Getting the public to appreciate the public good

He wished to God the dust would settle. Why didn’t someone complain? Always the same when a lot of people use one place: no one’s responsible, no one gives a hoot.

Ah, I wish I could write with le Carré’s intense succinctness. A few short sentences to conjure up an entire atmosphere. This is Peter Guillam, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, undertaking one of the most terrifying tasks as a spy: stealing information from his own service, in the duty room of its headquarters in London.

But it’s the idea le Carré expresses that struck me. No one gives a hoot for a place that many people use: “it isn’t mine, so it isn’t my responsibility”. I suspect we’ve all come across that attitude at some time or another.

It poses a problem for Socialists. How do you get everyone to take responsibility for something none of them owns as an individual, but we all own as a collective?

The simple way around the issue is to go for nationalisation instead of public ownership. Unfortunately, they’re absolutely not the same thing. A nationalised undertaking belongs to the state, not to the people. The extent to which it serves the public interest depends on who controls the state.

As I repeatedly point out to the fans of nationalisation, it was a nationalised industry, the National Coal Board, that was responsible for the slagheap slip at Aberfan in 1966, when 144 people were killed, 116 of them children. It was that same National Coal Board that broke the back of the miners and, in effect, killed the coal industry in Britain in the 1984 strike. 

‘Nationalised’ is not synonymous with ‘at the service of the people’.

One of Luton’s most attractive places: Stopsley Common

There are, however, instances of common use, if not common ownership. The trouble is, like the duty room in the spy service building where Guillam was at work, because no one owns it, some may well abuse it.

Danielle joined volunteers cleaning Luton streets when we lived there. What’s more, one of the loveliest places nearby was Stopsley Common, its very name underlining that it’s a public asset. Sadly, though, some people felt that this tract of common land was an ideal place for dumping waste. It was repeatedly disfigured by piles of builders’ rubble. Someone had decided that, since it was cheaper to dump the waste on the Common than take it to a tip, and the land didn’t belong to them as individuals, they might just as well leave it there.

It’s an international problem, as we confirmed this weekend. Near us, here in Spain, La Vallesa woods are even more spectacularly beautiful than Stopsley, and just as much a public resource. We joined volunteers there this weekend to clear up junk. It included, once more, builders’ rubble. In some cases, the rubble was in sacks, which had been dragged quite a way from the road, as though the people who left it were prepared to make a special effort to make it more difficult to collect.

Why drag it into the woods?
By the road, it would have been easy for the Council to collect

The woods don’t belong to them. To use Le Carré’s language, they don’t give a hoot.

The encouraging factor, on the other hand, is that there are people who do give a hoot. There were several dozen people there helping to clear up. There’s not a huge amount one can do in a couple of hours, but it was nonetheless a pleasure to see so many show up.

Volunteers cleaning up the rubbish

They represent the spirit that can make common ownership viable. That’s the public at its best.

We just need to educate the waste-dumpers to see things the same way. They’re the public at its worst, least concerned with the wellbeing of all. Make no mistake about it: it’s the biggest blockage to a socialised approach to the public good, and the attitude is by no means limited to the most privileged in society. A mindset change is needed throughout society.

When we’ve surmounted that obstacle, one of the fundamental planks of socialist thinking will stop being just a pious wish and become a feasible objective. But don’t be fooled – it’s very different and far better than mere nationalisation.