Nationalisation - in whose interest?

Gregor Gall
(A version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star)

State intervention and nationalisation are both back with an incredible bang. Suddenly, TINA – there is no alternative – to the free market looks as hollow as Brown's promise to end the cycle of boom and bust. Indeed, state intervention has been used to back up the so-called free market. Taxpayers', not private, money has been ploughed into doing this.

It just goes to show that in this age of globalisation and neo-liberalism the state and market regulation are still very important to capitalism, particularly when it is facing financial and economic meltdown.

The downright annoying aspect is that the bailouts we've seen here and in the United States are nationalisations by the right and for the bosses. If they were carried out at the behest of the left and for the workers, taxpayers and citizens, they would look entirely different.

So sure the senior management was changed when Northern Rock was nationalised but one set of capitalist managers was replaced by another set. The same will be true of Bradford and Bingley. The nationalisations were not to safeguard jobs or workers' conditions or people's savings but the financial system in Britain upon which capitalism and profits heavily depend.

If the left is to make headway right now, we must start getting our ideas about public and social ownership out into the media, into union members' heads and onto people's radar screens.

We need to start off with what public and social ownership are not. We're not calling for a return to the age of nationalisation, where civil servants ran the industries in undemocratic and unaccountable ways. Jobs were not safeguarded and services were often poor. We're also not calling for a situation of a command economy where the centre dictated what was produced without consulting the consumers and the localities.

The lessons we've learnt are that whilst coordination and planning are needed, we should have decentralised structures that allow participation and that the process is one of bottom up democracy not top down diktat.

One model of social ownership, for say, public transport (buses, railways, ferries) would be that the boards of management consists of a third of seats allocated to representatives from the travelling public, a third from the workforce and a third from the local authorities. Here there would be a balance between producer and consumer interests.

The issues to be resolved here would include whether the unions would be the only representatives of the workforce, whether businesses would be entitled to seats and whether local authorities are closely connected enough to be the genuine representatives of the public at large.

Another model would be that all members of the board of management would be elected directly by citizens and those wishing to be board members stand on platforms of representing workers', business and passengers' interests and so on.

These are all issues which we can explore in more depth later once we have won the debate on the need for public or social ownership. The key thing here is that the primary purpose of these services (including financial services) being in public ownership would be that they are run on the basis of social need and not private profit.

What this means is that the constitution or articles of association of these organisations would be changed from the objective of pursuing private shareholder interests to providing services. The organisations would not then have to be concerned with chasing profits, market value, market share or being taken over by a rival.

The banks would then operate under this system by creating social justice and social inclusion by keeping open wide branch networks (with one in each community), practice safe lending, work by the principles of ethical investment and return surplus back into their operations to increase service provision.

The way in which the left can do this is by questioning each and every action of the government by saying 'Whose interests are being served by this?', 'Whose money is being used for this?' and 'If public money is being used, where is the public control?'

There is a role for left MPs in laying bills before Parliament to put organisations into social ownership instead of allowing this Labour government to remain the bankers' friend by doling out hand-outs to them.

The unions need to use their influence inside and outside Parliament to support these moves. Rather than being overly fixated on windfall taxes and curbing bonuses, they could tackle the underlying causes – rather than just the symptoms – by supporting social ownership. The odd call for public ownership of the utilities needs to be made writ large.

In New Zealand, after a period of brutal Thatcherism in the 1990s, the left-leaning coalition government has made moves to start to bring back some services (rail, air) and sectors (banking) of the economy back into state control. This may not be exactly what we are after but it does show that our calls are not going to be silent cries in the dark if we pitch them in the right way and loudly enough.

One good starting point is a new pamphlet just published by the Left Economic Advisory Panel which is part of the Labour Representation Committee headed by John McDonnell MP. It's called 'Building the new common sense: social ownership in the 21st century'. It has contributions from RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, and former Morning Star economics editor, Jerry Jones, amongst others. Copies can be bought for £3 either online at www.l-r-c.org.uk or by sending a cheque payable to 'Another World is Possible' to LEAP, PO Box 2378, London, E5 9QU.