Politics should go off the rails
When you arrive at the scene of a rail disaster the first thing that hits you is the loss. The loss of unfulfilled lives. The loss of parents, children, partners and other loved ones knowing they’ll never see them again.
Then you feel pride. For the emergency workers who will work through the night to find the injured and the dead. Then you get angry. Angry that mindless privatisation and the profit motive had led to a train crash.
As Shadow Transport Spokesman I saw at first hand the under-investment in British Rail by the Tory Government. In the 10 years before 1997, it was £1.2billion a year.
It had produced a slow-running, less safe railway system. Labour then trebled that support to over £3billion.
We fought against the Tory madness of rail privatisation and putting the tracks in the care of a private company called Railtrack. We turned it into the publicly owned Network Rail. Governments can make a difference. Now the Tories are going back to the future.
Conservative Transport Minister Chris “Failing” Grayling claims the dispute between Southern Railway and the rail unions over safety concerns from reducing train staff is “politically motivated” against Tory voters in the South.
I remember when Harold Wilson accused me as a trade unionist of being “politically motivated” in 1966. We were seamen fighting to change a basic 74-hour week at sea.
Grayling has refused to meet rail unions or conciliate in this dispute. Surely that could be seen as a “politically motivated” action. In fact a southern Tory MP has called for Grayling’s resignation.
Former journalist Grayling likes a headline but is rubbish at drafting policies. His latest wheeze is to let a private company open and run the track between Oxford and Cambridge – the Varsity Line, which undoubtedly will please the Tory Cabinet, especially if there was an extension to Eton.
The Tories always believed the railways could be run profitably and without public subsidy by axeing services. They were wrong.
John Major then privatised the railway industry and split its operation into the track and operating functions. We warned it wouldn’t work and it led to fatal train crashes like Potters Bar and Hatfield, where private track maintenance companies failed to do their job.
This ideological and politically motivated railway policy was extended in the case of the East Coast line which had failed under two previous franchise owners.
Labour brought it back into the public sector and it became more reliable, more profitable and £1billion was handed back to the Treasury. Despite that, the Tories sold it to Virgin, paying more subsidies for a worse service. Equally offensive is the continuing growth differential between the South and a disadvantaged North. Transport investment in London in 2011 was £1,500 per person, whereas in the North East it was £300 per person.
Billions are invested in HS2 from London to Birmingham but the north won’t get it until 2040. The East-West HS3 across the Pennines from Liverpool through Manchester, Leeds, Hull and Newcastle will be decades away and rail electrification to Hull has been axed.
Meanwhile the East-West Oxford to Cambridge line gets £100million to start immediately, will be fully electrified, privately financed and owned, and undoubtedly supported by more public money.
The only way we can redress this transport inequality and protect safety is to bring our trains back into public ownership when the franchises lapse. And keep private companies away from our tracks.
The Tories must not put private profit before public safety again.
That really would be politically motivated.