ABSTRACT
There are a number of different motives underlying privatisation initiatives. It is not logically necessary to accept or reject them as a package but there can be no denying that much of the driving force behind the programme stems from acceptance of the total vision. Writing in 1982 about the United Kingdom, at a time when the government itself had not fully articulated the programme’s rationale, Heald and Steel3 distinguished four motives:
● to increase efficiency, by transferring enterprises from public to private ownership (which is held to be inherently more efficient) and by increasing the exposure of organisations to competitive market forces; ● to enhance freedom (which voluntary exchange in the market is held to promote and State activities to destroy) by means of policies which reduce State ownership; cut back the web of State regulation; and establish a people’s capitalism by building into denationalisation plans special provisions for extending equity ownership by individuals and employees; ● to relieve budgetary pressure on the government by means of denationalisation which generates cash from asset sales; removes the financing of investment by profitable public enterprises from budgetary entanglement; and may stem the drain of finance into persistent loss-makers;
● to weaken trade unions by avoiding the obligation placed upon public bodies to be ‘good employers’; by facilitating anti-union tactics and employment practices which statutory provisions and political pressures make unacceptable within the public sector; and by disengaging government from the intractable questions surrounding public sector pay.4
