Great British Railways: Is this an admission that rail privatisation was a failure?

[Railwaysceptic]

What other metrics can you use to assess the success of privatisation?

1) How many substantial conurbations with large populations previously treated as minor backwaters by British Rail have now been given new and better train services generating an above average increase in ridership and revenue? e.g. Barnsley, Mansfield, Blackburn, Lincoln, Halifax, Burnley.

2) How many well-laid out routes between large towns, previously treated as secondary routes by British Rail with no attempt to raise line speeds and generate additional business, now have 100 mph line speeds, faster regular services and above average percentage increases in passenger numbers? e.g. Lincoln to Nottingham, Hereford to Shrewsbury, Hull to Leeds, Peterborough to Leicester.

 

[Mikey C]

Ideology meant that there was a horrendous level of debate about the WAY the railways were privatised back in the 90s. The argument became a simple privatisation versus nationalisation one, instead of evaluating the proposed structure and method, whether the divide of track, rolling stock and operators was the right one.

London's buses provide a relevant contrast, as they are privately run but under the strict control of a central "public" body. AND they are in uniform red, thus making it even less obvious they aren't "owned" by TfL. Indeed the buses all being red has turned them into a non story in London, whereas when tendering first came in there were no rules, so it was obvious that a new operator was running a route

The National Express coach network is another privatisation example where a "unified brand and front end" was kept. Most routes are operated by local companies BUT it's invisible to the public who think it's one company owning a vast fleet of coaches to operate every route

 

[Djgr]

One interesting approach is to compare the railway in Great Britain with that in Northern Ireland. In the first the railway system has been privatised and fragmented (into literally thousands of pieces). In the second it hasn't.

The obvious advantages are:

a) It is far more straightforward to use. There aren't myriad competing websites with confusing fares that are valid on the green trains but not on the red.

b) It is far more integrated, including with non rail public transport. How many times does it need saying that competition is with the car and not whether the public transport runs on rails or not.

c) In my experience it is seen more as a service to the community rather than an opportunity to stitch passengers up in the good old ways of bus banditry.

So I do not subscribe to the narrative generally favoured in these forums. Privatisation for me has been just as bad as many people at the time said it was going to be.

 

[WesternLancer]

1) How many substantial conurbations with large populations previously treated as minor backwaters by British Rail have now been given new and better train services generating an above average increase in ridership and revenue? e.g. Barnsley, Mansfield, Blackburn, Lincoln, Halifax, Burnley.

2) How many well-laid out routes between large towns, previously treated as secondary routes by British Rail with no attempt to raise line speeds and generate additional business, now have 100 mph line speeds, faster regular services and above average percentage increases in passenger numbers? e.g. Lincoln to Nottingham, Hereford to Shrewsbury, Hull to Leeds, Peterborough to Leicester.

ref 2 - I'm not convinced I've seen any great transformation on my trips Nottm to Lincoln have I. Still the same old BR 156 DMUs at similar times that I took a quarter of a century ago...., at above inflation fares increases and not as clean inside as they were then.
Meanwhile off rail govt funded a massive upgrade to the A46 road making my option by car far better than it was in 1995 for the equivalent trip.

correct me if I am wrong tho as I've not dug out a mid 90s timetable!

to compare on that basis - which is not unreasonable, you have to look at how things changed between say 1970 and 1995 under BR, or how they changed between 1945 and 1970 say.

For me, rail privatization has been a failure because given the equivalent funding BR could have done much better with the same money.

 

[tbtc]

Good and thoughtful post - but Railtrack costs were going through the roof before publicly owned NR came along (WCML modernization being the extreme example)

Apologies, I wasn't meaning to look like I was bashing Network Rail, just meaning that a large share of the increased subsidy required to keep the railway running has been on that side of things and would have happened under any model - the fact that the public sector Network Rail has incurred these huge cost increases means that the public sector BR would have faced them too - so it's not a fault of privatisation.

