Last week the government was forced to bring yet another rail company back into public ownership because of its dreadful failures and shabby service. As organisations like We Own It and Bring Back British Rail have been pointing out for years, this is just one in a long series of cases where failing rail companies have had to be renationalised. Rail privatisation, which was introduced by John Major’s Tory government and hyped as improving the rail network through private industry, has failed. As We Own It and Bring Back British Rail have long argued, it is high time the rail network as a whole was renationalised. They have therefore produced a standard letter for people to send to the responsible minister, Mark Harper, calling for this. Here’s their message about it.
‘Dear David,
The Government has JUST announced it is taking TransPennine Express (TPE) into public ownership.
A few months ago, 8000 of you emailed the Transport Department calling for both TPE and Avanti to be run in-house – for people not profit.
This is your victory. It shows that when you take action you get wins.
The next 24 hours are a huge chance to double your VICTORY. Email Mark Harper, the transport secretary, now to take the rest of our railway system into public ownership.
With allies like Bring Back British Rail, Association of British Commuters and the rail unions, you’ve forced the government to take TransPennine Express into public ownership.
Now that you’ve got this victory, you can press for more.
The first 24 hours after a government decision are crucial. Ministers and their staff will be watching anxiously to see how the public reacts.
If their inboxes fill up with your letters supporting the TransPennine decision, and demanding they go even further, they’ll know public ownership is popular.
Our latest poll shows 67% of the public support taking all of our railway into public ownership.
This groundswell of support for public ownership will influence their ongoing discussions about other railway lines.
Tell the Transport Secretary now: more privatisation won’t help our railways.
Thanks to your actions, TPE will be the seventh rail franchise to come into public operation in just 6 years!
LNER, Northern, Transport for Wales Rail, Southeastern, ScotRail, and the Caledonian Sleeper have all been brought into public operation since 2018.
By emailing Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, today you can get even more wins for a railway run for people, not profit – and also ensure these wins are permanent.
Thank you!
Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate, and Imogen — the We Own It team
P.S. Here’s a photo from the fantastic action We Own It, Bring Back British Rail, RMT and others held outside the Department for Transport in March demanding TPE be taken into public ownership.
I’ve signed it, because it’s badly needed and I’m sick of the public sector supporting failing private companies simply for reasons of Tory free market ideology.
I noticed that GB News had a Johnbosco Nwogbo on one of their programmes to debate the issue of rail nationalisation. This looks like the same John Bosco who appears as part of the We Own It team above. He’s been a speaker on many of the online meetings and rallies against the privatisation of our vital public services. I didn’t watch the GB News item on the grounds that it would annoy me. John Bosco himself has a very deep grasp of the facts and is, like the rest of We Own It and similar organisations, well able to marshal powerful arguments in favour of nationalisation. I’m therefore sure he was more than a match for his free market opponent. And for some of the other morons mouthing off on the network.
And we all know what that means: more privatisation. This has got me really angry. The BBC local news for the Bristol area, Points West, has added a little local slant on the current NHS crisis. It has covered the views of a plastic surgeon, who was at one point appointed to an NHS committee of some description. Now the surgeon’s calling for a Royal Commission to examine the NHS and what changes should be made to it. The man’s concerned that 40 per cent of doctors graduating are planning to leave the health service, lured by higher salaries and better conditions in Australia and New Zealand. That is a problem that needs solving. However, his solution is to shrink the NHS. He opines that it’s too big, and is actually one of the world’s biggest employers. The NHS is indeed huge. I read somewhere that it employs more people than the Indian railway. But it’s always been big, and historically it always has given value for money. Until David Cameron, Tweezer, Johnson, Liz Truss and Sunak. But way back in 1979 the Royal College considered that improvements to the Health Service would be easily paid for by tax revenue. And to be fair to Tony Blair, it was properly funded during his tenure of 10 Downing Street, even though he really wanted to privatise whatever he could of it.
