Privatisation Follow

BECHTEL, THE biggest vulture to have got its claws into Iraq since the invasion, planned to be in London on Friday this week. It wanted to hand out a few scraps to British firms linked to government projects here. Bechtel is a byword for ruthless privatisation. The US government has given it the principal contract, worth $680 million, to "reconstruct" Iraq.

IN ENGLAND the Socialist Alliance is providing an alternative for all those who can no longer stomach voting for Blair's Labour Party. Over 160 Socialist Alliance Against the War candidates are standing in the local council elections. They are also campaigning against privatisation, student tuition fees and the witch-hunt of asylum seekers.

Labour now plans to privatise the military.

THE MOST coordinated strike action on the railway since privatisation forced train operating companies to cancel up to 90 percent of services across nine firms this Monday and on Friday of last week. Some 3,000 guards in the RMT union held two 24-hour strikes over a long-running safety dispute. Further action is planned for Thursday 17 April. Despite government support for strikebreaking, management on the nine companies admitted the strike's success.

GUARDS IN the RMT rail workers' union on ten companies were set to strike for 24 hours on Friday of this week and Monday of next over safety. "It is the first effectively national strike we have had on the guards' side since privatisation," says Alex Holden, a guard and RMT safety rep in Manchester. "The fragmentation of the industry means we have had to have a series of synchronised ballots." The companies are:

This year's women's TUC conference in Liverpool was the angriest I have attended. Throughout the conference, opposition to government policies on issues such as equality legislation, pensions, privatisation and the firefighters' dispute was linked again and again to the senseless waste of lives and resources in a war.

GUARDS AND conductors on 12 rail lines could call strikes next week after a two to one vote for action. The dispute to restore the safety role of guards goes right to the heart of the way privatisation has sacrificed safety, services and passengers in the interests of the rail conglomerates.

What have the rail, power and pensions industries got in common? This would be funny if it wasn't such a disaster.

NEW LABOUR'S privatisation scheme for London Underground came within a hair's breadth of killing dozens of people last Saturday. A motor fell off a Central Line tube train, knocking it off the rails as it entered Chancery Lane station. The train smashed into the platform, and its doors were ripped off as some carriages slammed into tunnel walls.

"IF YOU keep fucking around we are going to kill you all." That threat was made by the Colombian army to workers at the EMCALI public utilities firm this week. The workers, based in the city of Cali in the South American country, are occupying offices and plants against the threat of privatisation. A year ago they beat off privatisation after an occupation.

What does modernisation of public services actually mean? More managers or more money?

LAST YEAR could leave no one in any doubt about where the New Labour government is going. It began with Tony Blair in February denouncing public sector workers who oppose privatisation as "wreckers". It ended with the whole government mounting a vicious propaganda campaign against the firefighters and their union.