Privatisation and the politics of hegemony: A study of the attitudes of striking NHS ancillary workers towards privatisation, 1984-1985

This work is concerned with examining the nature of political consciousness from a Marxist perspective. It is also concerned with the direction and theoretical underpinnings of trade union opposition to privatisation in the NHS. These two areas are connected by virtue of the fact that certain views about the nature of political consciousness are implicit in the different strategies advocated to combat privatisation. Consequently, the adoption by the trade unions of methods relying heavily on the role of ’public opinion’ to defeat the introduction of privatisation is a rejection, at least to some degree, of traditional forms of industrial action and of the politics associated with it. These see such activities as central to the creation of working class political consciousness. In this way, the form of the opposition of the trade unions to privatisation connects with the current theoretical positions of thinkers who have been influenced by post-structuralism and Euro-communism, and for whom the important political questions are ones such as the ideological hegemony of ’Thatcherism’ and the possibility (or otherwise) of creating a ’universalising discourse’. This work seeks to challenge these ideas in two ways. Firstly, it tests out their validity by examining the attitudes of workers who have taken industrial action against privatisation in the NHS. This group should show the most consistent support for the welfare state if this strategy is correct. Secondly, it seeks to challenge the theoretical underpinnings to what I have termed ’counter-hegemonic struggle’. It looks at, and creates critiques of, the work of Hobsbawm; Hall; and the post-structuralists and Althusserians. The work concludes this overview of theories of political consciousness and ideology by advocating a model of political struggle based on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and which avoids the idealism of the various contemporary Marxist accounts of ideology.