This is what we’re talking about here: Privatisation. Selling off some of the NHS’ services, so that it no longer provides a service to everyone, free at the point of delivery.
This is what the Tories have been aiming for, and what their media mouthpieces, like GB News’ Nana Akua, are demanding. The present Health Secretary denied that there were any plans for any such thing. Yeah, and Thatcher denied that she wanted to privatise the NHS, but she did. What probably alarmed the Health Secretary was that this surgeon spoke their plans out loud. The Tories are despicable, as is this surgeon’s views. I hope, I really hope, that more medical professions will come forward to challenge the government and their slow privatisation of this precious institution.
And that the government pays our junior doctors what they’re worth.
Okay, I keep hearing rumours that the gender-critical, ‘femalist’ women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen has turned her organisation, Standing For Women, into a political party, and is preparing to stand against Keir Starmer. She has said before that she doesn’t expect she’ll win, but simply wants to take the opportunity during the leadership and election debates to ask Stalin a few awkward questions that he’ll have to answer. No doubt these will be ‘What is a woman?’ and ‘Do women have cervixes?’, both questions that have had Starmer running away as fast as he could when asked them. The trans issue is an uncomfortable one for Stalin, especially as he’s zigzagged all over that issue – first stating he would back a gender recognition act, then saying it wasn’t an issue he’d pursue, before going back to saying he’d back it again. But there are other, equally important questions the scumbag should be asked, and no evasions or refusals tolerated. Like:
How can we trust anything that comes out of your mouth when every pledge you’ve made has been broken?
How can we trust you with our traditional freedoms when your leadership of the Labour party has been authoritarian in the extreme?
How can potential allies and supporters in parliament and local government trust you, when you’ve been treacherous in your treatment of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour grassroots socialists?
How can we trust you with the NHS after your hero Blair pushed privatisation up a notch or two and you’re bringing in a CEO from a private healthcare company? Blair also modelled his reforms on the American private healthcare company Kaiserpermanente. He thought they were more efficient than the NHS. They weren’t.
Why should the poor, the sick, the disabled and unemployed trust anything you say, after Blair brought in the work capability tests and under Ed Milliband the party showed very tepid opposition to the sanctions regime? Why should genuinely starving people on food banks, and those fearing that they’ll end up on them, trust you and your cronies, after Rachel Reeves said that in power Labour would be even harder on the unemployed than the Tories?
Foreign policy: Blair launched at least one illegal war in the Middle East, the invasion of Iraq. That was nothing to do with democracy, but simply a grab for oil and the country’s state industries. It has reduced a middle eastern country with a reasonably secular government into a hell-hole riven by sectarian violence, one that became another theatre of war when ISIS raised the vile, barbaric heads. Brave, genuinely patriotic men and women were sent to risk life and limb on false pretences so that even rightists like Paz49 is wondering why Bush and Blair aren’t sharing a cell with Putin and the monsters of the former Yugoslavia looking at war crimes charges. Blair’s bombing of Libya in support of the rebels has also done much the same to that country, leaving part of it under the control of Islamist slavers. That’s S-L-A-V-E-R-S, in case your grubby mind can’t grasp how monstrous this situation is. How can we trust you not to start another fake, illegal, bloody war and waste more of our best people and destroy more countries?
Also: the Palestinians really are suffering terrible, racist persecution by the Israeli state. It has been repeatedly condemned by the international community. How are you going to stop this and not make libellous accusations of anti-Semitism against those campaigning against it instead?
Anti-Semitism: How can we trust you to take a genuinely objective, nonpartisan view of anti-Jewish hatred, when your definition of who is a true Jew is whether or not they support Israel? How can ordinary, grassroots Jewish members of the party trust you, when about 4/5 of those you’ve smeared as anti-Semites are self-respecting Jews themselves, as well as gentile supporters and activists against anti-Semitism?
