by Tommy Gorman

When, soon after she took control in Westminster, Maggie Thatcher began her crusade to ‘roll back socialism’ by selling off major public owned utilities, few could have imagined the speed and extent of change that has occurred during the following twenty years. Gas, water, electricity generation, telephone and transport, all state owned and controlled, have passed into private hands.

The Tories were so anxious to privatise British Rail that they sold off the leasing companies for £700 million less than they were worth, according to a report by the National Audit Office (NAO). Although the total sale raised £1.8 billion for the government the NAO calculates their worth at £2.5 billion. The fact that three parts of the overall system were sold within two years at a profit of £1 billion bears this out. In the midst of all this wheeling and dealing, massive profits were made by a few individuals. Former British Rail manager Sandy Anderson made a profit of around £33 million for himself. This has grown to nearer £50 million because of the rise in the value of shares in the new privatised company

Having cornered and gobbled up these utilities, big business is looking to the health and education systems as potential money-makers. They were spurred on by a report from the British Government think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research. It suggested that the administration of the National Health Service could, as an experiment, be handed to commercial firms to determine whether or not they could deliver better value for money than the present set up. Already this process has led to thousands of cleaning, catering and other staff having their jobs transferred to the private sector. And the private sector can only deliver economies by cutting wages and services. This idea follows naturally from and is an extension of the Private Finance Initiative (P.F.I.) whereby private finance companies are given vast sums of taxpayers money to build and own hospitals which are then rented back to the N.H.S

The ill and infirm would no longer be patients but mere customers whose access to treatment would depend on their ability to pay. All decisions within the Health Service would be determined by economics not the Hippocratic Oath. Since cleaning within the NHS was privatised the standard of cleanliness within the hospitals has deteriorated significantly. It is estimated than upwards of 5,000 people died in the past twelve months as a direct result of infections they picked up while in hospital

In Britain the Labour Government has already contracted out the work of three Labour controlled Local Education Authorities (LEAs), Liverpool, Hackney and Islington. For us in this part of Ireland the spectre of PFI has appeared at Stormont. With waiting lists for medical attention growing longer by the day the minister in charge of health provision stated that Private Finance Initiatives could play an important role in the development of that department. Other ministers have echoed this sentiment. This is a frightening prospect.

Will education and health provision in the future be shaped by the needs of big business? How will those deemed to be failures in the schools or the long term ill be treated in this market driven scenario? Almost daily we see on our television screens the consequences of cutbacks in safety standards made after the privatisation of the railways. If our education and health services go off the rails as a result of privatisation and greed the consequences will be infinitely more disastrous for society.