y
/

That government coercion has in turn
intensified the union’s campaign and at
the same time, broadened the opposi-
tion.

“The success of the campaign has var-

_ ied,” said Peter Willsman, the research
director for NUPE and a Labour Party
councillor with the London Education

Authority. “Obviously, it’s been most
successful where there are Labour Party
councils but many Tory councils are also
concerned with their votes so they’ve lis-
tened to public opinion.”

The opposition has sometimes been
slow to develop, he said, “because peo-
ple have to find out about the loss of
services before they realize the effects
and do something about it.”

He added that Canadians facing pri-
vatization in government services
“should look to Britain to see what’s
happened.”

Keith Blackburn, a researcher with the
Transport and General Workers, which
is also involved in local government, said
that the unions’ join campaign has set
out to expose publicly the contractors
who have defaulted on their contract
work and to fight continued privatiza-
tion. Equally important, he said, have
been union efforts to highlight examples
of good services and to convince local
councils to work with unions and con-
sumers in expanding and improving
those services.

Both Willsman and Blackburn
emphasized that the work with commun-
ity and consumer groups was vital
although both noted that joint union-
community action was still “inconsist-
ent” and was, in many cases, confined to
a small number of activists.

““We’ve been able to win back a
number of contracts from the private
sector,” Blackburn said. “But we’re a
long way from winning the fight on a
political level.”

Still, he said, the highly-publicized

problems of British Telecom — the first

instance where the media has given any
prominence to complaints about

privatization — has helped to bring
about a shift in public attitudes.

“There has been a tendency to accept
privatization ... and that mood has been
heightened by the share sales,” he said.
“But that has changed as a result of Brit-
ish Telecom.”

And joint action by the trade union
movement, community organizations
and particularly the churches was able to
defeat the government’s Sunday Trading
Bill. “So it is possible to defeat the -
Tories,” he said.

The most effective campaign so far
mounted against the government’s plans
has been that organized against the pri-
vatization of water. Headed by the Joint
Trade Union Anti-Water Privatization
Committee, a coalition of several unions,
the campaign has already derailed the
government’s plans once and organizers
see a strong possibility that it can be
done again.

Alan Jackson, a NALGO staff
member and the secretary of the joint
committee, told the Tribune that com-
mittee members looked at other union
campaigns against privatization, includ-
ing the BTUC campaign at British Tele-
com, and tried to learn from their
mistakes.

“The approach we took was that there
were a number of groups interested in
water who could be included,” he said.
“We tried to cover every area of opposi-
tion to water privatization and then
reach the people involved.”

Jackson said that there was a unusu-
ally wide range of environmental groups
involved, including Greenpeace, the
Friends of the Earth, the Council for the
Protection of Rural England as well as
others such as disabled groups who
depend on water for therapy and sport
fishing groups.

“The trade union committee was the
backbone of the campaign but at the
same time, we tried.to.stay. back.one step
so that all those involved could see
themselves as part of a broad coalition
and so the government couldn’t say it
was just the unions,” he said. “We

‘The most effective
campaign so far
mounted against
the government
plans has been that
organized against
the privatization

of water.’

encouraged other groups to make deci-
sions and to promote their views.”

The campaign first gathered momen-
tum in February of last year with the

” government’s first announced plan to sell

off the country’s water system, currently
run by 10 local water authorities, to pri-
vate interests.

The government’s white paper essen-
tially came down to a single argument
for privatization — the need to create
“the opportunity to make profits.” The
joint committee challenged the white
paper with its own arguments and used
the network of environmental and com-
munity groups to get the message
out — often to places where trade
unions would not normally have been
able to reach.

“The breadth of the campaign was the
key,” said Jackson, “it influenced

enough people to jeopardize Tory votes
before the (1986) election.”

Its first plan put off the rails, the
Tories introduced a new proposal in
their election manifesto to appease
environmental groups. But the new
proposals did not satisfy environmental
groups and created new opponents
among some of the local water authori-
ties which had earlier supported privati-
zation.

As a result, the campaign is again
gathering momentum across the country,
he said. On Sept. 18, British newspapers
quoted Tory sources as saying that water
privatization had been abandoned. The
statement was later denied by a govern-
ment minister but the faltering govern-
ment position and the strong campaign
of opposition has thrown doubt on its
future.

And whatever happens, the campaign
has underscored the value of joint action
between the trade union movement and
other groups.

“Our campaign is unique in the scope
of the coalition we were able to put
together,” said Jackson. “Trade unions

» have tended to wage campaigns on their
own but this government doesn’t listen
to trade unions. We had to reach out
much wider.”

Significantly, the connections made
during the campaign were useful in
introducing many other groups to the
trade union movement and its agenda.
“Many of these groups had not worked
with trade unions before and in fact had
a mistrust of trade unions,” he noted.
“But we’ve built up relationships over a
number of months and now we co-
operate in other areas as well.”

Jackson also emphasized that the
campaign had to set its own political
objectives and not remain tied to those
of the Labour Party, to which most Brit-
ish unions are affiliated. “We couldn’t be
seen as just.carrying out the Labour
Party agenda,” he said. ““We had to
work with all groups, even Liberals and
Tories, who were opposed to the privati-
zation of water.”

“In fact, we loosened our traditional
link with the Labour Party,” he said.
“They had their idea of what should
happen and we had ours.”

Many other unionists have also
emphasized the need for the trade union
movement to take its own independent
political position on privatization, par-
ticularly as the Labour Party goes
through an agonizing policy review,
including suggestions that the party
should accept share ownership.

“There’s still a tendency among trade
unionists to talk only of economic
interests — their jobs and wages,” said
Terry Wild of the National Communica-
tions Union. “There has been an increase
in political thinking since Thatcher came
to power and an understanding of the
need to involve the trade union move-
ment in politics but still many leave the
politics up to the Labour Party.”

The need is particularly urgent on the
issue of privatization, he said, because of
the low priority given by the Labour
Party to public ownership.

“The government has created the idea
that the public sector is a drain on the
public purse — and that the private sec-
tor would make things more efficient
and relieve the public of costs.

“But we need to show workers that
there can be better public ownership,” he
said.

The CPGB’s Pete Carter also emphas-
ized the need for the labour movement
to present “an alternative vision” to the
free enterprise model of privatized servi-
ces and highly-monopolized high tech
industry that Thatcher has promoted.

“The trade union movement needs to
put forward an alternative economic
strategy that can appeal to wider sections
of people,” he said. “It has to be an alt-

erative vision for the future of Britain.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 28, 1987 e 7

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