Racism: Ditto. There’s been a rise in Islamophobia in the party, as well as notorious incidents of bigotry and bullying against Black and Asian members and officers. Yet again, all we’ve heard from you is lies: lies that you’re implementing the Forde report, when all the evidence says you’re doing nothing of the kind and are actively blocking people from putting it into practice. Why should people of colour trust you with this issue?
Transgender issues: I’m gender critical, but this is fundamentally about trust. Starmer’s attitude to trans people has changed with the political winds. How can trans people and their allies trust what you say? Are you going to throw them under the bus as well?
Channel Migrants: You seem opposed to their mistreatment and the various harsh policies of Cruella and the Tories, but how long’s that going to last? Your behaviour suggests that you have no policies except what the Tories do, and no real ideological criticism of them. How can we trust you to bring about a fair, human solution to this problem, one that doesn’t involve treating asylum seekers as criminals? Italy’s Far Right Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni has made speeches declaring that to stop the flood of migrants, we should be tackling poverty and exploitation in Africa. She has also demanded that the international community do something to shore up the banks in Tunisia, as the banking crisis there is likely to set off a fresh wave of desperate migrants. She’s an authoritarian, who has impounded migrant vessels. Her party, God help us! – is descended from Mussolini’s Fascists. But she seems to have a far better grasp of solving the problem at its source in Africa’s poverty than you do! And no, I am not recommending anyone vote for the Far Right.
Northern Ireland: At the moment Nationalists and Loyalists are on knife edge. Tensions are rising and there are real fears that the hard men are going to come back and destroy everything decent people have worked for. My local MP, Karin Smyth, respect you because of the work you’re supposed to have put in on the Good Friday Agreement. But so did a lot of other people, including Mo Mowlam, Jerry Adams and Jeremy Corbyn. I’ve come across very dark hints that you were involved in some of the nastier, terroristic tactics carried out by parts of the secret state, and in your actions as Attorney General or head of public prosecutions or whatever, you showed no compunction on cracking down on civil liberties in order to protect the establishment. How, therefore, can we trust you to help solve this problem and protect the North of Ireland’s ordinary people?
Economy: The majority of the people of this grand country want the utilities renationalised. Thanks to privatisation, people can’t afford their energy bills, sewages is being pumped into our rivers and seas by the private water companies and nearly every month or so – I exaggerate, but it feels like that sometimes – a railway company has to be taken back into public management. But all I’ve seen from you is more support for the failing, undead shambling corpse of Thatcherism, a corrupt corporatism you learned from you mentor, Blair, which rewards shoddy service and political donations with government contracts and bloated profits. How can ordinary people trust you with our utilities?
The cost of living: Inflation is rising all the time, and hard-working ordinary people really are wondering how they make ends meet. You’ve suggested some policies like using a windfall tax from the energy companies to put extra investment in some services. But I’ve seen absolute no evidence that you want to do everything necessary to tackle this crisis. That means going all the way to the root. But instead you quail and cower before the press and political establishment, falling over yourself to reassure Murdoch and the rest of the blackguards that you’re a safe pair of hands, won’t upset Thatcher’s raddled, shop-worn legacy. You’re not a tribune of the people, but an establishment puppet, dancing whenever the donors pull your strings.
And we could go on and on, with issues like schools. The academies are another flagship project of Blair, one that he took over from Maggie Thatcher. Except she and Normal Fowler had enough wits about them to know it was failing and were winding the city academies up. Since then, academy chain after academy chain has had to be taken back into public management because they were failing. But I’ve seen no sign from you that you have the backbone to realise this is another failed Thatcherite policy that should be brought to a close. Or indeed, do anything about education except what might look good on the pages of the Scum and Heil.
In short, why should anyone, anyone at all, trust you within a foot of power?
Bring Back British Rail, whose name tells you they stand for the renationalisation of our rail services, are also holding a rally on Monday, 20th March, at the Department of Transport in London to protest the terrible services supplied by Avanti West Coast and Transpennine Express. They kindly sent me the details today.
