NEO LABOUR PUTS PINCH ON VOLUNTARY SECTOR
From the Bulgarian education system to the Bolivian water supply,
capitalists love nothing more than turning an area of life previously
financed by universal taxation into a source of profit. The
announcement that the government’s new get-tough-on-disabled-people
regime will not be implemented by a government department is an
indicator of a much wider process - the wholesale privatisation
of public services in Britain. The ‘assessment’ of disabled
people, care homes, employment and training services, the justice
system; all are up for grabs.
But rather than selling children’s homes directly to the Correction
Corporation of America, the government is sugaring the pill by starting
the sell-off to charities. Using the rhetoric of ‘local empowerment’
to spearhead this privatisation makes sense for the government because
charities are widely trusted and seen as having expertise in delivering
services. It also saves money - for a start, charities have millions
of volunteers, most of them dedicated to helping others rather than
making money. Forcing highly unionised local authority workers into
casualised jobs with charities will drastically reduce their bargaining
power. At least minimising their wage bill costs will maximise the
margins available for profit and management expenses.
Privatising basic services wasn’t possible in the past because
of opposition from welfare lobbyists, charities and unions - but
that’s all changing as major charities now support the turn
away from state provision. An alliance of neo-labour ideologues
and ambitious managers in the voluntary sector are embarking on
a process that will eventually return social welfare to the 19th
century with private businesses making money out of poverty, while
charities pick up the pieces where there’s no profits to be
made.
While charities traditionally ran some projects alongside campaigning
for government action to deal with social problems, many bigger
charities now see privatisation as a way of increasing their own
power and influence. It’s hardly surprising - the top 1.6%
of charities account for 60% of the voluntary sector’s income
and these mega-charities are already run like corporations. Their
hierarchical career structure for professionals often means that
the boardroom is a long way removed from the streets.
The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations
recently stated that “there may be a dissonance between some
of the values associated with the sector, including its independence,
and its increasing role in the delivery of services on behalf of
government,” but nevertheless decided that the whole thing
was “a very good opportunity for the third sector to grow in
size and influence”. With a need to retain and expand market
share, daft ideas like campaigning and independence soon go out
the window.
FAITH, HOPE & PRECARITY
Creating a market is a costly business - and it’s not spent
on improving services. It’s spent on creating a whole new layer
of managers and consultants to set up and market the new service
‘brand’ to new potential customers, mechanisms that weren’t
needed when services were just provided free to those who needed
them. But capitalists will always find ways of affording this switch,
because the money to be made from cherry-picking most profitable
areas from billions of pounds worth of services is a prize well
worth winning. The government is currently spending £188m
on getting the voluntary sector up to speed on the inner workings
of privatisation. A world of conferences and training sessions,
forums and partnerships has been established to get community and
voluntary groups to accept the dominance of market forces in service
delivery and accept neo-liberal ideas as common sense.
The privatisation of the welfare state is also about preventing
the possibility of dissent. Neo Labour has noticed that when privatisation
begins to bite anywhere in the world, it’s the community groups
that make up civil society that are in the forefront of opposition
to it. The changes going through now are designed to hard-wire community
groups into the privatisation agenda with jobs and contracts at
risk which will make it very difficult for these charities to think
and act independently of government in the future.
Even the language in this pseudo-corporate world doesn’t allowed
dissent to be mouthed without being considered ‘inappropriate’
or ‘unhelpful’. Of course, the ‘partnerships’
that government is creating to implement privatisation are not about
sharing real power – they involve infantilising ‘consultations’
where experienced charity workers are asked to stick their views
on the wall on post-its by patronising, jargon-spouting bureaucrats
who think they invented ‘community’ in 1997. Real decisions
are taken by the usual business elites.
