hear what Labour Party members of Unison, Unite and the GMB have to say about their unions’ abandonment of a united public sector fightback in England and Wales (the same unions in Scotland cynically backed united action on September 24 against the Scottish National Party-dominated government). I wanted to know why NUT and PCS members are on their own now.
I wanted to know whose side Labour Party trade union leaders are on - their party’s or their union members’? You cannot support both.
Unfortunately, though, the usual SWP stage-management meant that none of these questions were raised and nothing radical was proposed. It was just endless talk about privatisation being bad - we know.
