The Morning Star editorialises:
Not even arch-privatiser Margaret Thatcher
considered selling off Royal Mail.
For her, the decisive issue was the unacceptability of losing the monarch's head from the stamps issued by a private company, which might not worry Morning Star readers [oh, I don't know; she herself was an avid one, and many traditionalist Tory MPs and their staffers still are] but it could prove a bridge too far for many government supporters.
Previous attempts to privatise this well-loved institution - not least the effort under new Labour led by business secretary Peter Mandelson - have faltered in the face of an exceptionally broad coalition of opposition. The Communication Workers Union has always been at the heart of such coalitions, but they have been swollen by a plethora of groups and individuals that feel threatened by this privatisation too far.
Former postal union official Tony Clarke played a central role in the House of Lords last time round, arguing alongside ermine-clad countryside campaigners, business representatives, religious leaders and monarchists to defend the public mail service against the "public bad, private good" zealots. Throughout Britain MPs from all parties were deluged by demands that they oppose this shoddy manoeuvre.
The latest assault on our publicly owned Royal Mail requires a similar inclusive mobilisation. Opponents of privatisation will have their own reasons for doing so. There should be mutual respect for individual motivations.
Royal Mail staff know what is in store for them, having witnessed other sell-offs over the past 30 years. Jobs will go, working conditions will worsen and pensions will be cut. This will not be assuaged by the contemptible bribe of 10 per cent of Royal Mail shares being offered to the 150,000 workers to buy off staff hostility to privatisation. CWU members have indicated overwhelming support for strike action against privatisation in light of the effect it would have on their terms and conditions.
David Cameron claims widespread public support for the government plan to sell off a majority stake in Royal Mail, which suggests that he is confusing public consultation with hobnobbing with City bankers who stand to gain around £30 million as the price for handling this nefarious operation. He must know that opinion polls indicate around two-thirds public disapproval of Royal Mail privatisation.
His pledges on universal service, uniform pricing, six-day deliveries and free service for the blind and troops serving overseas are repeats of the pie-crust promises heard before earlier sell-offs. Once privatisation goes ahead, new private owners will petition to drop six-day deliveries or introduce price differentials on urgent commercial grounds. Given experience of other privatisations, they will be successful while abandoned rural communities will be left to whistle for Cable's promises.
Royal Mail does not need to be flogged off to modernise, to raise investment and to be profitable. It is doing all that in the public sector. There is no pressing need for the conservative coalition to sell Royal Mail other than its desire to build up an election war chest to offer tax bribes for April 2015. Royal Mail privatisation will enrich a small number of speculators, but it will degrade the lives of the vast majority.
Every trade unionist should signal antagonism to this scheme by signing the saveourroyalmail.org petition and supporting efforts by campaigners to raise public awareness and defeat privatisation.
And so should everyone else.
For her, the decisive issue was the unacceptability of losing the monarch's head from the stamps issued by a private company, which might not worry Morning Star readers [oh, I don't know; she herself was an avid one, and many traditionalist Tory MPs and their staffers still are] but it could prove a bridge too far for many government supporters.
Previous attempts to privatise this well-loved institution - not least the effort under new Labour led by business secretary Peter Mandelson - have faltered in the face of an exceptionally broad coalition of opposition. The Communication Workers Union has always been at the heart of such coalitions, but they have been swollen by a plethora of groups and individuals that feel threatened by this privatisation too far.
Former postal union official Tony Clarke played a central role in the House of Lords last time round, arguing alongside ermine-clad countryside campaigners, business representatives, religious leaders and monarchists to defend the public mail service against the "public bad, private good" zealots. Throughout Britain MPs from all parties were deluged by demands that they oppose this shoddy manoeuvre.
The latest assault on our publicly owned Royal Mail requires a similar inclusive mobilisation. Opponents of privatisation will have their own reasons for doing so. There should be mutual respect for individual motivations.
Royal Mail staff know what is in store for them, having witnessed other sell-offs over the past 30 years. Jobs will go, working conditions will worsen and pensions will be cut. This will not be assuaged by the contemptible bribe of 10 per cent of Royal Mail shares being offered to the 150,000 workers to buy off staff hostility to privatisation. CWU members have indicated overwhelming support for strike action against privatisation in light of the effect it would have on their terms and conditions.