Once the market is created, new areas of profit-making potential
will exist - that’s when the cost-cutting corporations appear
with lawyers holding copies of WTO free competition rules to put
an end to local charities delivering sensitive, imaginative local
services. Even before this, competitive pressure to deliver a minimum
service will soon reduce the flexibility and freedom of workers
to act as they see fit, or go ‘the extra mile’ in particular
cases – well, you wouldn’t want to bring down your performance
evaluation statistics, would you?
And of course privatising basic services takes them out of democratic
control. As veteran Glasgow community activist Bob Holman says,
“Local authorities are answerable to electors but national
voluntary societies are dominated by wealthy and privileged people
- huge amounts of state money are now putting even more power in
the hands of unelected elites.”
Still, not everyone is going along with the sell-off. Public service
unions are getting ready to fight for their jobs and the integrity
of the services they provide, and many charity workers who work
directly with people in need rather than ‘managing delivery
options’ are deeply suspicious of what’s happening. A
fight to defend basic, universal services from the tender mercies
of the market could be brewing. We should perhaps look to local
autonomous groups such as the Brighton Migrant English Project (See
SchNEWS 523), which has had great success
providing essential social support tailored to local needs –
all on a shoestring budget. Given a little money, groups like this
could be responding to front-line problems and helping build local
communities at the same time, but sadly it’s unlikely because
the only profit in it is social, not financial.
* As an example of how a business ethos dominating the provision
of social support to deprived areas leads to little of what is needed
and a large slice of the available cash ending up in managers’
and consultants’ fat pockets, read about a local quangocracy
operating in Brighton called eb4u in Rough Music (www.roughmusic.org.uk/#six).
 
CRAP ARREST OF THE WEEK
For wearing a t-shirt (again)
Cindy Sheehan – who’s son died in Iraq and has since held
an anti-war camp near George W’s ranch in Texas – was
arrested at Dubya’s State Of The Union speech on Tuesday night.
She’d been given a ticket to attend by a congressperson, and
while she had no intention of disrupting the speech, wore a t-shirt
saying ‘2245 Dead. How many more?’. After sitting in her
seat, as soon as she unzipped her jacket a goon shouted ‘protester’
and she was bundled out and arrested. She was released four hours
later.
Accidental
Democracy
Bringing democracy to the Middle East - wasn’t that what the
invasion of Iraq was supposed to be about? But it seems that too
much democracy in the region is a problem. You just can’t trust
those cheeky Arabs to vote the right way y’see.
Despite an overwhelming victory in internationally monitored elections
in Palestine, the world’s power players gathered round to threaten
Hamas with the withdrawal of aid necessary to run the Palestinian
Authority. With the Palestinian economy strangled under a network
of Israeli checkpoints, foreign aid is what keeps the refugee camps
viable. Most of the public service wages for doctors, teachers and
security officers etc, along with tax revenues are collected and
controlled by… Israel, who have just ordered a freeze on remitting
the cash (some $50m per month), saying they will not see it in the
hands of ‘murderous elements’. They are presumably determined
to ensure their own murderous elements remain well funded.
Hamas have won the support of the population more for their solid
reputation for incorruptibility than their religious stance or vows
to dismantle Israel. As so often in two or three party ‘democracies’
they were the only other real alternative for a population who had
grown tired of the corruption of Arafat’s clique and their
inability to secure any alleviation of their daily oppression.
However the usual suspects have been rounded up to condemn Hamas
as an undemocratic ‘terrorist’ group and a legitimate
target in the War on Terror™. The Israeli state’s effort
to shape discourse and make parallels between its occupation and
the US’s struggle against Al-Queda has been swallowed whole
by the mainstream media, who quote without comment hypocritical
demands that Hamas ‘renounce’ violence in order to receive
aid. Meanwhile the billions which pour into Isarel come with no
such strings attached. In fact Hamas has held a ceasefire since
last February, something which can’t be said for the Israeli
Defence Force.
