Private Island
by James Meek
(Verso, £12.99)

PROBABLY best known for his wonderful novel The People’s Act of Love, James Meek now turns his attention to the all too real issue of privatisation in Britain over the past few decades in Private Island.

Writing with flair, confidence and insight, he interviews key individuals and visits central places in a sorry story which won’t come as a shock to many Morning Star readers.

Meek excels at pointing out how so-called state monopolies all too quickly became big business monopolies and how the whole notion of a popular shareholding and property-owning capitalism is merely ideological spin to cover up who’s really been benefitting in the long term.  

The rise and fall of Railtrack and its whole relationship to what happened — or rather what didn’t happen — on the West Coast main line is an issue that should be raised time and again, at least until we get railway renationalisation back onto the political agenda.

Energy-wise, the ability of the utility companies to get away with price-fixing beggars belief. A Unison official makes the point that after years of campaigning for public ownership of electricity, they hadn’t quite expected it to be done by the French state company EDF.

Meek also highlights the fact that many bills are, in effect, actually taxes because existing off grid is for the vast majority well-nigh impossible. New Labour thankfully isn’t let off the hook either. As Meek notes in his chapter on health: “If the

Conservatives and their Liberal allies are dismantling the NHS, it was Labour that loosened the screws.

More of a social democrat than a commited leftwinger, Meek is quite at home demonstrating how the neoliberal version of a chaotic, privatised and deregulated capitalism isn’t really in the interests of the majority, including large sections of capital itself.

Thus it’s important to remember that although some post-war reforms were introduced as a result of popular struggle and of a ruling class all too aware of the “threat” of socialism, many were introduced because business needed the stability, planning, resources and investment that only large-scale state intervention could provide.

There’s lots to disagree with in this book — its introductory comments on the Soviet era paint a fairly bleak picture to say the least and Meek often understates the case for state ownership.

And the section dealing with Lubetkin’s legacy in terms of the famous Cranbrook estate gives so much time to the views of housing associations that it even includes an attack on the widely admired Defend Council Housing Campaign for its work in the area.

On the whole, though, a fine contribution with lots of valuable information for the coming battles ahead. Could somebody get Ed Miliband a copy?