Nationalise the energy sector under democratic working-class control and management
Wayne Scott
Whatever comes out of Sunak’s upcoming autumn statement, one thing is clear, our newly unelected prime minister will seek to further impoverish the working class, whilst lining the pockets of shareholders of the energy companies and his other fat cat friends.
This much was clear from Jeremy Hunt’s first statement as chancellor, promising cuts to come, along with a time limit of next April 2023 to end the pitiful energy price cap.
As it is, more than half of households in Scotland are officially in fuel poverty. Meanwhile, the profits of the big energy companies are soaring, whilst working-class communities struggle to afford their bills.
Demands have grown for a freezing of prices. However to freeze prices at their current exorbitant level would only serve to trap people further into poverty.
We demand lower bills, and we can achieve this with socialist policies. In the midst of the cost of living crisis, the word “nationalisation” is rearing its head, even the Tory mouthpiece The Spectator has featured an article calling for the nationalisation of the energy companies.
Despite how popular demands for nationalisation are amongst the public – even a majority of Tory voters supporting nationalisation of energy – Keir Starmer his been quick to distance himself from such a proposal.
Instead of nationalisation of the entire energy sector – producers, suppliers and the transmission network – all Starmer’s Labour have to offer is calls for the establishment of a public renewable energy company – Great British Energy – to compete with the private firms.
A public firm trying to compete with big energy giants would be forced to engage in profiteering in order to stay ahead of the competition, and in practice would end up being run like a private company.
This has been the case on the railways. The SNP boast that they have nationalised Scotrail. However, Scotrail is still run like a private business with union-busting directors on bloated salaries squeezing the workforce in the name of efficiency.
This has forced RMT members on the railways to take strike action recently in defence of pay and terms and conditions.
Socialists must be clear that the case for nationalisation that we make is completely different from the calls often made by sections of the capitalist class during times of crisis.
In the aftermath of the 2008 crash, Gordon Brown part-nationalised the banking system. In effect these ‘nationalisations’ meant the government paying off the banks’ debts and leaving the profits in the hands of the bosses.
This has everything to do with saving capitalism and nothing to do with socialism. As James Connolly pointed out in 1901; “state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism…but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism”
We don’t need any more bailouts for the bosses, or partial capitalist public ownership. socialist policy We need nationalisation of the entire energy sector with compensation paid only to small shareholders on the basis of proven need.
We demand that the entire production, distribution and supply of energy be placed under the control of the workers in those industries, which would allow these workers to transition to renewable energy production with no loss of jobs, wages or conditions.
This would lay the basis for a democratic socialist plan for the energy sector, as part of a wider socialist plan of production.
Energy could then be provided at cost price which would slash household bills. Socialist Party Scotland will continue to campaign for these socialist policies as the only solution to the capitalist cost of living crisis.
