Waving the people's flag

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Some people have expressed surprise at the support coming from Farage and Reform for the nationalisation of the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe. Based on the premise that nationalisation is a ‘left-wing’ concept, it would indeed be surprising for the most ‘right-wing’ party to be supporting it. The flaw, however, lies in the premise.

It's true that Labour historically (before Blair got his hands on the party’s constitution) called for “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”, and that ‘common ownership’ has generally been interpreted as meaning the same as ‘state ownership’ (the two are not necessarily the same thing, but that is an issue for another time). It’s also true that, in pursuit of that goal, the immediate post-war Labour government nationalised the coal and steel industries in the UK. They also nationalised the railways, although the background to that is a bit more complex: in the aftermath of the second world war, the railway system was in a bad way and needed the sort of massive investment which a patchwork of private companies was never likely to be able to provide. By and large, the utilities - gas, water, electricity, communications – were never really nationalised in the sense of being taken out of private ownership and into public ownership. Most of them had grown out of municipal undertakings, and the re-organisation was more to do with a transfer between one part of the public sector and another. Beyond those few examples, where is the evidence for an ideology-based attempt to bring the means of production under public control?

In practice, nationalisation is a tool used by both Labour and the Tories (think Rolls-Royce under Ted Heath, or the banks under Gordon Brown) to bail out failing capitalist enterprises. And it has been largely a temporary measure at that, with the companies sold back into the private sector when they became profitable again. Once we recognise it as a tool to assist capitalists rather than to dispossess them, it becomes entirely natural that the political ‘right’ should espouse it too – if not even more natural. The real question is not why the ‘right’ should be such passionate supporters of nationalising failing businesses, but why the ‘left’ should be so passionate about doing the same thing, rather than, say, taking control of enterprises more likely to have a long term profitable future. Again, though, the flaw is in the premise. Labour has long-since lost any claim to be ‘of the left’.