ABSTRACT
A recent article in the journal of the Institute of Economic Affairs proposed that the Church of England should be privatized, the clergy becoming a 10,000 strong sales force paid according to the number of customers enticed through the church doors (Hamilton 1990). The suggestion that the church be judged by some ecclesiastical equivalent of the standards of commercial theatre (‘bums on pews’) might seem offensive to some, but it merely reflects the fact that the philosophy of privatization, once accepted, has few logical bounds. For if it is assumed that public ownership breeds inefficiency in industry, the same assumption can, presumably, be applied to public service as a whole (Steel and Heald 1984). It is for this reason that advocates of privatization believe that the policy can prove helpful to any part of the public sector (Pirie 1988). And it is for the same reason that both church leaders and chief constables might do well to heed the words of John Moore, whose much-quoted statement of Government intent on privatization included the chilling reminder that ‘No state monopoly is sacrosanct’ (Moore 1983:91).
