THE GLOBALISED DESTRUCTION OF OUR PUBLIC SERVICES by. Dave Roberts

Reaching new depths of hypocrisy and opportunism even labour Government ministers are turning up on picket lines and demonstrations to defend NHS services which their cabinet colleagues are going to axe .Dave Roberts explains why labour government ministers won't and can't defend public services.

 The UK and world  Economy is now dominated by Trans-national corporations (TNC’s) whose power and influence is delivered by three organisations . The World Trade Organisation (WTO) the World Bank and the International monetary fund The three organisations exist to open up economies to Trans national corporations these Corporations are  powerful corps that whilst their headquarters may be based in a specific country, they hold no allegiance to any country or any people , they move billions of pounds of capital around the world ,seeking out the maximum amount of profit for their owners r share holders with no regard to the social economic, or cultural impact on communities ,societies individual countries or indeed whole  regions of the globe.

 International Trade and commerce  in the post world war two period , the era when the NHS was built and year on year further developed was governed by the General  Agreement on Trade  and Tarrifs  (GATT)  as a way of promoting “ free Trade” by reducing tariffs or trade barriers  primarily import or export duties and taxes to international trade.The GATT agreements were in effect simple business contracts entered into between countries, The WTO which is has a legal status  which is a  a permanent  body with a huge bureaucracy has now transformed GATT agreements into a legally enforceable  codes and agreements making the WTO one of the most powerful organisations in the world, in fact it is so powerful that it is the Only international body that the United States agrees to be bound by.

It is allows the countries on behalf of their business sectors to challenge the policies practices or economic programmes of another country  where they are deemed to be in contravention of WTO rules with severe legal and economic sanctions for losing parties.

The WTO today controls and regulates whole areas of the world economy ,and not just trade and commerce and agriculture, but increasingly  also public  health education and welfare services under the GATS agreement , the first  multilateral legally enforceable agreement on trade in services , A senior WTO official has said that the WTO is where governments conspire and collude in private against their domestic pressure groups”

And the European Services Forum a group of 50 of the largest European corporations have lobbied hard to remove exemptions for public services from GATS

The drive to privatise and commercialise our public services , is pushed on by the crisis of over production and  fall of the rate of profits in the manufacturing sector,(hence the push to close the remaining car plants in the UK at Peugeot Ryton and Vauxhall), and the precarious volatility of the financial markets.

We should not under estimate the rich pickings available to those who seek to make huge profits from our public services The global expenditure on education now exceeds 2.5 trillion dollars whilst on health care it is 3.5 trillion dollars. Predatory and powerful TNC’s have targetted the WTO/GATS  agreements to dismantle our domestic public systems of Health Education Transport etc. In addition to the economic cost of this there is an increasing human cost in lives and the continuing decline of services whilst we should not forget that  it is also a human tragedy for NHS staff as they struggle to deliver services in the face of  life threatening cut backs and a suffocating bureaucracy whose role is increasingly to   sell off and commercialise services. .

New Labour now supports the extension of the GATS agreements and has given the WTO lawyers a free hand in any negotiations on Britain’s Health , Education Welfare Transport  services and utilities- in effect the whole of the public sector

And what is not surprising is that not a single piece of paper ,or policy document has been published  by the government  on these important areas of public policy -they have hidden from the public the agreements they have signed up to, because they have in effect agreed to the wholesale privatisation of our services ,behind our backs they have entered and continue to enter into legally enforceable agreements with an un elected unaccountable , and untouchable organisation in the WTO. This truth is hidden from the british electorate, and no more so than by the labour lefts , who continue to build their own political careers by continuing to pursuade workers that another demonstration or picket line , a bigger push a few more days on strike is all that is needed to save services under threat and of course as always another labour government.

But the  deception is only part of the picture ,the Labour government and party need to hide this process from us because every few years they go through  general and local elections in  what is increasingly becoming a circus reduced to a political slanging match and beauty contest -they make numerous false promises of how they are going to put more money into education and welfare services and ask you to vote for them on that basis , when all the time behind our backs what they are really doing is putting more of our money into the hands of Trans -national corporations , And the whole privatisation and commercialisation agenda is the reason why the government can claim to be putting more money into education and health yet as we all know our services are declining

Unison the health Union  reported that the private sector had penetrated 35% 0t the Total NHS market  in soft support service contracts cleaning , catering maintenance security worth £1.1billion

Whilst  the cost of treating NHS patients in the private sector was 40% more than it would have cost in the NHS. A parliamentary health sub committee reported that the in 2002-2003 the NHS paid the private sector £100 million  for 60,000 operations that would have cost £70 million  in the NHS.

 The private finance  initiative is not as Labour would have it -a  partnership way of bringing more money and resources into the NHS, but a way of allowing  financial corporations to establish lucrative loan and  long term mortgage deals with the public sector  redirecting £millions of pounds of public money into the hands of private financers and their share holders.  By the end of 2003  there were  560 PFI deals worth a staggering £35 Billion  over 500 of these deals were signed up for by new labour

 The democratic deficit and the increasing irrelevance of local and general elections should be evident to all of this,and occasionally in rare moments of honesty you might Labour MP who is willing to own up to the effects of the process.

Robin Cooke once said

 “Talking about the increasing trend of non-voting , he said “ there is no glib solution to the trend .. and the inevitable tendency of decision making in the modern world to recede to European or even global forums makes political power appear even more remote to individual electors and even further beyond the practical influence of their votes… The problem is not that the British people have no opinion on the issues of the day but more and more of them no longer feel ownership of their parliamentary democracy or believe that it’s political culture can solve the problems in their lives”

A more worrying comment  comes from George Soros the billionaire financier who used his wealth and  resources to force a the UK out of the European exchange mechanism on the devastating “ black Wednesday”

He said this.

“ the biggest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of the unholy alliances  between government and business. This is not a new phenonomen it used to be called fascism…. The outward appearances of the democratic processes are preserved, but the powers of the state are diverted  to the benefit of private interests"

 So we now live in a global economy where  money is power and  mainstream politicians of all political persuasions are servants not to the people who elected them but to the masters of unaccountable , uncontrollable  and untouchable global capitalists.

 This is what the Walter Wriston the former chairman of citi-bank says

“money only goes where it is wanted  and only stays where it is treated well, and once you tie the world together with telecommunications and information, the ball game is over. For the first time in history the politicians of the world  can’t stop it”

And the TNC and their client governments do not simply restrict their global activities to economic and peaceful means , in there relentless search for profits they will their power to take countries to War. And the war in the Balkans and the War in Iraq where brought  for a number of reasons but primarily to ensure that the Nationalised economies of the Balkan region and Iraq where opened up for TNC control and exploitation.

There is an alternative  and an alternative that the world is crying out for their  system is called capitalism our alternative is called socialism their blood soaked system is called imperialism our alternative is internationalism. Fight for a socialist future build the Socialist Labour Party.