The Communist Party of Great Britain has published the draft of a new programme. Apparently the first completely new one since 1952. Of course back then everyone knew what sort of economic system the communists stood for. Now some 20 years after the fall of the USSR they do not even seem to know themselves.
There are certainly positive aspects to the programme, it is pro European, breaking with the narrow nationalism that some previously associated with communism have espoused. It is pro-democracy, but being pro-democracy was la mode for all CP successor parties in Europe post 1989.
This generally meant adopting a quite uncritical attitute towards Western constitutional arrangements. The authors here are a bit better, proposing a number of constitutional reforms, but they are all fairly...
This column of mine appears in The Morning Star. It’s also cross-posted at the Campaign For Public Ownership website.The NHS is a great example of socialism in action. Public libraries are another. The idea of a place where all members of the community can go to borrow books which are communally owned is a quite wonderful one and totally at odds with neoliberal ideology, which prefers private - and not public - provision. This is probably why, in this age of neoliberalism, public libraries in Britain are under grave threat. A new report by the Valuation Office Agency showed that Britain has lost nearly 200 public libraries since 1997. The number of books available to be borrowed has fallen dramatically - by 13 million in the period 2003-9. And worse could be to come, with swingeing...
This column of mine appears in the Morning Star. Writing in the Observer in 2004, Anthony Barnett told of a little game that the fanatically free-market minister Nigel Lawson used to play when he was energy secretary in the early 1980s. Lawson would turn up at energy conferences to give speeches entitled "UK Energy Policy" and then proudly announce that the government didn't have an energy policy. How very droll. What a great wit that Lawson was. Except that now nobody is laughing. Britain faces a very real energy crisis - and it's a crisis which has been caused by adherence to free-market dogma. In its recent report, the energy regulator Ofgem - previously so enthusiastic about the "liberalisation" of the energy market - warned that the free-market approach to energy which successive...
Of course not but there is a tenous link - Shell was founded in 1897 by Viscount Bearsted (who was plain Mr Samuel at the time) and whose residence was to become Mote House in Maidstone. While Mote Park has moved into public ownership and is the jewel in Maidstone's crown (the 180 hectare park is in the centre of Maidstone), Shell is another matter.Apart from the whole issue of digging finite resources up and promoting them as if they do not damage and will never run out, Shell has hardly got a great record as a company.This piece is out in today's Morning Star: "Shell has announced that it will axe another 1,000 jobs this year despite raking in over £6 billion in profits. The bombshell was dropped after the company reported a 69 per cent fall in annual profits to £6.1bn"It must be a...
This article of mine appears in The Morning Star.Do please try and sign the Bring Back British Rail Petition, mentioned below!Will the BBC survive a new Conservative government? Despite David Cameron's claim that he was a "big fan" of Auntie on the Andrew Marr show last Sunday, the oldest broadcasting company in the world looks set for the toughest years of its long existence if, as expected, Cameron's manic privatisers get elected this spring. Last year shadow arts minister Ed Vaizey, a member of Cameron's inner circle, suggested the selling off of Radio 1. And although the Tories denied that it was official party policy, a Daily Telegraph report quoted an unnamed Tory MP who said: "Radio 1 and Radio 2 are ripe for a sell-off, perhaps even BBC1." The sad thing is that the BBC has very...
This article of mine appears in the New Statesman.A pledge to renationalise the railways would be a clear vote-winner. So why do passengers’ demands fall on deaf ears? Public ownership is a puzzle. Voters are in favour of it, but our three main parties offer little to its supporters in terms of viable policy options. Instead, they remain wedded to a pro-privatisation agenda, trying to outdo each other in making lists of what public assets to sell off next.In the past two years, the government has nationalised Northern Rock, and has taken large stakes in leading banks. Privatisation has never been so unpopular. But the gap between public opinion and the position taken by our politicians is at its greatest in the case of the railways.Rushed through by John Major's government,...
Commenting on the Government’s announcement that the London-Edinburgh East Coast Main Line will come into public ownership next week, North East Fife’s MP Sir Menzies Campbell said:
“This line is a vital artery for Scotland and is well used by people in North East Fife. The Government’s mismanagement of the East Coast line – through a franchise system which allows companies to put short-term profits before passengers – has put this in jeopardy.
