NATIONALISE RAIL

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: november/december 2017 :: RMTnews 22 Britain loves its railway. It was one of our country’s finest inventions. Its sense of nostalgic romance still captivates us and is reflected in the popularity of our many heritage lines, steam charter trains and television programmes. Many stations are looked after by enthusiastic community groups that maintain flower beds. Its respectable, disciplined workforce and its union the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS), fired by a nonconformist Christian sense of community and solidarity, played a major role in the founding of the Labour Party. Yet with rising ticket prices and a vindictive government campaign to take guards off trains, renationalisation is increasingly popular with voters of all parties. Withdrawal from the European Union with its strict enforcement of competitive tendering in the single liberalised European rail “market” leave the door open to bringing back British Rail. A new peoples’ railway run on the values of work, family and community would symbolise a brighter post-Brexit future. Railway employment with its stability and discipline produced a proud workforce with a strong sense of identity. This was reflected in the ASRS union which became the National Union of Railwaymen in 1913. In the family It was a friendly society that looked after its members and their families in an industry where injury and even death at work was common. At meetings branch chairs presided holding the branch gavels, conferences were chaired by their president wearing his chain of office. They called each other brother, we still do. When the union marched it did so in formation behind beautiful branch banners with brass bands and branch officials wearing their embroidered red and green sashes. David Howell’s study of the history of railway union politics, Respectable Radicals, describes their uniform, their time keeping and their adherence to railway rules and regulations and they certainly were very respectable. With their peaked caps there was a semi-military way of working, today on the railway we still use terms such as mess rooms. With its national spread railway trade unionism was the backbone of the labour movement-particularly in rural areas. ASRS organiser James Holmes successfully brought the motion to establish the labour representation committee at the 1899 TUC and the 1901 Taff Vale judgement which fined the ASRS for damages for a strike encouraged the rest of the trade union movement to support the establishment of the Labour Party. During these years my great- great grandfather George Thaxton was ASRS president and he went on to be one of the first Labour Party Aldermen of Leeds city council. Like many of his contemporaries he educated himself at a nonconformist evening school and his socialist politics evolved from his Christian ethics. Railway employment retains many features that are unfortunately seen as old fashioned. It remains highly unionised, internal promotion is common – you can work your way up from cleaning to driving trains – it is also still a family occupation with many generations following their parent’s footsteps. Yet today our railway receives two or three times more in state subsidy in real terms than British Rail did. We have the most expensive railway in Europe. Many of our franchises are run by foreign state owned firms. Our system is complicated and fragmented with many different companies and contractors operating on a railway that could be run more efficiently if ran as a single company. There is a huge regional disparity in railway infrastructure investment with London receiving more transport funding per head than the rest of the country combined. The government has recently announced that planned electrification of lines in the north of England and Wales have been cancelled while London is set to enjoy a Crossrail 2 after an expensive Crossrail 1 has been recently completed. Neoliberal EU rules With our pending withdrawal from the European Union we can escape from liberalising EU rail directives that enforce p / NATIONALISE RAIL! RMT Manchester South branch chair George Waterhouse argues that Brexit is an opportunity to get our railways back