PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: november/december 2024 :: RMTnews 27 On Saturday October 5, 2024 RMT joined bereaved families, emergency services and other rail unions at the 25th anniversary commemoration of the Ladbroke Grove Rail disaster paying our respects to 31 people killed, and hundreds injured and traumatised on that day in 1999. The short, dignified remembrance ceremony was attended by dozens of bereaved relatives, some accompanied by grandchildren who weren’t even born when this train crash took place. For railworkers and emergency services, the lessons of Ladbroke Grove can never be forgotten. It epitomised everything wrong about Tory rail privatisation and New Labour’s betrayal of its pledge to deliver a ‘publicly owned, publicly accountable railway’. For those who lived through it, and as importantly for those who didn’t – a majority of RMT members today – it’s important to recall the political mistakes leading to this disaster 25 years ago. John Major’s Tory government privatised British Rail in 1993. BR was broken up and flogged to private buyers, while powers to regulate private rail companies went to a new Office of Rail Regulator. Labour won the May 1997 general election by a landslide and PM Tony Blair appointed his deputy, John Prescott as Transport Secretary. Prescott, a former National Union of Seamen official, was an RMT member with a grace and favour London flat in Maritime House to boot. One of Blair’s first betrayals was to reverse Labour’s pledge to take our railways back into public ownership. Blair proclaimed Labour’s loyalty to neoliberalism by deriding nationalisation as a creed of a bygone age and asserting that only regulation of private companies could ensure economic efficiency and consumer protection. Prescott's choice for regulator was Tom Winsor, a partner in a leading City of London law firm who took up the office of Rail Regulator from July 5, 1999. When the Ladbroke Grove crash occurred on October 5, 1999, Labour had made its pact with the devil to live within Tory privatised rail structures. They couldn’t say they weren’t warned. Two years earlier in September 1997, the Southall train crash killed seven passengers when a high-speed train with its Automatic Warning System isolated collided with a freight train. At Ladbroke Grove by contrast, the Great Western high-speed train approaching London Paddington at 100mph was on green signals when a Thames Trains commuter service leaving Paddington passed a signal at danger and drove straight into it. The collision caused a fireball that tore through derailed coaches. North Kensington Fire Officer Hodson reported a ‘large mushroom cloud of smoke rising 150-200m into the air’. What the deadly collisions at Southall and Ladbroke Grove had in common was a fragmented railway in which safety came a poor third to profit and squeezing greater productivity from railworkers through longer, more flexible working hours and reduced training. Ladbroke Grove’s rail infrastructure was a mess, with Overhead Line equipment introduced for Heathrow Express without regard to signal sighting on six bidirectional lines approaching Paddington. One year later, on 17 October 2000, the railhead disintegrated on the East Coast Main Line at Hatfield causing another high- speed train derailment killing four more. Hatfield was the death knell for Railtrack, the private owner/operator of railway infrastructure. When its shares hit rock bottom, the Labour government belatedly liquidated it into Network Rail. All those forty-two avoidable deaths, alongside others at Potters Bar and elsewhere, were a consequence of rail privatisation and the myth of private regulation. The lesson is, if you don’t own it, you don’t control it. RMT honours victims of Ladbroke Grove today by holding Labour to account on its 2024 manifesto commitment to create a publicly owned railway. Alex Gordon President’s Column THE TRUE COST OF PRIVATISATION SLIPS An RMT member sustained painful injuries after slipping on liquid at the entrance of a Starbucks branch within Leeds Railway Station and the union secured a four-figure settlement as part of a public liability claim brought against the company. The incident occurred as the member made their way through the station. Upon slipping, he fell and struck the left side of his head against a glass door, sustaining multiple injuries including bruising and swelling around the left eye, which resulted in blurred vision, irritation and soreness. He also experienced headaches, dizziness, nausea, and nosebleeds. Following his ordeal, the union instructed Thompsons Solicitors to bring a claim for compensation against Starbucks Coffee Company. His legal team alleged that the company breached its duty of care under the Occupier’s Liability Act 1957 by failing to ensure that visitors to their premises were kept reasonably safe, duty of care to the public by failing to have in place adequate systems of inspection, failing to have wet floor signs present, and failing to clean up the spillage. Thompsons Solicitors were able to secure the claimant a settlement award of £2,000, which reflects the pain, suffering and loss sustained as a direct result of the incident, without the need to go to court. These cases further highlight the value of the union’s legal service, demonstrating how RMT stands by its members and is prepared to take on cases that claim companies and no win/no fee solicitors may not.