Reviews

• This book is an incisive guide to how the Thatcherite and post-Thatcher privatisations have gone catastrophically wrong - not just from a left perspective, but in the terms that they were intended initially by the conservative governments (predominantly) who put them into practice. Looking in depth at several specific privatisations, Meek shows how many sectors of previously nationalised industries have fallen into the hands of companies owned by the state in other countries - such as French government owned EDF in the gas and electricity sector, and are not owned by small private shareholders - indeed the number of people owning shares has actually gone down. At first I felt that Meek was spending too much time looking in detail into specific small cases rather than taking a broader view, but by the time you've read the whole book, which is extremely readable, you have gained the big picture nonetheless, and much of the detail is important and interesting. His concept of the privatisation of taxation is interesting, and shows how we are all effectively financing the profits of private companies or public companies in other countries. Essential reading for anybody concerned about the corporate takeover of Britain.

• “Private Island” by James Meek is a highly informed and powerful critique of Britain’s privatization of its former publicly-owned assets. Mr. Meek is a well-respected writer who has spent many years reporting in The Guardian and other respected sources. This thoroughly researched, humane and reasoned book will interest everyone concerned about power, ideology and community. Mr. Meek dedicates individual chapters in the book to six sectors: mail, rail, water, electric, health care and housing. Mr. Meek explains how the free market ideology of privatization, as championed by true believers such as Margaret Thatcher, has failed to produce the promised benefits for the British people. Worse, it seems that Britain has been gradually losing its sovereignty as unaccountable foreign investors have gained control over many essential services. Mr. Meek’s text benefits from over 150 first-person interviews. Mr. Meeks discusses policies, politics and economics with a number of subject matter experts who help us understand the before and after effects of privatization. He also talks with many ordinary people who have disproportionality shouldered the costs of privatization. Contrary to what neoliberals would have us believe about the purported superiority of private enterprise, it seems that fat-cat investors are more than content to pirate away the wealth of a nation and deliver as little as possible in return. As the calamities of privatization are laid bare through Mr. Meek’s outstanding work, it becomes evident to us that the Thatcherites were blinded by ideology. To be sure, Mr. Meek accepts that Britain’s ruling class might well have been motivated by greed or stupidity (or both); in any case, the damage has been done. What matters most is that readers are empowered by Mr. Meek’s text to forcefully challenge the ruinous ideologies that have made life worse for most people. I highly recommend this excellent book to everyone.

• Chilling and timely. But how do we get it back?

• Very informative and when I looked into some of the points raised it seems to have been well researched. Politically it is centre rather than left and it concentrates on the management failures in Westminster (all parties seem to suffer from lack of basic skills in this area). Worth reading but it may leave you annoyed.

• I agree with most of the 5star reviews ive read. What surprised me was that the Labour Gvts came out so badly. I finished up realising that they were the lesser of the 2 evils eg on page 162 on NHS "it was Blair and Brown that began the replacing the public components of the NHS with private ones", "it was Labour who loosened the screws". "It was labour who introduced Foundation Trusts, allowing hospital managers to borrow money and making it possible for state hospitals to go broke.It was labour who brought in CHOOSE AND BOOK, obliging patients to pick from a menu of NHS and private clinics when they needed to see a consultant.It was Labour that handed over millions of pounds to private companies to run specialist clinics that would treat NHS patients in the name of reducing waiting lists for procedures like hip operations........ and it was labour that started putting a national tariff on each procedure." We are used to Tory ministers becoming directors on big companies and making fortunes for very little work. However on page 164 he names senior Labour members who left the cabinet and benefited in exactly the same way eg. Alan Milburn and Pat Hewitt. I liked the way Meek uses a person's personal history to clarify how things have changed over the last 50 years eg. with Pat Quinn in the Housing section. This shows how things were for her parents and how they are now. It gives you a deeper understanding of developments over time. I think it was important to personalise things otherwise it would have been just loads of statistics and charts which would have been very dry and boring. page 120 irony. Thatcher promised us a Britain with more independence from Europe, but her privatisation program has resulted in the opposite. eg. "the future of Britain's energy supply now hinges on companies based in Paris EDF Electricite de France, and Areva, maker of nuclear power stations, that are majority owned by the state of France. (I am writing this soon after Hitachi of Japan has bought the right to build a new nuclear power station in Anglesey).

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