“Indications that services will only remain in public hands until 2011 do not go far enough. The East Coast Main Line should remain in public ownership for three to five years to demonstrate how a franchise should be run. We need to see passenger-focused targets to drive up......
• Train service taken over from next Saturday• Public ownership will last for at least 18 monthsBack in the day, British Rail was synonymous with soggy sandwiches, late trains – or no services at all. Deserved or not, it was a reputation that became immortalised in the comedy, the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin – every morning, his train to Waterloo was reliably late, but always for a different reason.From next Saturday, though, the government will get a chance to make some amends, when it returns as a long distance train operator for the first time since privatisation in the mid-90s.Passengers on the prestigious London to Edinburgh route have been promised punctuality, good food and clean loos.The Department for Transport has seized control of the failed £1.4bn National...
There is a real threat of Britain taking a hugely regressive step next year, and electing a Tory government at a time when our country and world desperately need something better, more suited to the times. What I think we really ought to be talking about is what we can agree on as a progressive agenda for fighting back against the tories (in whatever party they are, not just in the Conservative Party - e.g. New Labour and the LibDem leadership are tories too!). The kind of thing that Neal Lawson, James Graham, John Harris etc have been doing. I think that the basic minimum parameters are something like:>A real Green New Deal http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/, and serious action on dangerous climate change (and other major environmental threats) more generally.>Public...
This article of mine appears in the Morning Star.For all the parties' talk of 'choice', there seems to be precious little of it about when it comes to selling off our public assets. Do you remember the days when political commentators in Britain used to sneer that US "democracy" merely meant the choice between two identical pro-big business parties?That was when there were genuine differences between Labour, Conservatives and the Liberals on a variety of key issues. But those days are long gone. The reality is that the Britain of 2009 is to all intents and purposes a one-party state. Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are merely wings of the "Capital party" - the same Capital party which has governed Britain since 1979. In 1997 capital decided it needed to change the faces at the...
I received the following from the SLP which I fully endorse:
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Campaign for Public Ownership
Press Release on the Government's Fire-Sale of state assets
SUNDAY 11th OCTOBER 2009
The Campaign For Public Ownership strongly opposes the government's plan for a fire-sale of state assets in order to cut the public deficit.
It beggars belief that after Britain's disastrous experience of privatisation, anyone still believes that selling off the family silver can improve the public finances in the long-term.
The Tote, the Dartford crossing, the channel tunnel rail link, and the Student Loan book and other assets earmarked for sale by Gordon Brown should be kept in public ownership.
If the government does want to save money, then why doesn't it listen to the majority of...
So there you have it. A new poll, commissioned by the RMT union, shows that 70% of the British public would like to see the railways renationalised. "This poll... shows that the Government are miles out of step with the voters when it comes to the crucial issue of who owns and runs our transport services", says RMT leader Bob Crow.But it's not just the Government, Bob. It's HM Opposition and the Liberal Democrats too, neither of whom support bringing the railways back into public ownership.Earlier this summer, our friend and regular commenter Olching commented on the depressingly uniform response to the question of renationalisation of the railways on an edition of the BBC’s Question Time. The fact that none of our leading three parties supports a measure backed by 70% of the people...
This article of mine, on Britain's rip-off private bus companies, appears in the Morning Star. It's also crossed-posted on the Campaign For Public Ownership website.They already have to try to make ends meet on the lowest state pension in the whole of the European Union. They have to live with the fear of having to sell their home if forced to go into care. Now Britain's long-suffering pensioners face the prospect of a new humiliation - having their free bus travel means-tested. A recent consultants' report commissioned by the Local Government Association criticised the current scheme for being "targeted too widely" and while both local authorities and the government insisted that they had no plans to introduce means testing in the near future, the economic climate means that free bus...
Which in this case is the TUC.Here are some motions tabled for its annual jamboree: Trade union rights and freedom - taking back our rights Congress registers its total disgust and disappointment at the continuation of the anti-trade union laws throughout the United Kingdom. Congress recognises that all initiatives and campaigns up to this time have achieved little change to employment rights for working men and women in this country. Therefore, Congress calls upon all affiliated trade unions and the General Council to organise a series of street demonstrations throughout the United Kingdom, and selective days on which trade unions will break the anti-trade union laws by taking a general strike. Further, these activities should continue until such time as the Government changes this...
