POLITICS
The wheel-clamp effect in the Government's programme of privatisation
FE RDINAND MOUNT
Readers in the provinces may be in- terested to know what the comfortable classes in the inner city are talking about. The answer, I am afraid, is not bourgeois triumphalism, of inner-city deprivation, but clamps. Nothing on four wheels, it seems, is now safe from the menace of the Denver Boot. Ambulances have been clamped outside hospitals, a hearse outside a cemetery, even a police car on surveill- ance duty. Some people have been clamped while still sitting in their cars, so quick and ineluctable is the process, calling to mind Lord Chesterfield's view of sex the position ridiculous, the pleasure momentary (for the damper) and the expense damnable. Miss Polly Toynbee in the Guardian was sympathising last week with the author of Sex Within Reason on the difficulty of finding a popular English verb for copulation which did not imply female passivity. 'Envelop' was clearly too feeble, they agreed. Entirely free of charge, I offer 'clamp'. True, the word has five letters instead of four, but it has all the desired feminist vigour.
The clamping mania has really taken off since Scotland Yard hired two private contractors to do the work. The number of clampings doubled immediately. The police have had to put the brakes on and impose a daily maximum, not out of charity to the motorist but because their administrative system cannot process the cases fast enough.
The whole affair brilliantly demonstrates all the main features of privatisation: In initiative rather hesitantly undertaken, mostly in the hope of saving money, takes on an unpredictable, almost frightening life of its own; new technology halves the time and cost involved; staff attitudes change dramatically and so does the staff. No doubt we shall soon be mourning the disappearance of those sturdy vehicle- removal officers who used to manhandle ill-parked cars into their transporters with sleeves rolled and brows perspiring, a sight in future likely to be as rare as that of carthorses ploughing.
Our political culture does not much care for the avowedly unpredictable. Journal- ists, no less than civil servants, are much happier with government initiatives which claim to be dictating the shape of the future. When a government nationalises the coal industry or imposes comprehen- sive education, we know what we are in for, or think we do.
The first Queen's Speech of the new Parliament, by contrast, is thus a curiosity. Indeed, there has probably been nothing like it since the repeal of the corn laws, if ever. Almost all its principal measures — the great exception being the replacement of domestic rates by the 'community charge' — depend for their effect on the choices of individual citizens, either singly or in groups.
Council tenants may or may not decide to opt for new private landlords under the Housing Bill. Landlords may or may not take advantage of the relaxation of rent control to offer more new or revamped dwellings for rent. Parents may or may not vote for their children's school to opt out of LEA control. Employees may or may not take advantage of the freedom not to join a strike or a trade union without being punished for it. Investors may or may not decide to invest in the newly privatised British Airports Authority or in the water and electricity industry when they come along.
Much the same objections are being raised to all these measures as were raised to their predecessors in the last two Parlia- ments. The first is: 'There . will be no demand for it'. To which one may retort, rather briskly, `If you really mean no demand at all, then surely no great harm will be done to the status quo, since nobody is being forced into take-up. But if, like a surly sales assistant, you mean "no demand worth bothering about", then you are being insufficiently bossy and anti- democratic, and also you are wrong.'
The provincial bus companies, for exam- ple, were supposed to be unsaleable; and Mr Nicholas Ridley was denounced as pig-headedly ideological, not least by the National Bus Company, for splitting them up instead of selling them more profitably as a comfy single block — the dream of all senior managers in state monopolies. The 1985 Transport Act had to be pushed through Parliament to almost universal scepticism, especially from Tory backben- chers. In practice, 35 of the 76 companies into which NBC was divided have already been sold, many of them to their own senior staff; another 15 sales are awaiting the Minister's approval; total proceeds are likely to be over £200 million, twice what was predicted six months ago, and more or less the same as what was being estimated for the sale of the group in one piece. Expectations of tepid response have been similarly defied elsewhere; for example, 10 the sale of council houses. The next argument to be encountered is: `What about the rump that is being left behind in state control, the unprofitable, unsaleable losers? Surely you are merely assisting the winners to separate them- selves from the poor, to cream themselves off' — not a phrase I care for, but there you are. This argument seems to me based on a flawed, static view of the way people react to changed circumstances That falla- cy is already exposed by the response of many trade unions and local authorities to the imminent prospect of 'contracting out'; council dustmen suddenly discovered that they could do the same job for 40 per cent less; hospital laundries and cleaning staff miraculously improved their performance' Why should not a local education author- ity, threatened with the defection of some of its schools, start a serious drive to raise standards? Indeed, something of the sort has already been visible in the ILEA and will no doubt gain momentum with the prospect of some London boroughs seced- ing under the provision of Mr Baker's Bill. Queen's Speeches are usually written off as non-events, 'much as predicted'. One s attention is drawn instead to the delicious manoeuvres surrounding the election of the Shadow Cabinet or the prospects for a merger of the Alliance parties. Yet all this is secondary stuff, significant only in terms of how it helps or hinders the Labour PartY or the Alliance to accommodate itself to the central thrust of the Queen's Speech' The rhetoric of Mr Kinnock's new Labour Party is centred, quite rightly, on the 'Enabling State' — which has made It possible for Mr and Mrs Kinnock to be the first of their family to attend universitY since, I think, the late Stone Age. But Labour — and the Alliance too — still have to cope with what might be called the last enablement', by which the state leaves room for you to make your arrangements. It will take all the notorious elasticity of the idea of socialism to fit that one in. I do not for one moment claim that this `people-enabling' legislation is a sufficient response to poverty in the inner cities, but it is certainly a necessary one. For the hopeless poor, further and other policies must be thought out. To these we will return.
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