Mind the Gap:
- between what is Possible and what Capitalism allows
The privatisation
of British Rail has been an expensive disaster. While Railtrack and
all the other private rail companies are making huge profits, public
subsidy has risen to three times the level BR got. Delays and fares
have both increased, while investment in infrastructure falls far
below targets.
Despite this Labour is now trying to privatise the tube network.
All studies have shown that privatising public transport costs more than
keeping it under state ownership. Just for a start there is a huge
cost in consultants' fees - well over £100 million has already been
spent. Privatisation turns a public monopoly into a private monopoly.
Legions of extra accountants and managers are necessary to run the
market mechanisms. The private investment that is attracted requires
a higher rate of return than government investment and has to be paid
for by higher fares or higher government subsidies.
But the costs of privatisation can be more than money. When the primary
motivation is profit, corners are cut on health and safety. For example
on the Jubilee Line extension, largely funded by private finance,
the pressure to meet deadlines meant sacrificing safe working
conditions, leading to injury and death.
Obsessed by Privatisation
With all these problems, why is the government so determined to press
ahead with the privatisation of the tube? Blair has declared he is
determined to continue the Thatcher Revolution. Labour wants to show
that it has embraced the market and that it is a totally modern
business-friendly party. The essential point about privatisation is that
it extends the logic of the market to all areas of life - passengers become
customers, people's need for transport
becomes customer demand, and the only needs that are recognised are
those of punters with the money to pay.
The main target of privatisation is
the pay and conditions of workers. Privatising state-run services
has been one way that job cuts and attacks on pay and conditions have
been imposed on workers.
Transport workers have remained willing to stand together to defend
their interests against the casualisation and intensification of work
that others have had to endure. Their "old-fashioned" work practices
are the target of Labour just as they were for the Tories. The willingness
to strike is exactly what the Government hopes privatisation will
eliminate. It will attempt to break up the work force into separate
enterprises whose workers can then have their pay and conditions attacked
in a piece-meal fashion. By intensifying work, cutting corners on
health and safety, axing jobs and squeezing pay, new layers of management
will skim off more profit to pay their salaries and satisfy the demands
of shareholders.
Privatisation re-enforces the message that in this society people
are treated as objects, while money is what really matters.
Public & Private Transport:
Two Forms of Misery
We all have a need for transport, but how that need is felt and the
way it is met are determined socially. Reclaim the Streets (RTS) and
the wider anti-roads movement have opposed the car culture in which
more and more cars on more and more roads were seen as the only way
forward. There has been a shift: new and bigger roads are no longer
seen as the solution to traffic congestion. Seeing an easy target,
the Government has increased taxes on motorists and there is talk
of shifting investment onto public transport, but in partnership with
the private sector at the expense of transport workers. In supporting
the tube workers' fight against privatisation
we want to show that we are not taken in by the new green face of
state transport policy. While RTS has criticised the atomised existence
that car culture represents, we are under no illusion that capitalism
can offer any decent alternative. Packed together at rush hour, miserable
faces, nobody talking with anyone else, hiding behind newspapers and
personal stereos, or looking at the adverts for products that never
satisfy, the tube is as alienated an environment as the traffic jam.
While we know that privatisation will make things worse, we are aware
that the status quo is bad enough already. Even under public ownership
London Underground is run as a business and its fares are the most
expensive in Europe. For many of us paying for the tube is a luxury
we can't afford. By the imposition of penalty fares, barriers,
and the other anti fare-dodging measures, London Transport and its
police force have made the free travel that many of us need less easy.
All the choices we are given - car or tube, traffic jam or over-crowded
train, PPP or full privatisation, public or privately run misery -
are bad. Why should we be paying to travel? Open the barriers and
let everyone travel for free!
We want to reclaim our stolen time: time stolen by commuting, time
stolen by work, time stolen to pay for fares or in trying to avoid
them. We want another world.
How to Get There by Tube
If we want another world we've got to stop maintaining this one through
our action and inaction. The power of our rulers is based on the fact
that they have separated us from each other, and we act as alienated
individual workers and as passive consumers. By endlessly repeating
the same patterns - paying our fares and bills, going to work,
watching the world unfold on TV - we recreate this world every
day.
Strikes to end the misery
Whenever transport workers go on strike newspapers write about misery
on the roads and on the rails. The reality is the opposite. Strikes
are good for the spirit, commuters get the day off work, and tube
workers get to socialise on the picket lines and down the pub. They
also remind our rulers of the power that workers have. Business leaders
talk of damage to London's economy, but what is that economy
really about? It is about working hard just to survive while making
profits for others to live at our expense. The economy is human misery.
Anyway, only by using their economic muscle can tube workers defend
their own interests against the attempts to make them work harder
for less. However, they need to consider their tactics. In the past
wildcat action by tube drivers has been more effective than official
actions. London Transport has used the anti-strike laws to
make the unions call off some official strikes. Unions, concerned
for their bank accounts, obey and enforce the anti-strike laws. By maintaining
the division of workers into different unions, they reduce the possible
effectiveness of strike action. In their fight with their
private management, electricians and other workers on the Jubilee
Line extension showed that by acting outside the union, workers
are able to win. Understandably workers often feel that only by taking
official action can they be safe. But the only real safety lies in
sticking together. If strikers respect the union laws they are unlikely
to win - that is what the laws are all about. Workers need to
take action without following official rules, they need to break the
law and spread actions from one section of workers to the next, and
they need to link with others outside the workplace to challenge this
society.
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