This is no way to run a railroad (Railway crisis)

Member Name: Gaping Chasm

Product:	Railway crisis
Date:	21/11/02 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: oh dear...

Disadvantages: not enough space to list them all

Five and a half years ago, Tony Blair promised us "joined-up" government. He then appointed as his transport supremo a man who can barely do joined-up writing. What chance was there of getting an "integrated" transport system from someone who has difficulty integrating half a dozen words into a coherent sentence? Two Jags' legacy is the current chaos on the railways.

Instead of sorting out the shambolic privatisation inherited from the Tories, Two Jags spent his time attacking the poor sods who were trying, with a limited amount of success, to make it work. Egged on by Blair, he was more concerned with political point-scoring than making the trains run on time. Two Jags totally undermined public confidence in the industry and the confidence of those who work in it. They weren't all Fat Cats. Most were hard-working ex-British Rail staff whose livelihoods and pensions depended on the success of the network. Those on the Railtrack payroll face an uncertain future and those working for the private operating companies are looking anxiously over their shoulders.

The post-Hatfield hysteria stirred up by Two Jags made a desperate situation 20 times worse. It wasn't as if the safety record of Labour's beloved nationalised British Rail was any better. Or its punctuality and reliability record. Certainly not its strike record. The train operators could only play the hands they were dealt by the Tories. And they made a decent fist of it, running a practically strike-free railway and increasing passenger numbers.

Railtrack was always going to be a problem. The network should have been broken up and responsibility for the track handed to the train companies. That could have been negotiated responsibly by the Government. But Labour chose instead to slaughter Railtrack at every opportunity, drove it into the ground and then stole it from its shareholders. In doing so, Two Jags' successor Stephen Byers signalled t
o the rail unions that the Government was back in the railway business. It then became too late for him to protest that it wasn't his job to intervene in a pay dispute between unions and management. He sold the pass. Union leaders are convinced that, as in the bad old days, the Government will pick up the bill rather than risk a commuter backlash.

This was what used to happen years ago, when the Evening Standard left a printed bill reading "Rail Strike Latest" on permanent display at every London terminal on the grounds that every day there would be a walkout, or at least the threat of one. That's what made Thatcher determined to rid the taxpayer of the burden of running the railways. Unfortunately, Johnny Major completely screwed it up. But that's history. What happens next is what matters.

And what's happening now is that all the old Trots and troublemakers have crawled out of the woodwork and are once again making the travelling public's life a misery. There's no easy answer. The rail militants will have to be faced down, just like the miners. Once light is let in upon the real motives of the madmen fomenting the strikes, as is beginning to happen, ordinary rank-and-file railwaymen and women will come to realise that they are being used as political pawns and will rise up against their leaders.

The Government has to make it clear that it will help the railway network get back on its feet and will then, once again, get the hell out of the business. That will have to come from the top, from the Prime Minister. For the moment, Blair contents himself with sniping at the Tories and babbling on about ten-year plans. Ministers like ten-year plans. They're never around when the plan runs out. And what's the betting that in ten years' time, not only will we still not have "joined-up" government, we won't even have joined-up railway lines?

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