In
1987, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister, declared in an
interview that, “there is no such thing as society”. It is therefore fairly ironic that 13 years later,
David Cameron, the new Conservative Prime Minister, has announced his plans to
create a ‘Big Society’ in Britain. Throughout the general election coverage,
Cameron had avoided mentioning any specifics on what was meant by his vision of
a Big Society, but now Cameron and his new best friend Nick Clegg, have
outlined what is in store for the country.
Thanks
to the economic crisis and the bailout of the bankers, the Tory-Liberal
government has inherited a rather large budget deficit, which currently stands
at approximately £156bn. Always keen to appease big business and the gamblers
in the City, the Tories have promised to cut the deficit quickly, whilst Clegg
has made it clear on a number of occasions that he supports ‘savage cuts’. The
new coalition government has set its sights on public services as the main
target for the cuts. The problem they face, however, is that, unlike fat-cat
bankers, most ordinary people rely on public services to provide essentials
such as education, healthcare, transport, and a whole host of other
necessities. The Cameron-Clegg vision, therefore, is to reduce government
expenditure on services by taking them off the books, whilst relying on private
organisations for the provision of essential services. According to the BBC News
(18/05/10), “The prime minister and his Lib Dem deputy said people should
have more say over planning decisions and voluntary groups should be able to
run public services”.
In
essence, therefore, the term ‘Big Society’ is merely a modern euphemism for privatisation.
Whilst Cameron tries to prettify the idea by talking about services that are
run by charities and voluntary groups, the reality of the plans is far more
similar to the privatisation of public services that took place under New
Labour over the past 13 years, with schemes such as the Private Finance
Initiative (PFI). These projects, often synonymous with Public-Private
Partnerships (PPP), were embraced by previous governments, who saw them as
providers of a free lunch. According to the Financial Times, “Public sector
commitments to pay for these, in terms of capital, maintenance and services,
now total in excess of £215bn, stretching until 2032”. However, as a result of the ‘credit crunch’, the
money behind the PFI schemes has dried up, leaving a trail of embarrassment for
the government, who have been forced to bail out a number of failed companies.
One of the most notable cases was the infamous Metronet scandal. Metronet was
responsible for the maintenance, renewal, and upgrade of the infrastructure on
nine London Underground lines, but was later
bailed out with £2bn of taxpayers’ money after going into administration.
Michael
Gove, the new Secretary of State for Education, has announced that the first
area to be crushed by the Big Society is that of schools. Gove’s education ‘reforms’
(i.e. counter-reforms) look to extend the academies programme, which was
originally started by Tony Blair in 2000, and to encourage all schools to apply
for ‘academy’ status. These plans contain a whole host of problems, and should
be rejected outright. The original idea of the academies programme in 2000 was
to improve the worst performing schools; however, the Tory-Liberal plans are
for schools rated as ‘outstanding’ by inspectors to be fast-tracked into
academy status. Rather than raising the standards of education for all,
therefore, Gove’s plans are merely an attempt to widen the gap.
More
worryingly, is what exactly gaining academy status entails. Academy schools are
essentially the application of PPPs to the field of education: the government
puts up the majority of the funding, with a small fraction provided by private
sponsorship. In return for this minimal sum, the private funder is given
control of the operation and management of the school. The main issue is that
academies are given almost full autonomy from local or national government
control. Although they must still adhere to the national curriculum, they are
given a great deal of flexibility in what is taught. In some cases this has led
to religious groups, charities, or individuals teaching Creationism in science
lessons. Meanwhile, any young person who has had to take school examinations in
the past decade will be well aware of how qualifications have become completely
privatised, with a multitude of different examination boards competing for
students as their customers.
Another
important implication of the autonomy given to academies is the ability it
gives the management to drive down the pay and conditions of teachers and other
staff. By gaining independence from national agreements, the organisations in
charge of schools will be able to make pay deals on an ad hoc basis, thus
reducing the power of the teaching unions to negotiate on behalf of their
members. With teachers likely to see an attack on their wages in the coming
period, the coalition government is clearly hoping to pass on the
responsibility to private companies and avoid a direct confrontation with militant
unions such as the National Union of Teachers (NUT).
Whilst
Cameron and Gove have tried to emphasise these ideas as a way of avoiding
bureaucracy and giving parents and communities more control over their schools,
the reality is that their plans are more likely to lead to large private
companies taking over the running of schools, with little accountability to the
parents and pupils. In a recent speech, Michael Gove even admitted that his
plans were wide open to privatisation, claiming that, “I am a Conservative,
I do not have an ideological objection to businesses being involved” (The Guardian, 31/05/10). The Guardian article continues
by saying that, “Companies could profit from running schools using existing
legislation which allows governing bodies to contract out the running of their
school to a company that can charge a management fee…Under the management fee
model, the school governing body remains not-for-profit but all the services –
from teaching to school lunches and cleaning – can be run by private companies”. This is remarkably similar to the PFI schemes
initiated in hospitals, in which vital services such as cleaning were outsourced
to private companies. The MRSA superbug was an unhealthy reminder of what such
privatisation can lead to.
The
most probable scenario is for large management companies to take over the
running of a number of schools, as has already happened with hospitals. Mike
Baker, an education analyst for the BBC News, predicts that, “The big change
ahead may, I suspect, be less about the creation of more academies and more
about the start of an era of large chains of schools run by academy sponsors or
education management firms”.
Meanwhile, Angela Harrison, an education correspondent for the BBC announced
that, “New academies set up under the proposed legislation would be able to
be managed by outside companies…Many are run by groups known as ‘education
providers’, which are not currently allowed to make a profit. They can however,
through their size, make economies of scale. It is these groups which could end
up organising the day-to-day running of schools set up by parents or other
groups”.
The
Tory-Liberal plans for education, therefore, are in many ways analogous to the ‘Right-to-Buy’
scheme initiated by the Thatcher government in 1980 as a way of taking social
housing out of the control of local councils. Whilst much of the social housing
stock was bought up by individuals, vast sections were sold onto new,
arms-length management companies known as ‘housing associations’. Although
nominally ‘not-for-profit’, these independent organisations are not given any
regulation on how much the management can earn. Meanwhile, investment by these
housing associations for new construction has been almost non-existent, resulting
in over 5 million people now registered on the housing waiting list according
to the Local Government Association.
It
can be seen, therefore, that the idea of the Big Society is nothing new – it is
the same old Tory policy of privatisation, but repackaged for a new generation.
One can easily trace a line from the privatisation of Thatcher (and Major),
through the New Labour policies of Blair and Brown, and onto Cameron’s vision
of the Big Society. Meanwhile, the fact that Clegg and the rest of the Lib Dems
in the coalition government fully supported the proposals really does show what
kind of party they are.
What
is needed now is for working people, the trade unions, and the youth to resist
these attacks on public services and to clear the Blairites out of the Labour
Party. We must demand services that are under public ownership and democratic
control. However, we should not stop there. We must go further and demand the
nationalisation of all the major levers of the economy under workers’ control,
including the banks, so that we can plan production for the needs of society,
which, despite Margaret Thatcher’s insistence, definitely does exist.