David Cameron claims widespread public support for the government plan to sell off a majority stake in Royal Mail, which suggests that he is confusing public consultation with hobnobbing with City bankers who stand to gain around £30 million as the price for handling this nefarious operation. He must know that opinion polls indicate around two-thirds public disapproval of Royal Mail privatisation.
His pledges on universal service, uniform pricing, six-day deliveries and free service for the blind and troops serving overseas are repeats of the pie-crust promises heard before earlier sell-offs. Once privatisation goes ahead, new private owners will petition to drop six-day deliveries or introduce price differentials on urgent commercial grounds. Given experience of other privatisations, they will be successful while abandoned rural communities will be left to whistle for Cable's promises.
Royal Mail does not need to be flogged off to modernise, to raise investment and to be profitable. It is doing all that in the public sector. There is no pressing need for the conservative coalition to sell Royal Mail other than its desire to build up an election war chest to offer tax bribes for April 2015. Royal Mail privatisation will enrich a small number of speculators, but it will degrade the lives of the vast majority.
Every trade unionist should signal antagonism to this scheme by signing the saveourroyalmail.org petition and supporting efforts by campaigners to raise public awareness and defeat privatisation.
And so should everyone else.
This is all because of the EU competition directive, by the way.
ReplyDeleteIf Miliband doesn't oppose the EU-then he doesn't oppose this.
Its stunningly simple.
And he's way ahead of you, if you bothered to pay any attention.
ReplyDeleteThe Morning Star has always been waaaay ahead of today's johnny come lately opponents of the EU.
ReplyDeleteAn old friend of mine who uses the Whips' Office to campaign for Departments of State to take it has just been put on the National Executive Committee.
ReplyDeleteI love the line "which might not worry Morning Star readers".
ReplyDeleteOf course it wouldn't. They are Soviet Union nostalgists, and anti-British Republican Marxists.
The Morning Star's readers were once known as "tankies" because of their support for the Soviet Union against the Czech people.
Then again,as Peter Hitchens writes, Britain's trade union movement was infiltrated by the Soviet Union throughout the 70's and 80's.
Bless.
ReplyDeleteYou really do need to grow up.
"were once known as tankies blah blah blah"
Thank you so much for that staggering revelation.
Bless, Bless, Bless.
Oh, and "as Peter Hitchens writes"? Unless he wrote it at the time, then it's not news, or even if he did. Nor was the whole thing ever anything approaching discreet enough to count as "infiltration". It was just part of the landscape of British politics, universally known because entirely open, and worked within or worked around as the case happened to be. The infiltration of the Conservative Party, on the other hand...
ReplyDeleteEven after all these years, precisely one Minister from each party has been found ever to have been an agent of an Eastern Bloc country (Czechoslovakia, in both cases), and both were on the Right of their respective parties, in John Stonehouse's case as far right as Labour went in those days. He had barely any union connections and, among other adventures, he joined the SDP.
Can you remember the Soviet Union? Even I remember watching the Wall come down. But I bet that you don't.
Oh, the trade union infiltration went much further and deeper than that.
ReplyDeleteI was referring to what Peter Hitchens recently wrote about their national campaign to destroy Britain(reproduced below)
""In 1980, during the ’Solidarity’ crisis in Poland, the British trade union movement had revealed itself as a nest of apologists for Soviet tyranny, refusing to support the Gdansk shipyard workers against the Communist authorities.""
""This was because a large number of important unions had been penetrated at very high levels by well-organised Communist and fellow-travelling factions""
""Much of the suicidal behaviour of the unions during this period also only makes sense if it is seen as part of a campaign of national destabilisation. They were being used""
So there we have it-from someone who was Industrial Correspondent at the time (and who later lived in the Soviet Union).
The trade unions were a Soviet fifth column in British society.
No, it wasn't. And none of this is news, or has been at any point in the last 40 or 50 years.
ReplyDelete