Join our Avanti & TransPennine Passenger Rally at the DfT
FirstGroup runs two of our worst performing rail franchises – Avanti West Coast & TransPennine Express – which are causing misery to millions of people’s lives through record cancellations and delays. Both contracts are up for renewal this year.
We are organising a massive Passenger Rally at the Department for Transport on Monday 20 March 2023, 10am to say enough is enough. It’s time to #KickFirstOut and bring both franchises back into public ownership now.
We will be submitting our Make West Coast Public petition – now signed by more than 12,000 people – to Transport Secretary Mark Harper MP, so please make sure you sign the petition in advance.
Please help spread the word and reach other angry passengers by sharing details on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram:
Down here in the West Country, First Group have the same dire reputation they have in the rest of out Sceptre’d Isle. First Bus, which runs Bristol bus services, has got the nickname ‘Worstbus’ and its rail service was so poor they changed its name to First Great Western to make some kind of spurious invocation of Brunel in the hope that will somehow burnish its failing reputation.
Brunel is awesome, and an inspiration to aspiring engineers even today.
First Group is a revolting, profiteering failure. Even though I am not a passenger on those lines, I fully support the rally.
Coming together with us in the evening at the #BuildingtheFightback online rally at 6.30pm. Full details are below – PCS, NEU, RMT, CWU & more voices of resistance will be joining us!
Yours in solidarity. The Arise & Labour Assembly volunteers.
RALLY: Building the fightback in 2023.
Online rally, 6.30pm, THIS Wednesday February 1. Join us on to hear about & build on a day of action across the country! Register here // Invite & share here // Retweet here.
FINAL-LINE UP CONFIRMED: Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary // John McDonnell MP // Riccardo La Torre, FBU // Diane Abbott MP // Dave Ward, CWU GS // Richard Burgon MP // Angie Rojas, Acorn // Tandrima Mazumdar, Migrants Organise // Logan Williams, striking teacher // James Braithwaite, RMT Young members activist // Robert Poole, co-founder of Strike Map // Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Region & Peoples Assembly // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No/
Join leaders of key industrial disputes – and who are at the forefront of fighting proposed anti-union laws – at this vital event! Now is the time to build the growing fightback, co-ordinate the resistance & popularise policies that put people before profit.
Hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event. ‘
I’m not planning to go, but I’m putting this up for those who are interested. And I’m 100 per cent behind everyone battling the Tories and their anti-worker policies.,
I’ve also had this email from the pro-NHS, pro-nationalisation organisation, We Own It about a planned demonstration they’re holding against the privatisation of the NHS in February. They’re appealing for people to go to it. I can’t, due to expense and illness, but I’m putting it up here in case there are people interested in it, who may be able to attend.
‘Dear David,
BREAKING: private health companies donated £800,000 to the Conservative Party over the last decade. Now we know why the government is doing nothing about NHS privatisation!
A recent Oxford study linked NHS privatisation to the preventable deaths of 557 people.
It is time to make the government feel the power of organised people over organised money.
Can you sign up to become one of 557 people in Parliament Square from 2 – 4pm on Saturday, 25th February demanding an end to NHS privatisation?
So far, 541 people have signed up. We need 89 people to reach our final goal of 630 (that is, 557 people representing the victims of NHS privatisation, 43 people to help carry signs and banners and 30 stewards to help manage the event).
You are involved in our NHS campaign because you believe that our NHS should work for people, not the greedy private companies that donate to the government.
Unite the Union, Just Treatment, Doctors for the NHS and Socialist Health Association fully agree with you. That is why they are now supporting our action.
It is time we make the government feel the power of organised people over organised money.
We want to bring together 557 people representing the 557 people whose deaths are linked to NHS privatisation to put on a powerful display that can get into the papers.
