Labour & Nationalisation

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When the post war government nationalis ed the mines, the newspapers carried photographs of smiling miners standing beside notices proclaiming "This pit is the property • of the people of Britain."

Some thirty years later the number of miners has been reduced by 250,000, extensive rationalisation has taken place with the dosure of "unprofitable" pits and the rages position of miners in relation to other workers fell back so far that two national strikes were called, the second of which brought down the Heath government early in 1974.

A similar story applies in every orber nationalised industry. In the early 1960s rationalisation of the Taliways cost hundreds of kbousands of jobs as "unprofitable" lines were closed down.

In British Leyland, which is 95% government owned, the government, through the National EnterBoard is demanding massive itable redundancies as a condition for supplying further finance to the company.

With the government planning to extend nationalisation to the aircraft and shipbuilding industry, there can be little doubt that workers in these industries will be confronted with similar rationalisation plans.

In whose interests, therefore, are these nationalised industries being run? Certainly not in the interests of the British working class whose property these industries are supposed to be.

Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution commits the party to establish public ownership of the means of production and distribution. But of course the Labour Party is a reformist party, more concerned with making capitalism work by reforming its less acceptable aspects than with the overthrow of the capitalist system. based as it is on the private ownership of wealth.

In 1945, after five years of all-out production for the war effort, much of British industry was suffering from the consequences of under investment and the run-down and destruction of capital.

In order to restore key areas of industry to profitable production, vast quantities of capital investment beyond the reach of the capitalist class, were needed.

ince these industries were essential to the post-war revival of British capitalism, the Labour government stepped in and nationalised these basic industries, the mines, the railways, gas, electricity and steel.

Generous compensation was paid to the former owners and the nationalised industries were put under the management of stateappointed• bureaucrats, with the finance needed to re-capitalise these industries being provided by the government out of taxes and loans from other governments, particularly America.

The working class were to have no say in the running of these industries. On the contrary, these industries were run as a service to the capitalists. Cheap coal, gas and electricity, cheap steel and transportation enabled the employer to keep his costs down.

At the same time, the enormous losses resulting from interest payments to former owners and the undercharging of the bosses (but not of course the domestic consumer, le. the working class) gave ready-made arguments to the opponents of nationalisation who argued that private enterprise was "more efficient" than the public sector.

What was actually happening was that the capitalist state, through the Labour government, was acknowledging the inability of capitalism to maintain and expand the productive forces without the intervention of the state.

The capitalist state was therefore on behalf of the national capitalist class, taking control of sections of industry in order to ensure the return to profitable production of the rest of British industry.

That firms nationalised in this way would remain part of the capitalist economy was something foreseen by Engels as far back as the 1880s.

Arguing that the capitalist state would ultimately have to undertake the direction of production, Engels pointed (in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific) to communications, and in particular railways, as the first area where the state would have to intervene.

He went on to point out that:

'The transformation ... into state ownership does not do away with the capitalist nature of the

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XIALIST PRESS Metarider Sta trated on:

"the key issues of redundancy terms, pensions, and the problems caused by the industry's casual labour system."

COMPUTERS

ensuring no production. This brutal frankness:

disruption of is stated with "The parties to this agreement, [including union leaders] recognising the extremely harmful effects of any stoppage or disrupnationalised firms must be accompanied by an expansion of the work they undertake - for instance the publication of useful books, book. lets, and other material for school colleges - while all jobs are protected through a system of