None of the Above

Regular readers will be only too well aware that I've been writing about this TR omnishambles for what seems ages and although understandable because it is about our very future as a profession, it can get tiresome. Sometimes it's useful to try and put what we're going through in some kind of wider context.

I've been pondering this for some time and handily I see an article comes along that very neatly does the work for me. Writing in the Guardian yesterday, Seumas Milne has written a piece entitled 'The grip of privatisation on our vital services has to be broken'. It addresses pretty much all the stuff that's been going on recently from the electricity oligopoly to the raid on the Co-operative Bank. From privatising the Royal Mail, to re-privatising the East Coast rail line.

Often billed as 'the only way' of doing things, it's fascinating to read that in the rest of Europe things are changing and the Germans are in the process of taking electricity back into state control:-

Any doubts about who really controls Britain should have now been dispelled. Any thought that the financial crisis might have broken the neoliberal spell, rebalanced the economy or chastened the deregulators and privatisers can be safely dismissed. October has been the month when the monopolies, City hedge funds and foreign-owned cartels put the record straight. It's they who are calling the shots.

In the past week, a Swiss-based tax exile announced the closure of the Grangemouth petrochemicals plant, a crucial slice of industrial Scotland, after provoking a dispute with his workforce. Threatened with the loss of 800 jobs, they signed up for cuts in real pay and pensions.

Naturally, the employer claimed to be losing money (despite having made £1.7bn last year), while the media blamed the union. In fact it was a textbook lockout and display of corporate power by Britain's largest private company – a strategic and once publicly owned complex supplying 85% of Scotland's petrol, left to be run on the whim of a billionaire.

But that is mere bagatelle compared with the defiance of the energy privateers. Ever since Ed Miliband forced electricity and gas profiteering into political focus by pledging a price freeze, the monopolists have outdone themselves. Squealing that such interference threatened power cuts, one after another has taken the opportunity to jack up prices still further.

Four of the "big six" cartel, which controls 98% of electricity supply, have now increased prices by over 9% – blaming green levies and global costs – while wholesale prices have risen 1.7% in the past year and profit per "customer" has doubled.

Thousands of old people will certainly die this winter as a result of the corporate stitch-up that is called a regulated market – designed in large part by the same John Major who last week called for the introduction of a windfall tax on energy profits.

It should be obvious that powerful interests are driving what is by any objective measure a failed 30-year experiment – but which transfers income and wealth from workforce, public and state to the corporate sector. In the case of privatised utilities, that is the extraction of shareholder value on a vast scale from a captive public.

What's needed from utilities are security of supply, operation in the public interest, long-term planning and cost effectiveness without profiteering. The existing privatised utilities have failed on all counts.

The case for public ownership of basic utilities and services – including electricity, gas, water and communications infrastructure – is overwhelming. It's also supported by a large majority of the country's voters. But it's taboo in the political mainstream.

The answer is because it's a commercial relationship, not one of democratic accountability. There are any number of models of social ownership, including local and mutual, that could bring Britain's utilities back into the public realm. In energy, for example, it could start with a single firm or power generation alone.

However, the costs of privatisation have created a powerful counter-momentum in Europe (and even more so in Latin America) to bring services, resources and utilities back into the public sector: water in France, power in Germany, and transport in Britain (Newcastle is currently attempting to take back bus routes). In September, the people of Hamburg voted to bring back the power supply into municipal ownership. Berlin is set to follow suit this coming Sunday.

Privatisation is a failed and corrosive model. In Britain, it has combined with a determination to put up any asset up for sale to hollow out the country's industrial base to disastrous effect. If Britain is to have a sustained recovery, it needs a genuinely mixed economy. The political and corporate elite have run out of excuses.

There's a growing realisation ahead of the next General Election in May 2015 that there's going to be bugger all to choose from in terms of what the main political parties will be offering and what most people want. We have a severe democratic deficit. We know that opinion polls regularly favour retaining public services, yet all parties continue to press on with privatisation. Membership of all the main parties continues to fall, but at the same time the popularity of online campaign groups like 38 Degrees and Change.org continues to rise. 

The politicians have noticed of course and some feel that the real target of the Lobbying Bill currently wending its way through Parliament is such groups. The aim of the political elite seems to be to make sure such groups are neutered and prevented from campaigning during the year preceding a General Election. 

This is all very dangerous stuff for a democracy because it's quite likely turn-out will continue to fall as the disconnect between the governed and politicians becomes ever-greater. One concrete sign of brewing discontent, but that politicians have chosen to ignore, is the level of civil disobedience during the ridiculous charade to elect Police and Crime Commissioners last year. A staggering number of voters spoiled their ballot papers. This says loud and clear to me that people are not so much apathetic, as getting angry.

So in this context I was interested to come across the following article on the Guerilla Policy website, triggered by an interview on BBC 2's Newsnight programme with Russell Brand:- 

In this interview with Jeremy Paxman for BBC Newsnight, Russell Brand lit a political fire. Well, he didn’t so much light it as point to it and fan the flames. Borne of growing frustration with a woefully corrupted political and economic framework which serves only a minority of wealthy people and corporations, this fire is now raging. The None of the Above campaign has been gathering support to stand candidates at the next general election, to reject this system outright. Is Russell Brand to become the face of this movement?

None of the Above

This will be familiar to anyone who has watched the film Brewster’s Millions – the Richard Pryor comedy where Pryor’s character unwittingly becomes the figurehead of a political movement by standing in an election as ‘None of the Above’.

The campaign is designed to promote independent candidates who stand against the establishment. They may be women or men; young, old, or in between; of any racial, ethnic background; of any religion or none; they are the bricklayers, teachers, carers, parents, students or office workers that keep our world ticking over day and night. A ‘NOTA’ campaign is designed to give voters a chance to actively rather than passively (by abstaining) reject the status quo at the ballot box.

A Call to Arms

During his fateful interview with Paxman, Brand successfully gave voice to the millions who have had enough. The indebted students, the jobless young, the working families that cannot meet the rising cost of living, the elderly forced to choose to heat their homes or eat, the public sector workers whose jobs, pay and pensions have been cut, the private sector workers going through the same, the parents terrified at the nightmare future ahead of their children – of all of us who are not represented by our current political, economic and social systems.

Where is the democracy if you get to choose between the least worst option? Where is the democracy when there is no choice to vote for a single individual or party that stands for what you do? Well…?

And democracy is about more than the vote each four or five years. Where is the democracy in our workplaces? Where is the democracy in our schools? Where is the democracy in our health system? Where, in fact, is the democracy in any of the decisions which affect us on a daily basis? There isn’t any. Not only do we not do democracy well, but we barely do it at all. Don’t point at Iran and tell me to feel lucky. I don’t aspire to dictatorship, I aspire to democracy. To do it well and all the time. And so, in our hearts, don’t we all? Aren’t we all, if we really admit it, coming to the realisation that we are living in precarious times – and that all those in positions of power, and the locks on the doors to such power, are not there to serve us?

So, here is an opportunity. Russell Brand has become a megaphone for a national conversation that was already underway, but fervently ignored. The None of the Above campaign is not looking for a leader.  Like the Occupy Movement, it seeks to promote leadership in all of us.  It is more about fundamentally transforming the way we do democracy, than it is about a red, blue or yellow tie. But what Russell can do, if we get those 10,000 signatures and he accepts the challenge, is turn his expression of our anger into a tangible political result in 2015. He has the platform, if we have the courage. So…what are you waiting for?