More press coverage means more pressure on the government. The more of us there are at the action, the more likely the action is to get press coverage.
We need 89 more people to reach our goal. Can you sign up now to join us?
Because of the incredible efforts of our NHS nurses and ambulance workers who are fighting to save our NHS, the government is already feeling pressure.
With the recent study that links NHS privatisation to 557 preventable deaths, there is no better time than now to pile onto that pressure they are feeling.
The government already knows that over 75% of the public, according to our last poll, want to end NHS privatisation. But they don’t feel that people will fight to see that happen.
You can show them from 2 – 4pm on Saturday 25th February in Parliament Square that you will.
The more people join this action, the more powerful it will be. The more powerful it is, the more likely it is to receive coverage from the press.
This coverage will pile on the pressure on the government and start forcing them to take action.
We need 557 people to represent the 557 people whose deaths are linked to NHS privatisation, according to a recent Oxford study.
But we need even more people to make sure the action is big and effective. So after signing up, please send the link to your friends and family, especially those who live in London and ask them to sign up too.
Thank you so much for always standing up against NHS privatisation.
Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate – the We Own It team
PS: 30 years ago today the British Coal and British Rail (Transfer Proposals) Act 1993 was passed, paving the way for privatisation of our railway. We’ve put together a list of 30 top failures of rail privatisation from the last 30 years. Take a read and share with friends and family.’
Plamenatz’s book, Man & Society: From Montesquieu to the Early Socialists, also contains a paragraph on the ideas of Louis Blanc. Blanc was a French socialist best known for creating the National Workshops established by the French government during the 1848 revolution. These were intended to be cooperatives set up by the government to provide work for the employed. They would use part of their profits in buying up other workshops and so expanding this socialised sector of the economy. In practice the scheme was handed over to civil servants, who were resolutely opposed to them. The result was that the work offered by them was mostly in menial tasks like digging ditches. They were not very popular and rapidly closed down. However, there was more to Blanc’s socialism than the Workshops, and his views are very similar to those of 20th century social democrats. By which I mean real social democrats, who believe in a mixed economy, rather than the Labour right which has fallen over itself embracing neoliberalism.
Plamenatz writes of Blanc
‘Louis Blanc wanted the state to control all the banks, the factories, the railways, the insurance companies and the larger commercial enterprises; and he also wanted manhood suffrage. Small businesses should remain in private hands. Like many social democrats in the west today, he called for an economy divided into a ‘private’ and ‘public sector’, over which the State should exercise a general control. But he never really went into the question of how the State should manage the economy and the public sector, and how this management could be reconciled with effective democracy. He also neglected the question put by Saint-Simon: ‘What is the structure of authority appropriate to a large-scale economy, centrally controlled?’ (pp.286-7).
I like the idea of the National Workshops and really wish they’d been a success, though it was inevitable that the conservative ministers and civil servants put in charge of them should be determined to run them down. I also prefer his version of socialism that leaves room for a private sector. Some things, I believe, are better off in the hands of private industry and I think there should be a sphere outside the control of the state in which a person’s business is his or her own, in contrast to the mass, totalitarian societies of communism.
Oh ho! The news team at right-wing news outlet must be scared. RMT’s Mick Lynch has been laying waste all before him in interviews and debates, and so the alternative to the ‘woke, wet’ BBC is falling back on the old Thatcherite tactic of crying ‘Communism!’ Looking through YouTube this morning I found a piece put by them asking if the RMT aren’t trying to bring down capitalism with an interview with a Soviet historian. Ah yes, we’re back to the old Zinoviev letter of 1925 or whenever, the notorious MI5 forgery which painted the Labour party as in league with the Soviet Comintern. Or to the 1980s, with Arthur Scargill as an agent of Moscow. We’ve already had Sunak’s government tell the nurses that they’re doing the work of Putin.
No, Mick Lynch isn’t trying to bring down capitalism. He’s just trying to get all his union’s members a fair wage, and proper management and investment of Britain’s railways.
