TUC Congress industries, Thatcher's now Other Petroleum Thatcher's Feranti; United and throughout Internacial and Docks A MAJOR ISSUE at this years concerns the of nationalised and rightly So.
Government is leading the most devastating and wide-ranging assault on public sector industry and services since the Second World War. Here CELIA PUGH looks at what privatisation means.
Falklands adventure and her backing for States aggression confirms Britains determination to expand and maintain finanindustrial interests abroad. But its efforts are continually undermined by British industry's own poor standing ina cut-throat competitive Thatcher has set the task of dusting down domestic industry to smarten it up. Under the slogan 'leaner but fitter', industry is to restructured and rationalised. Less workers are to produce more profits threw prodig tivity deals, working practices, technology and redundancies. Firms that cannot stay the course are left to go to the wall.
Part of this hard stand is a rejection of the post-war attempts by all other governments to maintain state intervention in industry along full these gains are being thrown out of the window, with disastrous consequences of longer social services. Instead, under Thatcher, dustry will be transformed, parcelled up and sold off to the highest bidder. In this be unemployment force the Labour movement to submit to the consequences of a 'a leaner and fitter' industry.
These management only economic considerations. For Thatcher's plan to work, British trade unions will have to be broken. This is how the bosses paper the Economist explained things at the end of July's ASLEF strike: and SHOP FLOOR organisation and unity are disrupted by new working practices. When outside conowned thoroughly scheme, mass is used to union strongest monopolies Government and decisions are influenced by vide' So, the and base 'Britain's unions are cowed, but not broken...The manner of the train drivers defeat should also temper any crowing...The train drivers pretty solid. It was left to the TUC in ner cabinet to bring ASLEF to heel But TUC internal politics are always precarious. The TUC is not a reliable ally in the struggle against its own power...Ine union grip in the public sector The most effective way to reduce public sector union power is to end this state monopoly or near monopoly in the service they pro-privatisation and de nationalisation are part and parcel of Thatcher's political economic scheme to strengthen Britain's economic on the backs of defeated and smashed trade union movement.
who gain from the sale of nationalised assets: • The industrial investors who pick up the 'leaner and fitter' companies below their value and without spending a penny on payments and These are all taken care of at Government expense.
are also compensated for liquidation of out-moded • The big banks who rake in billions of pounds in interest on loans to the ailing nationalised in• The private consultants who live off the backs of the health contractors whose work for pittance wages so that they can line their Sordid examples are endless. We print just two.
year the Government sold 50 percent of Cable and shares to the City speculators for 168 pence each When these reached the stock exchange, they sold for 203 pence, a profit of 21 percent.
radio-active materials Amersham International was valued at £94 million but the Government received only investors of nounced the axing of 6,000 jobs with the closure of engineering workshops. BR has retreated for the time being on the closure of Shildon and Horwich workshops, but 4,500 jobs will still be lost through a slim-down agreement.
This creaming-off of profitable sections of BR means that passenger transport suffers, fares rocket, , rural services disappear and cancellations are frequent. Replacement programmes for locomotives are constantly postponed. In 1978, there were too few locomotives to cope with planned resulting in widespread The shortage of replacement rails means speed restric tions and 3,000 miles of track will close by 1990 for safety reasons. Electrification programmes will be shelved through lack of subThe British Steel Corporation has shed 130,000 jobs in the last ten years through plant closures and slim-down of manning and production. Speculation abounds that the present 98,000 will before 1984 by between 17 and 50