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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1072/30202
From The Socialist newspaper, 5 February 2020
photo CCO/CC (Click to enlarge)
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge, Socialist Party executive committee
A debate, of sorts, is opening up on nationalisation in the Labour leadership election. Support for public ownership – or not – is an indication of which class interests a party serves – workers or bosses.
The Socialist Party welcomed the pledges to renationalise rail, the water companies, Royal Mail, the energy companies and BT Openreach in Jeremy Corbyn’s general election anti-austerity manifesto.
But we also said that it is necessary to go further still – to take the main levers of the economy out of the hands of the billionaires and place them into the hands of the working-class majority – in order to democratically plan production in the interests of all.
Voters polled in December 2019 were six percentage points more likely to support railway and water nationalisation than they were at the 2017 election. The same poll found that support for nationalising bus companies is up nine points. Support for public ownership is even higher among young people.
A spokesperson for the right-wing frontrunner Keir Starmer said: “Keir supports expanding common ownership, whether by outright nationalisation or by other forms such as municipals, community organisations or co-operatives: all of which mean services are run for the public, not for shareholders.”
Another right-wing candidate, Lisa Nandy, backs rail nationalisation (who doesn’t?) but opposes public ownership of energy. Rebecca Long-Bailey on the other hand says she supports the Labour Party manifesto.
There may be circumstances where genuine workers’ cooperatives can play a positive role – but Starmer is attempting to blur the lines on what nationalisation is about.
Publicly owned companies should be run not “for the public” under “common ownership” but under democratic workers’ control and management, based on elected committees of service users and representatives of the trade union movement in each workplace, the trade unions nationally, and a government representing working-class interests as a whole.
Compensation should be paid to small shareholders and pension schemes on the basis of proven need. Elected committees, accountable to the working class, could make the call.
To solve the problems faced by both people and the environment requires more than just removing the profit motive from those parts of the economy where it’s clear privatisation has failed – it means removing the grip of big business from society altogether.
Recent figures put it clearly. While austerity has seen wages stagnate over the last decade, the amount paid to shareholders by the UK’s largest companies listed in the Ftse 100 has doubled. It reached a record £110 billion last year! Since 2011, another £20 billion a year has been spent by companies on share buybacks in the UK.
Nationalisation of the top 150 companies and banks that dominate the economy would provide the basis to begin democratically planning production, and the use of resources properly, without interference from the 0.1%.
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In The Socialist 5 February 2020:
News
6.5 million working poor: Fight to end low pay
Labour leadership contest and public ownership
Coronavirus exposes capitalism’s weaknesses in healthcare and economy
Record dissatisfaction with democracy: capitalism’s dead end
Refuges turn away 64% of women – set no-cuts budgets now!
Grenfell watch: Unions challenge ‘mockery of justice’
Them & Us
Rail
Nationalise the railways: For an integrated public transport system
Expensive, overcrowded and unreliable: Renationalise the railways!
Cancel the franchise, not our trains
Will the North get investment and transport infrastructure?
What we think
‘Post-Brexit’ era of crisis ahead
Workplace news
Huge victory for Bromley library workers after 241 days on indefinite strike!
14 more days of university strikes over pensions, pay and conditions
500 BBC journalists’ jobs under threat
Newham council tax workers’ pay victory
No to academisation of east London schools!
Ealing tax office workers strike against closure
NHS
Outrageous waiting times will put lives at risk
NHS: Save stroke beds in Coventry and Warwickshire
International
Syria: Assad regime consolidates power after brutal counterrevolution
Israel/Palestine: Trump ‘peace plan’ promises further conflict
Campaigns
Socialist Party calls anti-austerity protest on Budget Day
Sadiq Khan “out-Tories” himself to defend tech firms’ tax bonanza
Socialist Sellers
Reading Labour council: Stop privatising our leisure services
The rich fund the Tories and Blairites, so help fund the working-class fightback
Support the working-class press in 2020
Defend and fight for warm, safe housing for Samira and everyone
Alternative Burns Night success
Readers’ opinion
Liverpool council: “No more cuts” – Is Joe Anderson serious?
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