Privatisation - are there other methods of offering competitive public services?

Following on the blog late last week regarding the misinterpretation of what privatisation was about in terms of how it relates to socialism, the removal of Clause VI from the Labour party and other action that I think has led to a restriction on socialism in the west, it does cross my mind why Clause VI was removed when adapting it grossly and fundamentally may have been adequately for the Labour party. I don’t doubt that it could well have been a very strategic move which was aimed at promoting the fact that the Labour party were really ‘listening to the public’ and were moving on from all that was wrong with socialism, at least in terms of how Murdoch saw it. Whether or not this move has become seen for what it is does highlight how blinkered the media can be about this type of thing.

The dropping of clause VI was no doubt a significant milestone in terms of the operation of the Labour party to pander to the whims of the media who are dominated by private sector interests. I do feel the need to express some dissatisfaction that greater awareness of the flexibility of public services wasn’t explored. During the eighties there was a general ‘restructuring’ or reorganisation of the economy, not that it’s possible to stop this from taking place at any point anyway. There was the transition from what’s been called the 'Fordist' to 'post-Fordist' economy - that there was an era of mass-production in nationalised industries that were inflexible, produced masses of the same goods without any ease to vary what they produced through to an economy of nice, clean, environmentally friendly, small companies which were able to offer choice to the consumer because they’d eroded workers rights with the assistance of Baroness Thatcher. Hurrah..! erm I think not some how. The ‘Fordist’ as a means of economic production was a cheap, mass produced good linked to Henry Ford and the changes that have taken place in the economy since then have involved increasing the degree of flexibility. How much of this is really due to advances in technology and is really nothing to do with neo-liberalism or any Conservative politician.

Blair's milestone was not what it may seem to be - it was about the irradication of socialism from the Labour Party not about the modernisation of the party. A Labour party would have sought to modernise the way we understand nationalisation and not let everything fall into the hands of the private sector away from appropriate influence of the workforce. Have journalists allowed this to take place and not adhered to convention - are they, including the BBC staff, just the puppets of the private sector who have facilitated the process of nationalisation over Europe? I would hazard a guess that there have been several attempts to get adequate coverage of this type of issue – have journalists been restricted for doing this?

Delivery of nationalised services could have been revised fundamentally without taking Clause VI out of the Labour Party manifesto altogether – whether there was a strong enough attempt to request revision of the services that were available in a manner that was classed as flexible to meet the needs of the times, not the job-for-life-socialism that was probably necessary considering how badly the workforce were treated in many respects, will remain open to question. Maybe with the issues relating to the fuel pricing, particularly in relation to gas at present, and water-supply company problems that take place I do wonder if there could be again, delivery of nationalised services in a form that suits the times, as can be achieved with some pushing a shoving as we’ve seen in the NHS.