Ah, the end of history. Remember that? Give the pesky locals political freedom and 1,000 years of joyful free markets would beckon. Democracy and capitalism would walk hand in hand down the aisle, consummating the triumph of one system.
This was the early 90s and, like James Meek, I had the privilege of reporting on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist system. We also had the misfortune of watching hubristic western advisers lecturing to the Russians and eastern Europeans about the way ahead. Embrace privatisation and all would be well. Flog off all the assets, as quickly as possible, to the highest bidder. I recall how these famous economists – many of whom would now be too embarrassed to admit their role – acted as puppet masters in the finance ministry in Moscow. One of the results was the carve-up of Russia’s natural resources between a small group of unsavoury characters who knew whom to pay off and whom to frighten off. This great act of economic theft and ideological folly gave rise to the phenomenon of the oligarchs, the most conspicuous members of the global super-rich.
In his devastating account of the privatisation dogma of the past 25 years, Meek makes clear that these policies formed part of a bigger picture. He charts the link between the policies pursued abroad and at home, policies that in the UK have now turned full circle. Whole swathes of industry, particularly the public utilities, are in the hands of foreign state companies whose very existence would not be tolerated here at home.
Meek bombards the reader with compelling facts, but he does so with panache. After all, how many authors could turn a passage about ownership of the water industry into a page-turner? “It is the hypocrisy, in particular, of a party that claims to loathe nothing more than communism and totalitarianism obliging Londoners to pay a tithe to the Chinese government just for turning on the tap,” he notes. Or this, in regard to the British electricity industry and its domination by the French state monolith EDF: “In Thatcherite terms EDF was a public-sector mammoth that would inevitably be hunted to extinction by the hungry and agile competitors of post-privatisation countries like Britain.”
He focuses his forensic glare from the railways to nuclear power, via the NHS, to housing and the postal service. He becomes an expert on everything from postal shift patterns to the intricacies of the French health service.
Privatisation, rather than ushering in an era of consumer power and open competition, has led to monopolistic stitch-ups against consumers and allowed fat cats to pay themselves silly money on the basis of “performance indicators” produced for their benefit. “The reality is that the faceless state bureaucrats of the old electricity boards have been replaced by the faceless (and better paid) private bureaucrats of the electricity companies.” The dream of free marketeers was to turn Britain into a nation of small shareholders. Before Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979, individuals held almost 40% of shares in UK companies. By 1981, it was less than 30% and by the time she died in 2013, it had slumped to under 12%.
As demolition jobs go, this can hardly be bettered. The absence of polemic makes the quietly withering prose all the more powerful. And yet in his understandable desire to provide a single narrative, Meek does not mention those industries whose privatisation could be deemed a success. Do we hark back with pride to the era of nationalised airlines? And what about our phones? There’s surely no nostalgia to be found in the old rickety GPO.
Most people, I would suggest, are agnostic about the means of ownership. What matters is what works. And as the author demonstrates beyond peradventure, many of the privatisations have failed in their core goals of delivering better services. To say so is not ideological; to deny the overwhelming evidence is.
John Kampfner’s new book, The Rich, a 2,000-Year History, is published by Little Brown on 2 October
Private Island is published by Verso (£12.99). Click here to buy it for £10.39 with free UK p&p