Yesterday Northern Rock – taken into public ownership 18 months ago – posted its figures for the first six months of the year. They made for eye-watering reading:
Nationalised bank Northern Rock made a pre-tax loss of £724m for the first six months of the year as its bad debts tripled. The Newcastle-based firm wrote off £602m in bad loans and expects that figure to be similar in the second half of 2009.
The bank revealed that 6.4% of Together mortgages – the 125% loan-to-value product now withdrawn – are more than three months in arrears, up from 2.14% a year ago. Almost 40% of homeowners who took out a Together mortgage now find themselves in negative equity. Some 3,667 homes have fallen into arrears by more than a year without being repossessed. Northern Rock...
Over at Total Politics. The rules are at their website- all you have to do is to list your Top Ten UK Blogs, (your favourite blog at Number 1) and then email them to the address at their site. Any support for this blog and for the Campaign 4 Public Ownership blog would be greatly appreciated. As for the other eight blogs, well, the organisers request that bloggers don't publish lists of other blogs to vote for- but if you want some ideas, then there are links to some excellent blogs in the links section on the right.Voting closes at midnight on 31st July, UK...
The taking of the East Coast main line away from National Express is only the beginning of dealing with problems with the railways in Britain. According to a report in the Independent (27/7/2009) some MPs fear that more services will have to be "rescued".
What does this mean? A Government that has been intent on privatising virtually every thing in sight has a change of heart? Lord Adonis, late of an education reform that is having to be dismantled, announced that the East Coast franchise would be up for grabs after only a year. As withe Post Office fiasco it's tax payers picking up the debts with profitable bits going to the private sector.
It's not as if we have a coherent plan for transport when there is urgency required in the face of carbon emissions and the need for viable,...
Today the Daily Telegraph carry an obituary for the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski (see below). They point out that he came to dismiss the idea of democratic socialism seeing it as being as "contradictory as a fried snowball". For he pointed to the dangers of the development of unrestricted power entering the hands of an omnipresent bureaucracy.It seems to me that we can indeed fry the snowball as long as we perpetually provide checks and controls against the very dangers which Kolakowski feared - and we use a wok. But we must always be on our guard. We don't want the snowball to fall into the fire. Below I give my recipe.1. Regular elections and full enfranchisement for local, national and supra-national legislative bodies.2. Written constitutions which safeguard devolved powers,...
Something strange seems to have happened. It seems that I've slipped down some sort of Time Tunnel and have arrived back in 1975.I've been watching the tv and Tom Watson is leading the British Open Golf Championship by two strokes.I'll be posting regular updates about life in 1975- it seems too as if QPR could be preparing to make a title challenge for the forthcoming football season and that Prime Minister Harold Wilson is beginning to get inflation under control. It's also great to see pubs where people can smoke to their hearts content and a complete absence of Starbucks and Pizza Express in the High Streets. And boy, a £5 note really goes a long way on a night out!Seriously though- wouldn't it be great if Watson could roll back the years and win the Open at the age of 59? We've...
This piece of mine appears in the Sunday Express.It’s also cross-posted at the Campaign For Public Ownership website.If you’re of like mind and would like to see Britain's railways- and our bus transport and public utilities- renationalised, please get involved in the campaign.If the government can take the East Coast line into public ownership, why not the entire network?Nationalise the losses, privatise the gains. That’s the Government’s policy when it comes to the banks and now, it seems, it applies to the railways, too. Transport Minister Lord Adonis last week announced that the Government would take back the East Coast line, the busiest inter-city route in the country, from private operator National Express, which had warned it was likely to default on a franchise...
The Green Party is welcoming the Government's move to bring back into public ownership the East Coast mainline, from National Express, but is repeating its call for the full re-nationalisation of the railways in the face of Beardy's bid for the franchise.Sir Richard Branson, co-owner of the Virgin West Coast franchise, has expressed an interest in bidding for the East Coast franchise if it became available.Rupert Read responded to this by saying:"Virgin would then have control of England-Scotland services, as well as London to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Doncaster. The entire idea of privatisation was to inject competition, and this would be substituting a public monopoly for a private monopoly. That cannot be allowed to happen, and as a Green MP for Norwich North, I...
