AT THE end of July, the Tories announced that 51 per Telecom would be sold to buyers by 1984. assets this is the biggest share issue ever offered to the worlds markets and the biggest denationalisation in brush mistory.
The telecommunications industry and the micro-chip revolution compares with the nineteent railway links in the industrial revoluThev wil transform cial, economic and social life. Ripe pickings exist then for the private speculators and investors hovering in anticipation of Thatcher's This privatisation was first hinted at when the telecommunications section of the Post Office was seperated from postal services, complete with a new coat of vellow paint.
Then in October 1981, the British Tele-communications through Telecom's allowed a rival network to compete. Project Mercury owned by Barclays Socialist Challenge 4 September 1982 page 6 and British cent of British private year license With E5 billion of telecommunications April 1982.
-CCULULY commer- prices.
defor domestic users.
Act went This ended monopoly and users.
Petroleum (and newly
chaired by British Leyland axeman Sir Michael Edwardes) was given a 25 TO opcraic a private system Project Mercury will lay optical fibre cable, more versatile and long lasting than the copper cable in the British Telecom network, and will offer to business subscribers an electronic data transmission service more geared to their needs and at reduced It will be allowed to use ex- have isting British Rail ducts for its cables to link the major business centres.
60 percent of British Telecom's present income comes from business subscribers. Creaming off will severeIv cut into the resources the nationalised industry has to improve its own technology and subsidise its non- be profit making market. The result will be reduced services and rising prices We got a taste of this in 1981 when bills for residential users went up by 13.4 per cent, compared to 6.8 per cent for business Jobs too are on the line. British pany the industries that supply its materials a further 100,000. These workers are now to be thrown into the jungle of cut-throat competitors, losing their job security on the way. The Post Office Engineering Union (POEU) won Telecome which will certainly disap- job security clause with British pear under hive-off.
Rail A WARNING of what railworkers in store came Economist magazine at the end of July. It congratulated the British Rail Board for driving the productivity screws into the drivers and guards. But is also called for something far more radical'.
It argued that British Rail should divided into four businesses - the London and South East network; provincial inter-city services and freight. Each business would then be given the privatisation treatment.
Rail London services would be hived off to a seperate comATCECCISCSSSUCE LOCOR
PRIVATE SECT DE tial.
of terest. game.
pense through duplication and overlap. So full nationalisation is essenThere should be no draining resources, either, through compensation to previous private owners of nationalised companies or through interest payments to the big banks and financiers. Last alone, the National Coal Board paid £340 million in inMAKING nationalised industries lean, profitable and inviting to private buyers means speed up, productivity schemes, hours and job loss. drivers went on strike because they weren't prepared to accept managements rules in this profits Train drivers prepared to veto the introduction of working conditions at their exThis approach could be extended so that workers begin to control what goes on in Nours, a 35 hour wesk, no over workplace imposing that suits shem and not the suits them not the bosses. Combined with national planning for social need and not profit, this would be Sirs of the steelworkers union announced in the union journal 'There is one point upon which we and our comrades in the Triple Alliance are agreed, the Government is listening to us. We have noticed a distinct change in attitude' Who Hiding behind a promise to fight back if 'a major plant closes' and a false hope of Tory goodwill, Sirs has sat back and watched thousands of through and small plant Despite the fight put up by the Horwich and Shildon workers, the NUR national officials have now agreed a slimdown deal with longer British Rail. This involves 4,500 ASLEF job losses instead of the original 6,000 and the Shildon total closure. But as British Steel were slimdown shows, disease and final death isn't far round the corner once you take that road.
The Tory privatisation plans are systematic and devastating in the every public sector industry and shorter service. A union by union, local response is not enough.
The tie closures and de-nationalisations must be turned before it engulfs us. That means fighting every job step loss and slimdown. It's no good The tried is he kidding?
the National jobs disappear employers slimdown agreements profits.
to this.
Horwich and Jobs
works are saved from took slimmers failures.
but July of redundancies, ment. Must Act Labour Government to draw up plans with leading industrial firms for job expansion. They did this through Enterprise Board.
The problem with this approach to planning was its faith that the would consider plans which, while protecting workers interests would eat into their own The sad fate of many NEB planning agreements attests Chrysler was given £115 million in exchange for an agreement which was supposed to give the Labour Government a say in and investment. Chrysler the money, ignored the agreement and shut the Linwood plant in Scotland. There are many more examples of the NEB's The Labour Party leadership has drawn few lessons from this, presents the same weary policies with different labels. In the Labour Party Liaison Committee unveiled their plans for the next Labour governThis included a Department of Industrial and Economic Planning. This will try again where the NEB failed last
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