Britain:
Re-nationalise the railways!

by Daphne Liddle

British rail safety inspectors have warned Railtrack, the privatised 
company responsible for railway infrastructure, that it risked court action 
for poor maintenance after figures revealed a 21 percent increase in the 
number of broken rails on the network over the last year.

Broken rails do not only lead to delays. They cause derailments and 
potentially very serious accidents.

Railtrack has subcontracted its maintenance work out to a number of big 
construction companies. They have all been out to make profits by cutting 
costs, wages and conditions and employing unskilled labour.

The RMT transport union has been engaged in a protracted dispute with these 
companies about wages and conditions and also about safety considerations, 
for workers and for the travelling public. 

This was all predicted when the Tories broke up and privatised the rail 
system.

There have been terrifying stories of Connex South East trains coming 
uncoupled mid-journey, leaving carriages of passengers stranded for hours. 
There are obvious safety implications here too.

And complaints over the mounting numbers of delayed, cancelled and 
overcrowded trains have trebled in the past two years. Trains have been 
reduced in size so that commuters are forced to stand through long 
journeys, but fares have continued to rise. All this too was predicted at 
the time of privatisation. And the then Labour opposition was doing the 
predicting.

Earlier this month Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced the 
introduction in 2003 of a long-overdue safety device to prevent major 
accidents. But it was not the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system 
recommended after the Clapham crash over a decade ago.

Instead it is to be the cheaper Train Protection and Warning System because 
the train operators, rolling stock leasing companies and Railtrack do not 
want to pay for ATP.

The Government has agreed on massive subsidies to foreign based motor 
manufacturers while rail privatisation has meant the virtual extinction of 
Britain's once great rolling stock manufacturing industry.

All this has been against a background of the Government saying it wants to 
encourage more use of public transport in order to cut down on car-
generated pollution.

Real improvements to public transport are the only sensible way of 
discouraging private car use.

John Prescott is powerless to improve public transport services while they 
remain in the hands of the profit-hungry privateers.

But Railtrack and the rail operating companies are all on fixed term 
franchises. When these run out they do not have to be renewed. The railways 
can be brought back into public ownership without vast government 
expenditure.

And the franchise contracts allow for the railways to come back into public 
ownership if there are serious breaches of the contracts. It is about time 
these clauses were implemented.

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New Worker