Day: April 18, 2016

Dear Editor

Private ownership and control over major parts of industry and commerce does not and cannot operate for the benefit of all. If individuals or groups of investors do not make enough profit they have no hesitation in moving their money elsewhere to do so. It cannot be right that such power to determine if one has a job or not is theirs.

In my long life I have seen some of the poverty and despair of the 1920s and 1930s, and the devastating effects of World War Two, but in 1945 ordinary people said ‘we are going to change things, where the wealth of the country will be used to benefit the people’, and they did so in many ways: the NHS to care for all, taking the essential industries of gas and electricity suppliers into public ownership (and, at that time, the main energy provider – coal mining) and many other public services were also started.

Later, many circumstances contributed to undermine this determination to push forward more changes in society to benefit the people: this allowed the wealthy to regain power and control over our lives.

The very nature of the system of private control and ownership cannot do other than create devastating cycles of poverty and despair for millions of people both here and abroad, as investors fight each other to maximise their profits.

The last fifty years have seen the results of their gross greed and mismanagement; recent events within our own industries show all too clearly they will continue to wreak havoc on the lives of millions – unless these millions regain the determination people had in 1945.

A. Delahoy, Silverknowes Gardens