Sadly, it looks like things are going to get even tougher for the
Palestinian people before they get any better. If you’re looking
for reasons as to why, you’d be better off asking questions
about geo-politics, self-interested Israeli power-elites asserting
their ‘rights’ to act as ruthlessly as the US always have,
and the US’s tacit condoning of the situation, which conveniently
provides them with a power base stronghold in the area as they gradually
plot their latest cold war - the one with Islam playing the role
of communism and US playing the part of …
* For more see http://electronicinfitada.net
COTTONING
ON
Mali cotton growers have voted against using genetically modified
crops in a ‘citizens jury’ and are looking at supporting
local farmers and strengthening traditional methods. Mali is the
largest producer of cotton in sub-Sahara Africa, and is under pressure
to move to GM crops and large-scale industrialised farming. Currently
Mali’s cotton is mostly grown by smallholders. The citizen
jury was held during a five day event in Sikasso bringing together
local farmers with counterparts from India and South America with
experience in GM crops, plus biotech scientists and NGO’s.
For more see www.iied.org
LASER
ERASERS
Both main gates at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston
were blockaded last Monday by ‘Block The Builders’ in
a protest against the proposed new ‘Orion’ laser facility
at AWE – which would set Aldermaston up to develop new nuclear
weapons. This plant would see the UK again break its international
obligations under the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty, as
well as undermining the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. For more
see www.blockthebuilders.org.uk
FIGHT
ON THE TILES
“If we can’t run a successful factory with the bosses,
let’s try it without”. That’s how workers at Zanon,
a tile factory in Neuquén province in Argentina saw it. And
it worked.
In 2001 Argentina went into economic meltdown. Businesses defaulted
on their debts, stopped paying their workers and shut the places
they worked in. Zanon was just one of these workplaces. Sacked by
telegram, with orders unfilled, the workers decided to take over
the factory themselves.
Organising day to day activities by elected committees and taking
all major decisions by general assembly, the workers started selling
the tiles left -paying wages owed and soon they had restarted production,
which has grown dramatically, employing more and more people ever
since.
Zanon workers have since formed their own, radical, independent
trade union, breaking away from the corruption and timidity of the
old official unions and fighting for worker’s rights to organise
in four other ceramics plants. They produce Nuestra Lucha (Our Struggle),
“a newspaper of the occupied factories and workers in struggle”,
plus a radio program and a website. Zanon workers provide free materials
to schools, hospitals, community centres, poor families and others
in need and the assembly plays an active part in supporting the
struggles of other workers, the unemployed and the indigenous community.
In return, these companer@s (South American term loosely meaning
‘anarchist comrade’) have supported Zanon in defeating
police attempts to retake the factory for its old bosses, who deserted
it over four years ago. Nike claim they, “don’t sell shoes,
they sell dreams”, well, Zanon workers don’t just make
tiles, they start revolutions.
What did you do at work today? Go and hear what Zanon workers did
when they tour the country this month. Feb 13th Brighton 7.30, Brighthelm
Centre, North Road, contact: 07904 431 959 Check out www.nosweat.org.uk
for more details.
Inside
SchNEWS
Heather Nicholson, prominent activist with SHAC is on remand
for allegedly assaulting a Countryside Alliance supporter. Write
to her at NR7271 HMP Bronzefield, Woodthorpe Rd, Ashford, Middlesex
TW15 3JT.
* For full details on all anarchist and animal liberation prisoners
check out: www.brightonabc.org.uk
and www.alfsg.org.uk
CHAIN
REACTION
Fancy putting Tony Blair in chains? Fancy putting the whole of
Parliament in chains? Well on May 1st you could make it happen.
A special kind of protest is being organised to highlight the farcical
‘No Protest Zone’ around Westminster, part of the Serious
Organised Crime and Police Act which was rushed through Parliament
after last years London bombings. 6,000 people are needed to form
a human chain round the 1km exclusion zone that covers the area
around Parliament.
