Government will use troops to break POA strike

Submitted by AWL on 31 March, 2011 - 3:06

The British state is preparing to mobilise the army to break a prison officers' strike if they take action against the privatisation of Birmingham Prison.

Commenting on the proposed privatisation, Prison Officers' Association (POA) leader Steve Gillan said "This is a disgraceful decision. Prisons should not be run for the benefit of shareholders nor for profit. The state has a duty to those imprisoned by the criminal justice system and this coalition government have betrayed loyal public sector workers for their friends in the private sector."

The government has awarded the contract to run the jail to private security firm G4S. The move was part of a “competition” in which companies bid for the rights to run one of four prisons put out to tender. Of the three other prisons, Northampton was withdrawn, Buckley Hall in Rochdale will remain under state control and Doncaster will be run on a performance-related-pay basis by Serco.

G4S is the world's largest security company and one of the largest private sector employers in the world (secondly only to retail giant Wal-Mart). It was recently implicated in the murder of asylum seeker Jimmy Mbuenga and is routinely accused of workers' rights abuses. Serco has also come under attack by workers' organisations; in its capacity as the operator of the Docklands Light Railway it recently had a court injunction against an RMT strike overturned.

If such companies are allowed to run Britain's jails, that can only be bad news for inmates. Any attempt to struggle for prison reform or abolition, to move away from a system of state punishment based on retribution and detention, will be massively set back by private ownership of prisons and operation for profit. For workers in prisons, whatever misgivings we might have about the potential role of prison officers as police or army-type state instruments, the privatisation of prisons can only mean worse conditions. And beyond this, if troops are mobilised to break a POA strike then that will set a dangerous precedent which will have implications for all of us. The privatisation of prisons must be reversed and resisted.

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