Privatisation prepares the way...
WORKERS, JAN 2007 ISSUE
It started with Thatcher. She first privatised the steel industry and worked her way through a series of state industries including gas, electricity, telecoms, water, coal, shipbuilding, and rail and air transport. The objective was to breathe new life into a dying capitalism by letting it exploit and make profits from previous off limits industries and funded by the working class. In the process trade unions could be destroyed and all concepts of public ownership or enterprise with them.
After the privatisations, the new word became "outsourcing". Starting with cleaning and ancillary services in industries she wouldn't dare to privatise, such as health care and social services, private and privatised companies took up the idea of outsourcing to keep wages down by enforcing competition for functions of their businesses. Payroll, IT, catering, management, – you name it, it can be outsourced.
Blair took this to new heights. Privatising and outsourcing services that Thatcher never dared to touch, he began to call it "contestability". Was NHS Logistics privatised, outsourced or simply subject to contestability?
But why simply outsource a function, why not outsource the entire working class? This is behind the deliberate organisation of workers from low wage countries, especially Eastern Europe, to come to Britain, to work for less and replace British workers.
Capitalism knows exactly what it needs to do to destroy a working class. What a criminal shame that those who purport to be the leaders of our class in our trade unions don't have the same perception to enable them to defend our class.