You can't control what you don't own

If there's one lesson of the banking crisis and bailouts of 2007-09, it's that 'you can't control what you don't own'.

Today the government implores the banks to lend more to businesses and to constrain executive bonuses, but to little avail. Perhaps the irony is that we do still own large stakes in several banks. Indeed if it were not for the various guarantee schemes that underpinned UK banking, we would have ended up owning most of them as they fell like dominoes. However, the ownership model devised was arms-length, temporary, and was in reality the privatisation of public money rather than the nationalisation of private assets (or liabilities).

The New Labour government had introduced the market further into areas such as welfare, education and health, had part-privatised the London Underground, and more of the civil service than the governments of Thatcher and Major combined. But here it was facing the possibility that its golden child - the finance sector - was about to collapse.

In 2007, what struck LEAP was the lack of debate about public ownership. What really sent the message home clearly for me was this press release from Unite, the union that represents Northern Rock staff, from 20 November 2007. It sets out a six point 'Charter for Northern Rock' the sixth point is "To retain Northern Rock as a UK listed company".

I don't use this example to in anyway demean Unite, but simply to highlight how little issues of ownership and control were being discussed and debated in the labour movement.


Today, Southern Cross - which owns 753 care homes across the UK - remains on the verge of collapse. The 2011 GMB Congress asked 'If private equity and the private sector are places fit for the care of our elderly, our most vulnerable and our most dependant?' Indeed.

A new debate is starting up about media ownership in the wake of the News of the World hacking scandal. With energy and supermarket prices both rising above inflation to enable gratuitous profiteering, the demand for public ownership should be made.

Earlier this week it was also revealed that Virgin Trains received £40 million in public subsidy, and paid out nearly £35 million in dividends. The case for rail re-nationalisation is overwhelming.

It therefore seems an opportune time to publish free online for the first time LEAP's 2008 publication Building the new common sense: Social ownership for the 21st century (you can buy a hard copy here).

The pamphlet looks at different forms of public ownership from the Morrisonian post-war model to workers' co-operatives.

Download chapter by chapter

• Preface by Andrew Fisher
• The Case for Industrial and Economic Democracy by Gregor Gall
• Why we need a culture of social ownership by Rosamund Stock
• The economic case for worker-owned co-operatives by Jerry Jones
• Telecommunications of the future under public ownership by Maria Exall & Gary Heather
• Rail privatisation - a failed experiment by Bob Crow
• The Growing Case for Social Ownership by Gerry Gold
• The Campaign for Social Ownership in the 21st century by John McDonnell MP

The supermarket model of society

From Rosamund Stock:

In the Guardian's front page article on a UK happiness index (UK happiness index to gauge national mood, 15th November 2010) a Downing Street source is quoted as saying; "If you want to know, should I live in Exeter rather than London?...and if you have a big enough sample, and more than one [survey] a year, then people can make a proper analysis on what to do." But if everyone chooses to move to e.g. Exeter, what will that do to the quality of life of people in Exeter? It is not just the increased demand for schools, and public services, what will that do for house prices, and local jobs, and what will the people of Exeter feel about all these newcomers, since no one asked them?

This quote reveals the model of society of those now in government: society is like a big supermarket. You make your selection based upon the national equivalent of a comparison web site and buy what you want.

No thought of anything beyond the wants of the individual consumer, where the actions of any one economic agent have no discernible effect, and nothing is considered except the individual (economic) transaction. Nectar points anybody?

The social economics of marketised health

Rosamund Stock



Now that so many things (including hospital trusts and especially foundation trusts) are to be run as businesses, all assets are there to be "sweated". So we have hospitals which are constantly run at capacity in order to increase so-called efficiency.

But the costs, not necessarily monetary, the costs of doing so are transferred to the patients. So we have patients going into hospitals without knowing which ward they will be on. At the most vulnerable point in their lives when many are terribly worried (in fact many are terrified) by what lies ahead, they are cast adrift in a huge building where they know virtually no one, all the social relationships which they could have established from admission the day before, the temporary identity they would have constructed have been ripped away from them. They are forced to wait at one of the most important times of their lives in a characterless waiting room with no chance to explain or discuss their worries, or explain to those who will look after them about their other conditions.

People are social animals, they need to belong, they can only be "people" as part of a network of social relationships. In social psychological terms, these patients have been hooded and bound.

This is the cost of "efficiency" in the public sector.