22 June 2012
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Click here to download pdf Guardian Article
Dear Colleague
Our latest research publication (“An asset to use not strip – the size of the Public Sector in Northern Ireland”) in its discussion of the threat to public service in general, emphasised that what we are now facing is an attempt to take back into private ownership what is left of the “public sphere”.
An article in yesterday’s Guardian (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/20/g4s-securing-your-world-policing or the attached PDF) examines the increasingly extensive reach of one company, G4S, whose turnover for 2011 is quoted at £7.5bn and whose UK operation it states “is increasingly moving into areas previously run by the government: prisons; policing; building and managing the GCHQ communications base; being a key operator of the government's controversial welfare to work programme; running immigration detention centres; and providing caretakers, cleaners and security at schools and hospitals”.
The Public Service Defence Campaign is not just about defending the current staffing levels and terms and conditions within the public service, it is about defending the very principle of public service. This article is a warning of the shape of things to come if we do not continue to build the maximum opposition to the government’s attacks on public services.
Yours sincerely
BRIAN CAMPFIELD
General Secretary