No, the nurses aren’t doing Putin’s work. They’re trying to get a living wage for their members. What they aren’t telling you on the news, or at least, I haven’t seen it, is that a quarter of NHS trusts now have food banks for the nurses. Abominable. And they want proper management and funding of the health service.
This means reversing privatisation in those industries.
But this isn’t Communism. It’s not total nationalisation of the economy, or the transformation of Britain into a one party state.
Last week it was revealed that Keir Starmer intends to abolish the House of Lords. Before I go any further, I should say that I have no idea what he wants to replace it with. I caught a few seconds of a video put up by GB News or one of the other god-awful right-wing YouTube channels of a Starmer being laid into on this issue by Peter Hitchens. From the few seconds I saw, Hitchens was accusing him of wishing to make all the members of the upper house appointed by the Prime Minister. Hitchens stated that this would be undemocratic, which is absolutely right, if true. But the debate is also more than a little familiar. Back in 1986 or 87 the papers carried reports that the Labour party then wanted to abolish the House of Lords. I think they also plans to reform the House of Commons to make it more democratic, which would have involved giving more power to the speaker. Then there were Tony Blair’s reforms in the late ’90s and early part of this century.
Blair took on the objection to the House of Lords that it was an unelected, undemocratic anachronism. It is. It is, or was, a remnant of feudalism, the old medieval grand council in which the king or the prince was advised by the kingdom’s great lords. It goes all the way back to the witangemot, the council of wise men, in Anglo-Saxon England and similar feudal assemblies in the Carolingian Empire and other states on the continent. Such an assembly is outdated and against the basic principles of democratic representation. On the other hand, it had the advantage of being cheap. Or so I heard it said at the time these reforms were being mooted. The other argument, put forward by really reactionary Tories, was that the hereditary peers deserved the place because they were better fitted to it through centuries of breeding and education. Which is the old Tory argument that all the great civilisations had an aristocracy that cost them an election in the early part of the past century. I don’t think it’s a vote winner, but I’ve no doubt that Jacob Rees-Mogg probably believed in it. He started his career as an aspiring MP campaigning for the seat of a Scots fishing town. He proudly announced that he was standing on a platform of trying to convince the local people that an unelected, hereditary upper house was actually a great institution. Obviously he didn’t succeed, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the SNP vote didn’t increase in that constituency as a result.. Blair reformed the House partly by appointing some of its members, and subsequent Prime Ministers have done the same, so that the number of peers is now 800-odd, far more than the House of Commons and even the governing political assembly of the Chinese Communist party. The peers get an allowance for turning up, and so there have been scandals and accusations that many of them just stick their head through the door long enough to claim their cheque before zooming off to business elsewhere. And the opposition objected at the time that Blair’s reform was hardly democratic. He was denounced as a new Cromwell, who was packing parliament with his supporters, just as England’s Lord \Protector and the butcher of Ireland had done during the Interregnum.
The suggested alternative was to transform the upper house into a senate like America’s. It would still have the duty of checking and amending legislation, but would be elected. According to Private Eye, there was no real enthusiasm behind this idea. People didn’t want to have to go through another round of elections, and the lack of popular support for such a chamber would mean that only mediocrities would serve in it. This must have been the view of the powers that be, or something similar, because the plan seems to have vanished soon after.
.I believe that the current House of Lords needs to be cut down, and no, I don’t want membership of the House to be by prime ministerial appointment. But I also don’t see any point in reforming it radically. The precise nature of the House of Lords doesn’t actually bother me to anywhere near the extent that this country needs a return to the social democratic consensus pre-Maggie. Privatisation has failed, and the Tory welfare reforms are leaving people cold and starving. We need to renationalise the utilities and the railways, as well as the NHS, which should be properly funded. We needed to reverse the destruction of the welfare state so people aren’t left dependent on food banks and private charity to feed themselves if they’re unemployed or disabled. And we need to make sure working people are paid a proper wage for exactly the same reason, not to mention nationalising the energy companies so that people pay less for the fuel and electricity bills and aren’t faced with the decision whether to heat their homes, pay the rent or eat. All this is far more pressing and important than tinkering with the constitution.