The exclusion zone was an amendment to the original bill, and has
no relation to the rest of the Act, which is all about creating
a taskforce of super cops to deal with organised crime. The reason
the amendment was added was to try and stop Brian Haw’s continual,
5 and a half year protest of the British government’s foreign
policy and sanctions in Iraq, during which he has been camping outside
Parliament. This however failed because the idiots who drafted the
law stated that organisers of protests need at get Police permission
“when the protest starts”. As Brian’s protest had
started years before the law was even dreamt up it didn’t apply
to him!
If you fancy mixing direct action with a giant game of Hokey-Cokey
(careful when you shake it all about, you might get nicked) then
go to www.pledgebank.com/protest
Jackboot
On The Other Foot
Don’t worry, yer so-leftwing-we-can’t-see-the-centre
SchNEWS hasn’t come full circle and joined the far right but
we’re not totally gutted that Nick Griffin and his gang of
bonehead nazi sympathizers got a ‘not guilty’ in Leeds
this week. This attempt by the thought police to restrict freedom
of speech under the offence of ‘inciting racial hatred’
was opening a very dangerous door. The clampdown backfired and all
it did was allow a national platform for these wolves to slip on
the sheep’s coat of civil rights. Community action is what
defeats fascism, not the state. Confronting the fascists where their
rhetoric is gaining a foothold (thanks to Neo-Labour) is gonna be
a thousand times more effective than relying on the political police
to do our dirty work. Anti-fascists are taking the fight to the
heart of this lunatic political fringe, leafleting estates, raising
awareness and physically confronting the BNP racists. For more see
www.antifa.org.uk
SchNEWS
in brief
- Over 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Negev Detention
camp have begun a hunger strike in protest at their collective
treatment by their jailers. They last had food on Monday. Some
of the prisoners were recently denied visits from outside after
getting caught celebrating the birthday of the Fateh movement.
See www.imemc.org
- Nokia have come under fire at this years World Economic
Forum taking place in Davos, Switzerland. The company stand
accused of not complying to any labour laws. Workers cannot organise
and are often paid below the legal minimum www.evb.ch/en/p25010664.html
- The Tax Justice Network were refused an invite to the
WEF. This is surprising, as the Network deals with shady Corporate
tax evasion. They might have learned a thing or two. www.evb.ch/en/p25010662.html
- Wanna get involved in local action against animal abuse
in Brighton? There are meetings on the 1st and 3rd Weds of every
month at 7pm at the Cowley Club, 12 London Rd, Brighton
- Slavic Night, a barbaric benefit for some very tough
Polish streetfighters who wrestle bears, eat nails and shit crowbars.
Cowley Club Brighton Saturday 4th Feb 8 onwards.
...and
finally...
In this age of risk management, team building exercises and executive
stress toys, there’s a lot of money in the growth sector of
the ‘get the edge on your business competitor’ expert
advice market. But how do you ‘think outside the box’
when you’re an arms company, and you’ve got pesky anti-war
protesters who won’t take other forms of intimidation - legal
and physical - to get ‘on message’ before they expose
all your dirty work? And worse, it’s got to a High Court case
against the protesters, your MD’s resigned and you still can’t
stiff them? Well, obviously, call in a stress counselling mediation
guru from California to sit in the middle while you and the protesters
sit in separate rooms, and at the end you attempt to find some ‘common
ground’ before a group hug and a round of Kum Bayah.
But that’s what’s happening in the injunction proceedings
between Brighton bomb builders EDO MBM and anti-arms-trade activists,
where the judge has ordered EDO to appoint a goatee bearded ‘mediator’
between them and the protesters named in the injunction. It is hoped
the protesters will get carried away with the warm fuzzy vibe and
agree to let the whole thing go. The meeting is today (3rd Feb),
presumably to be held in comfortable agreeable surroundings with
ergonomic chairs, neutral colours, mineral water and soothing music…
* For updates see www.smashedo.org.uk
Disclaimer
SchNEWS warns all readers - don’t take the gravy train
- you might get your ticket punched... Honest!
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