Srare sec or carve-u: TORIES SEEK RICH PICKINGS

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SUBSCRIBE to Socialist Press Send to: WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIV Tory vultures are hovering over the most profitable sectors of the nationalised industries.

They are waiting for the fruits of the labours of Thatcher's asset-strippers and axemen.

And they are getting impatient at the initial caution of the moves towards handing over the richest pickings to the exploitation of "private enterprise".

Assault

Important though they are as an assault on the state sector, the Tory moves so far announced are clearly more designed to test out the response of union leaders than to fully implement Thatcher's plans to hand over whole arcas of the public services to private capitalists.

In electricity supply, for example, the EETPU leadership is verbally committed to defending the 71-year old state monopoly.

Energy Secretary David Howell has challenged this by announcing the intention of ending the monopoly regulatons which ban firms from producing and selling clectricity as a main business.

Subsidiary

At present, firms-such as chemical firms-can produce their own power and sell any excess, so long as it is only a subsidiary part of their business.

There is no known qucue of private businessmen wishing to set up their own power stations: it would be a risky, highly expensive and dubiously profitable venturc.

But there is no limit to the number of businessmen who would like a slice of the colossal profits made by the state-owned electricity boards.

If the right wing EETPU leadership do nothing to oppose the attack on the Board's monopoly, there is little doubt that the next step will be towards selling shares in the existing state electricity supply industry.

This is already the case in the docks: the Tories plan to change the British Transport Docks Board into a companyand sell shares in it to their friends, the bankers and speculators.

Elsewhere, the Tories are focussing their attention on forcing in the thin end of the wedge-a comparatively small initial breach of existing state monopolies-as a prelude to a full scale strategy for the "hiving off" of the most lucrative sectors.

Telecommunications Thus in telecommunications, Sir Keith Joseph has announced plans to breach the monopoly on the supply and maintenance of equipment, and to allow private firms to offer services such as data processing using Post Office circuits.

"Initially" these would be allowed only where they did not compete with the Post Office; but this condition will quickly be dropped.

One problem Joseph faces in implementing this policy is the prospect of unleashing a massive flood of imported high technol ogy equipment which British telecommunication firms are at present incapable of producing at competitive prices.

Embarrassment

it is this embarrassment which explains the period of delay before the Tory plans are implemented: even the most rigorous monetarist must quail at simply handing over the potential profits of telecommunication supply to rival electronics firms in the USA, Germany, Japan and the Far East.

Things are rather simpler on the postal side: the Tory objec. tive here is to create the elbow room both for profitable private enterprise to move in and fol the axing of the least profitable services.

The immediate compliance of UCW leader Tom Jackson in these schemes will no doubt en courage Joseph and his henchmen in their next moves.

But a growing body of opposition to hiving ofi proposals in two other fieldsBritish Rail's non-rail subsidiaries and the British National Oil Corporation-has forced an unexpected Tory climbdown.

British Rail is to have 100% ownership of a new company to cover its non-rail activities-and plans for private investment have been deferred.

And the long awaited plan to sell shares in the BNOC has also been aborted by Energy Secretary Howell, who is now proposing to leave BNOC intact and to sell not shares but bonds -to the annoyance of Tory right wingers.

Meanwhile elsewhere in the public sector the Tories are investigating ways of bringing in contract firms to carry out laundry, catering, bulldıng and estate management in the National Health Service.

workers wages at po aty ilvol DU WIll workers wages at poverty leve already, it is hard to see how ) private enterprise could hope to 1 undercut the present cost of t these services-unless a suppleJoseph mentary charge was levied on patients for clean sheets and food.

The Tory offensive on the state sector is only beginning: but as rationalisation strips away much of the traditional industrial base of British capitalism it is obvious that bankers and investors are now looking for lucrative areas in which their capital can be used for the direct exploitation of new sections of workers.

These attacks can be stopped -by mass action by workers in the public and private sectors to bring down the Tories, and demand the Labour leaders implement their promise to renationalise "hived off" sectors with no compensation.

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