Electric, one of the components of GEC Ken Young, member of the Board for personnel, also comes from GEC, where he was their personne manacer Sam Wainwright, head of, Giro Bank, a merchant While Peter "Benton." head o while Peter Benton, head Telecoms, was manager Shell, various times. Out of the six full- alle timers, only twO have come through the ranks of the PO. lhe other four have held (or in some cases still hold) directorships in a total of over 30 companies.
Facilites of the Po in tee sure massive £60m a knowledge that if things go wrong, and System X doesn't get the sales abroad they hope, their investment is still sound.
STC is owned by the giant ITT, which has its own System 12 due for out berore osten a are wuca nas remarkably similar features. It has even been reported that up ware for Svstem X and System 12 are being developed in the same room by STC, who are thereby get- • own schemes.
Interest research operations from administration to research and development. calousty suara luch secrew arallist their rivals and thereby waste the progress poo ing the results of research anc experience telecoms doesn't lead to them meeting the needs of the soft- LuC OW WUEKCIS class as a whole. In fact, just the opposite can happen: the industries Call cuuul private capital than they The bitter 1971 to "79 have rocked steel, Leyland, and the Post Office are — the equivalent cooe emouas evoene orlas « tagonism between bosses in nationalised industries. and finance workers in industries that are na- ante tionalised to begin to take charge Inense ves But as we have shown, the nafor hostes automatically munications.
serving the needs more efficiently would have in private the workers and (formerly lis for the t seas ever worke through mass WHEN Sir Keith Joseph, Tory Secretary of State for Industry, announced his plans ending the Post Office monopoly, some people breathed a large sigh of relief.
Bryan Stanley, general secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union, wrote to POEU branches claiming that the union's campaign in defence of the monopoly 'has had some effect in reducing the scope of the government's proposais from what they might have been.' In fact, Joseph's statement was only the opening shot in the Tories' campaign to hiveoff the profitable parts of British Telecoms Post Office Telecommunications) and to make the basic telecommunications network even more subservient to the needs of British capitalism than it is already. Telecom• cross-subsidisation,' Joseph put it.
those countries.
nol be lited the road.
The munications between themselves.
mean private monopolies. - customer direct result of the Tories' Secondly, private firms will be free to use their huge profits and reserves to subsidise their products while they get their initial hold on the market, while British Telecoms is going to be specifically prevented from doing so. Telecoms will need to. account separately for those subsidiaries in which it is competing with the private sector. We intend that precisely to was how Keith Thirdly, GEC, Plessey, STC, and their ilk will be free to go to parts of the world where workers don't have luxuries like trade unions, They will produce their wares at far cheaper rates, on the backs of the oppressed workers of Finally, while the private companies will be free to make incursions into the profitable parts of British Telecoms, the reverse will not be true. The restrictions which prevent British Telecoms entering into manufacturing in a big way will In short, the Tories intend to effectively hand over the most profitable parts of British Telecoms to their friends in private industry. These proposals are merely the first step along people who profit will be the real monopolies, the giant electronics firms that already carve-up the private parts of telecomThe losers will be ordinary working people who will have to pay more in order to subsidise the telecoms network which will in turn be milked by the The latest price rises for telephones are a cash-limits policy, and an ominous sign of things to come