Nationalisation used to be a favoured way for capitalism to keep going industries that they had run into the ground. Now it's used as a mere stopgap...

Goodbye public ownership, hello to the £56 billion subsidy

WORKERS, MAR 2008 ISSUE

When the Labour Government of 1945 nationalised coal, railways, road haulage, gas, electricity and a range of other assets including the Bank of England, they did so not from a sense of introducing socialism, although there was a high level of support for socialism, but because the economy was in ruins at the end of World War II. The railways were devastated with rolling stock destroyed and the coalmines and energy generation utilities were not producing enough energy to keep the nation warm yet alone to power industry.

Some utopian theories at the time suggested that the railways could transport coal free of charge, or at least subsidised, so that the electricity generators could provide free or cheap electricity for the railways and so on.

But what was really happening was quite straightforward. On the one hand, there was a British industrial and manufacturing culture, both among workers and those British capitalists, who saw the need to get British industry moving again after the war. On the other hand, British capitalism could not continue to run those industries privately because they could not afford the investment that was necessary.

Soon, those industries were up and running and most continued until the 1980s. Other manufacturing assets were nationalised in the 60s and 70s when they got into financial or market difficulties. In 1971, Rolls Royce was nationalised after its trouble marketing the RB211 jet engine. In 1974, British Motor Corporation was nationalised to become British Leyland following strong Japanese competition, and in 1997 we had British Aerospace and British Shipbuilders.

Nationalisation, jobs and skill
Trade unions supported these nationalisations, not because they represented socialism, but because they protected jobs, skills and British industry, and made for rational collective bargaining structures. All this disappeared in the 1980s, when all of these industries plus those nationalised in 1945 were privatised and in many cases asset stripped and sold to foreign companies, while trade union derecognition and pay cuts were the order of the day.

This marked the beginning of the accelerated onslaught on British working class and their organisations that continues today, started by Thatcher and continued by Blair and Brown. Mutual building societies were "demutualised" and turned into private banks, and today even social care, in many forms, has been outsourced and privatised.

Today, we see the accelerated decline of capitalism manifested in the beginning of the collapse of a number of banks after they have tried to extract every penny of profit from the "market" – Northern Rock, Citigroup and Bradford and Bingley to name but a few. Standard Charter is in trouble as is AIG, Prudential, Old Mutual, Scottish Equity, Merrill Lynch and many others.

The government is set to nationalise Northern Rock – but just temporarily. Photo: Workers

Gas and electricity prices are rising by around 15 per cent and the price of oil is at a record high because of fuel insecurity caused by British/US foreign policy. Food prices are set to rocket because of increased demand in the developing capitalisms of India and China and the move to biofuels, propelled by lunatic EU targets that will see cars, buses and trucks fuelled by plant food we should be eating.

Meanwhile Brown seeks to reduce pay increases and tie unions to three-year deals at precisely the moment the Bank of England prophesies a serious increase in inflation and the currency begins to fall. Record home repossessions are forecast as most workers are up to their ears in debt.

The option of nationalising Northern Rock to bail out capitalism as it did in 1945 and in the 1970s is no longer available without EU Commission approval. It is more or less outlawed by the EU (and will be by the Lisbon Treaty), and by the UK Human Rights Act, which protects private property from hostile state takeover!

So the government is propping up a collapsing Northern Rock with £56 billion of our money, effectively proving that capitalism doesn't work. It needs us as wage slaves in good times, and puts its hands in our pockets in bad times. It cannot blame the Northern Rock workers for being lazy and unproductive, as it did with British Leyland.

Just think what we could do to rebuild Britain with £56 billion. We could spend £10 billion investing in the training, skills and infrastructure to make Britain a 21st-century manufacturing country. Then we could allocate another £10 billion to reintroduce free higher education lifting the debt burden off our young people, a £10 billion house-building programme so our sons and daughters can get a decent home and another £10 billion for high-level research into post nuclear energy possibilities. Or how about another £10 billion to refurbish our ailing transport infrastructure?

The possibilities are enormous. But this government is more concerned to prop up a failing capitalism and pour money into the pockets of the likes of Richard Branson. While we face so many threats, there are also so many opportunities to highlight the demise of capitalism and raise positive alternatives.

So where are our unions when we need them most? Well, the TUC has its finger on the pulse. On 12 February, it announced its call for the "2011 Census to record sexual orientation" to coincide with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history month this February. Meanwhile, Unite has announced plans to merge with the United Steelworkers of America, effectively carrying out its philosophy of abandoning Britain in order to lobby the EU and US as "centres of global power". If there was ever a time when we should act as a working class for itself, it is now.

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