Private Island by James Meek

Author:James Meek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

One day I went to Worcester to visit Malcolm McMurray, a retired Severn Trent manager who worked for the company in its public and its private incarnations. As a senior union leader, he campaigned against privatisation in the late 1980s, addressing public meetings across the region. After privatisation, Severn Trent showered its workforce with shares. Union organisers from outside the water industry used to complain that when they met unionised water workers, they talked about share prices.

Worcester was drenched in hot sunshine when I walked up to McMurray’s house, past the double garage and the shining gold Volkswagen estate to his front door. He let me in. He looked lean and fit.

‘Nice house,’ I said.

He smiled, a little sadly. ‘I’m always grateful I retired while they still had the final salary pension scheme,’ he said.

We sat in his long, neat garden, rolling away into trees in the distance. He was sixty-four. He retired in 2000, in his midfifties. In 1973, as a regional manager, he was based at Mythe for three months; the then state-owned Severn Trent had tried to save money by changing shift patterns, and the shift workers, then members of the TGWU, were throwing strategic sickies to sabotage the scheme. In the years running up to privatisation, McMurray recalled, investment slumped. He’s sure that the Thatcher government deliberately starved the water industry of cash to enhance the case for selling it off. After privatisation, more than half the old workforce of 11,000 lost their jobs. He remembers being shocked at the shift in the public’s mood when it was privatised. ‘At times of peak demand, we used to be able to use local radio to appeal to our consumers to use less water, to not use hosepipes, and generally they were co-operative, they went along with it. But that suddenly changed when we were privatised. People knew we were only in it to make a profit. It was quite a shock to realise how quickly people’s attitude changed.’

I asked McMurray if he knew any union leaders who’d campaigned against privatisation, then taken up company share options.

‘Well, I did,’ he said. ‘It would be easier to say who didn’t.’

McMurray’s wife came in with their two little blond grandsons, bright in scarlet jumpers and covered in stickers from the school races. They went down towards the trees to play and the sun caught on a small fountain that the couple had installed, chuckling away on a pumped loop in the shrubs in the middle of the garden.

‘I had no conscience about it at all,’ said McMurray. ‘I’d campaigned against privatisation, but we’d lost that particular battle. Privatisation was inevitable. I wasn’t going to leave the water industry and so I thought well, I’ll buy some shares, and try and continue to serve the public as best I can.’

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