This just in, on the Grauniad blog this afternoon: Ken Livingstone explains why the privatisation of the railways has been a catastrophe, and how the East Coast Main Line fiasco provides the opportunity to start renationalising the whole network, and why that would be a good thing.Every word is spot on. No need to add anything. Just read the piece. UPDATE: And see also this from the Campaign for Public...
2 Big Stories
The news has a state vs public ownership flavour at the moment:
Passengers to pay price for crisis on the railways
“A series of big projects are in grave doubt after the collapse of the highest-earning franchise exposed a deepening hole in the rail budget.
National Express East Coast is to be renationalised after the parent company refused to honour a pledge to pay the Department for Transport £1.4 billion in the years to 2015.
The DfT will have to accept a much lower sum when it puts the franchise back out to tender and is likely to be forced to pay up to £500 million a year to other rail companies that have been hit by the recession and can recoup most of their losses from the taxpayer.” [Times]
Sale of Royal Mail stake shelved by ministers [FT]
Peter...
The Green Party is today welcoming the Government's move to bring back into public ownership the East Coast mainline, from National Express, but is repeating its call for the full re-nationalisation of the railways.Whilst the Government has today announced that the East Coast mainline service is to be brought back into public ownership, but there remains doubt as to whether this will be permanent or if another franchise bid could succeed given the financial trouble that has hit National Express. And whilst National Express has lost the service annoucned today, under cross-default clauses, the Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis, could strip National Express of all its contracts, now that the group has handed back one franchise. In Eastern Region this would include the Southend line and the...
Ah, it seems like only yesterday when I started the Daily (Maybe) as a private little project to see if I could write a post a day for just one month. There seems to be a little bit of slippage on the end point as I started on July 1st 2006. What do they call it? Mission creep?At the time I laid out what I was trying to do;Aim - to have a blog. Objective - to post on the blog. Strategy for challenging a world being increasingly swallowed by neo-liberalism - ummmm. Attempt to set the tone - one picture of a cat that looks like Hitler. Big doubt - that people start blogs with good intentions and then start flagging and collapse, for all to see.The success rate seems pretty good. I have a blog, I have posted on it, I have said ummmm a whole number of times, I have posted pictures of cats...
Commenting on the news that the Government is to take the East Coast rail service, run by National Express, into public ownership, North East Fife MP Sir Menzies Campbell said:
“The issue in not who runs East Coast main line services but the quality of that service and its reliability. Many of my constituents such as those who commute from North Fife to Edinburgh, St Andrews University students and those stationed at RAF Leuchars, rely on the line as their first choice for public transport.
“It is essential for economic and social reasons that this vital public service be maintained and improved. The Government had no option but to take it into public ownership but this should not become an excuse for poor service and bad time......
What does public ownership mean for East Coast...
The government has refused to re-negotiate its contract with privateer transport company National Express and is to take the East Coast railway line into public ownership.But rather than making this move the first step in the renationalisation of the entire network, Transport Minister Lord Adonis says that it is the Government's intention to tender for a new East Coast franchise operator from the end of 2010.Why? What Adonis seems to want is a system where losses are nationalised and profits are privatised. Get the East Coast line back in profit and then flog it to Richard Branson or another privateer, seems to be the government's intention.As taxpayers- and railway users- we shouldn't put up with this nonsense.It's time to call an end to Britain's Great Train Robbery and pressurise the...
The government will take the East Coast rail service into public ownership. Has privatisation been good for...
If there is one thing most of us agree about, it is the deplorable demise of British Rail - as a single network - fifteen years ago. I believe it was a mistake, albeit with right and plausible intentions because British Rail was being subsidized by the taxpayer hugely.Contrary to popular belief, Lady Thatcher had retired as Prime Minister by the time the process began; Sir John Major made the decisions. But we are still supporting the private railway companies heavily, in a financial sense, to this very day aren't we?It was predictably inevitable that the railway network would become disjointed with synchronization of time-tables and other things impossible and confusing, let alone tariffs. Personally I'd like to see the whole of the United Kingdom run within a revived British Rail...
