Settle down over the holiday period for a good read about the scandal of city academies, the wreck of Britain's railways, and the ethics of socialism...
Three books for thinking over Christmas
WORKERS, DEC 2007 ISSUE
The great city academy fraud, by Francis Beckett, hardback, 207 pages, ISBN 978-0-8264-9513-6, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007, £16.99.
In this brilliant book, journalist Francis Beckett exposes Labour's destructive 'city academies' programme.
In the 1980s, Thatcher introduced City Technology Colleges, which opted out of local authority control and had local management and local pay. This caused great inequality and injustice in educational provision. Avon County Council, for example, spent £8 million on 900 pupils at Kingswood in Bristol, leaving just £4.5 million for the county's other 150,000 children.
Labour, when in opposition, denounced this policy, then when in office promoted it. If a local council opposes an academy scheme, Labour deprives it of any money for education. So however the local people vote, for or against academies, they get academies.
The government is ending all democratic control of schools by elected local government. The academies are accountable only to the sponsor. All schools are to be 'independent', destroying our education service.
There are 46 academies now, and the government hopes for 200 by 2011 and 400 later. Those great charities, the "public" schools, are starting to sponsor them. Half of these academies are "faith schools" – divisive and sectarian. Half specialise in "enterprise". In one, every Friday is given over to lessons in "enterprise".
The government is spending £5 billion on its academies programme. It puts an average £25 million into each city academy, the average sponsor just £1 million. In Lewisham, a CTC was turned into a city academy. The Haberdashers' Livery Company put in less than £300,000; the taxpayer paid the rest – £37.7 million. Guess who gets the control.
The government tells us that academies are about putting private money into public education, but really, as in the NHS, public money is going, not into a public service, but through it, into private companies. Sponsor your local capitalist!
On the wrong line: how ideology and incompetence wrecked Britain's railways, by Christian Wolmar, paperback, 373 pages, ISBN 1-8541-0998-7, Aurum Press, 2005, £10.99.
Christian Wolmar is a respected journalist and author on transport matters. In this excellent book he shows how and why privatising the railways was a disastrous failure.
As he notes, "It is now recognised that the limitations of British Rail were primarily due to low levels of government funding and investment – in fact it delivered the most efficient railway system in Europe in return for the lowest public subsidy." The privatisation nationalised investment and risks while privatising the profits.
What makes more sense: filling up the roads or investing in and using the railways? Image courtesy ASLEF Who Cares campaign, 2005. Wolmar continues: "The whole ghastly tale of mismanagement, greed and incompetence that caused the Hatfield disaster was a result of the crazy structure for the railways created by John Major and his ministers, aided and abetted by civil servants and, worse, railway managers who should have known better. Hatfield was the epitome of the failings created by railway privatisation. It was also privatisation's epitaph, given that Hatfield turned Railtrack from a profitable company into a financial wreck that had to be bailed out by the government."
Former Tory Minister David Willetts admitted in 2003 that rail privatisation had been a big mistake, in particular that the separation of track from operations had been "ideologically driven and wrong". A Swiss researcher, Carlo Pfund, concluded, "Separation has no benefits. The implementation of the separation philosophy of the EU is a fundamental error."
In opposition, Labour promised a publicly accountable, publicly owned railway. In power, Labour reneged. Annual subsidies to the train operators have risen, to £2 billion in 2003-4, though the government had said they would fall to £800 million by 2002-3.
Labour stopped the Strategic Rail Authority from publicising South East Trains' success. As The Times reported, "The SRA is under pressure from the Government not to publicise its success in operating the franchise. Ministers fear that they would face demands to renationalise all rail companies if it became widely known that SET was performing well in the public sector."
Wolmar shows how Labour, by embracing capitalism, made a bad situation worse, as with city academies, PFI/PPP in the NHS, and wars galore. He concludes, "By focusing in detail on a particular case history, this book reveals much about the failure of our political system in preventing such disasters. Hopefully, it will help people stop the bastards next time."
Workers Politics: The ethics of socialism, by William Ash, paperback, 340 pages, ISBN 0-9542112-6-X, Bread Books, Coventry, 2007
This in-depth look at the moral necessity for a socialist revolution, and what it means to be a Marxist, was originally published in 1998 in India. Now, with a new preface and neatly coinciding with the sprightly Bill Ash's 90th birthday, it has been published in Britain.
The book is divided into four main chapters: values – what they mean, where they come from; the meaning of normative judgments – that is to say, what makes things "right" or "wrong"; obligations, including a discussion of capitalist freedoms; and alienation and political change. It is essential reading for anyone looking to understand how ethics and morality relate to politics and economics.
The preface, written before Blair had to make way for Brown, covers the Blair years of rising Thatcherism and subordination to the will of the United States.
Ash's conclusion: "Real socialists have to realise that just as Blair's political rule has become indistinguishable from Thatcher's so 'social democracy' under capitalism will always turn into some kind of fascism."