But I think the mooted reform of the House of Lords is another example of Starmer wishing to emulate Blair. And Blair wanted to make Britain more like America. But our political system is different. It’s parliamentary, not presidential, and that does apparently affect the results of Blair’s reforms, including his changes to the judiciary. There’s a very interesting video of David Starkey explaining this, put up by the New Culture Forum. Starkey is, of course, a terrible old reactionary while the New Culture Forum are the cultural wing of the Institute for Economic Affairs, a right-wing Buxton Street think tank that wants to privatise everything Thatcher, Major and Blair haven’t already sold off, including the NHS. But Starkey makes a very good case for the incompatibility of British and American constitutional systems.
But most of all I’m afraid that this constitutional tinkering is in lieu of practical policies, that will make a real difference to Britain’s poor and working people. Such as the return to proper, socialist, or at least social democratic politics. Blair changed the constitution, but didn’t change Tory government policies. He just carried on with them once he was in power. In fact, he ramped them up and went much further in the privatisation of the NHS than the Tories had dared.
And now, after the sketches of various TV presenters and characters, here’s some serious stuff. Don’t worry if you like the art, I intend to put some more of it up later.
I got this email from pro-nationalisation, pro-NHS organisation We Own It on Wednesday appealing for people to send a form letter they have created to the transport minister to take West Coast railway out of Avanti’s hands and into that of the state. The email runs
‘Dear David,
The governments of England, Wales and Scotland have been forced to take five of our railway lines into public ownership in the last few years.
Now you have a HUGE opportunity to make it SIX. Let’s bring the West Coast Mainline into public ownership.
Can you send our letter to the Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, to demand he save Christmas for millions of passengers and take it into public ownership?
The private company running the West Coast Mainline, Avanti, is doing such a terrible job that the government has said they may take it into public ownership.
The transport minister said in October that a publicly-owned operator is ready to take over if Avanti does not improve the service.
It is clear that the service is not improving – even though they paid out millions in profits to shareholders last year.
Now even right-wing papers like The Times are acknowledging that the publicly owned East Coast Line is doing a much better job than the West Coast Mainline.
It took We Own It supporters like you – alongside our allies at Bring Back British Rail (BBBR) – to force the government to take the East Coast Line into public ownership in 2018.
Now you have an opportunity to force the government to do the same for the West Coast Mainline.
We know sending them our letter can work – because it has worked before.
You know our trains would be run much better in public ownership.
Instead of money being sucked out by private train companies, profits can be invested to cut our fares and make sure trains run on time.
Train drivers’ union, ASLEF, just revealed this week that £3.2 billion has been syphoned out in profits from our railways.
That money could have been used to cut fares and make sure our trains run on time.
And it could have been used to pay our rail workers who kept our country running during the pandemic what they deserve.
But you can force change on this issue now.
We Own It supporters like you – side by side with our allies at Bring Back British Rail (BBBR) – forced the government to take the East Coast Line into public ownership when it was failing passengers.
With Avanti now failing to run West Coast trains properly, you have a unique opportunity to get another BIG WIN by forcing the government to step in.
This action can make a big difference. Send the letter to Transport Secretary Mark Harper and share the link with your friends and family and ask them to send the letter as well.
Thank you so much for everything you do to make sure our railways work for people, not profit.
Cat, Alice, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate – the We Own It team’
I’ve signed it, because everything it says is correct. And the quotation from ASLEF shows that we need the unions not just to protect workers’ jobs, but also to provide proper information on the destructive effects of privatisation rather than Tory propaganda. If you also feel as I do, please feel free to use the links and send the letter as well.
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