However, from the debates that we have on here, you'd think that the need to repaint trains every seven years when a franchise changed hands was the reason for billions more in subsidy, rather than the fact that construction costs and the requirements of modern Health'n'Safety have pushed costs up across the board - maybe "it was acceptable in the eighties" (to quote Calvin Harris) but infrastructure/ maintenance/ safety costs have gone up significantly above inflation, which impacts a lot on the railway

Essentially, the cost increases would have happened under any model of ownership/ operation - so the majority of the things that people are complaining about are inevitable one way or the other (IMHO) - the majority of the increase in funding has been spent on things like this (rather than occasionally repainting trains)

1) How many substantial conurbations with large populations previously treated as minor backwaters by British Rail have now been given new and better train services generating an above average increase in ridership and revenue? e.g. Barnsley, Mansfield, Blackburn, Lincoln, Halifax, Burnley

You've reminded me of one of my favourite periods of privatisation, the early era when the non-Intercity TOCs focussed on their best routes, so some of the lines "ignored" by BR (as they weren't high profile/ profitable enough to qualify for InterCity) became "flagship" routes of the ex-Provincial TOCs - e.g. look at how a route like Birmingham - East Anglia went from being relatively low profile with BR to being the focus of attention under Central Trains (new 170s, the "CityLink" branding) to being ignored again as the weakest link in the XC franchise

One interesting approach is to compare the railway in Great Britain with that in Northern Ireland. In the first the railway system has been privatised and fragmented (into literally thousands of pieces). In the second it hasn't

Genuine question - how have subsidies gone on Northern Ireland's railways in the equivalent time?

Maybe that could be some kind of benchmark for how things may have been if we'd not privatised things in GB (albeit starting from a very different base)

 

[WesternLancer]

Apologies, I wasn't meaning to look like I was bashing Network Rail, just meaning that a large share of the increased subsidy required to keep the railway running has been on that side of things and would have happened under any model - the fact that the public sector Network Rail has incurred these huge cost increases means that the public sector BR would have faced them too - so it's not a fault of privatisation.


----

You've reminded me of one of my favourite periods of privatisation, the early era when the non-Intercity TOCs focussed on their best routes, so some of the lines "ignored" by BR (as they weren't high profile/ profitable enough to qualify for InterCity) became "flagship" routes of the ex-Provincial TOCs - e.g. look at how a route like Birmingham - East Anglia went from being relatively low profile with BR to being the focus of attention under Central Trains (new 170s, the "CityLink" branding) to being ignored again as the weakest link in the XC franchise

ah, I see your point. I guess the only way to compare is then some sort of (inevitably difficult and complex to do) contrast with infrastructure prices in other, overseas say, equivalents over the same time period. I expect a tricky one to do given all the various factors involved.

On your second point, isn't that not very different to BR Regional Railways 'Alphaline' product on selected routes? (with then new 158s, branding, on board service like trolley etc etc) something that it didn't really take privatization to achieve as BR had already shown an ability to do just that. Or indeed in earlier eras under BR with products like Transpenine DMU service (tho Alphaline a more relevant comparison with citylink just a rebranding of the former BR RR Alphaline really anyway).

 

[Grumpy Git]

For me, rail privatization has been a failure because given the equivalent funding BR could have done much better with the same money.

Ah, but think of all the donations that have been made to a party of a certain hue in the meantime. Not to mention how much profit has gone to subsidise public transport in other EU countries.

 

[WesternLancer]

Ah, but think of all the donations that have been made to a party of a certain hue in the meantime. Not to mention how much profit has gone to subsidise public transport in other EU countries.

Possibly - but I'd want to check the figs for donations to Tory party from First, Stagecoach, Abelllio et al - easy to look up if you have the time I guess. I'd have thought the unions would have published it? All has to be declared AFAIK.

 

[nw1]

This is absolutely incorrect. Any reading or understanding of the way that privatisation came about and was organised would realise this statement is not true.

While there was general agreement that the involvement of the private sector would reduce costs and improve service levels the issue to be solved was how to pay private companies to operate loss-making services in a manner that was transparent.

The issue of 'on rail' competition was recognised very early in the debate for exactly the reasons you mention as well as the need to find a method of stopping operators 'cherry picking' routes and times and also running 'spoiler' trains just in front of another operator's principal express.

This is why the model was dropped and cost reductions driven through the franchise competition process whereby the winner would gain a time-limited monopoly of services in a given geographic area. It was recognised that there would be some overlaps at the boundaries but it meant that payments were allocated to a set of services the broad outline of which were defined in the contract.

There was a nationwide recession in the early 1990s. The reasons are complex and don't really belong here, but a world wide slowdown coincided with a home grown SNAFU. The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession and this article https://www.economicshelp.org/macroeconomics/economic-growth/uk-recession-1991/ describe the two recessions.

BR did not operate in a vacuum.

Sorry - I was making some assumptions there. My understanding was that the normal rationale for privatisation was to introduce competition and a free market, and therefore lead to lower prices for consumers - and that state companies had to be privatised to make this competition 'fair'. But I am no expert in this area so apologies.

Also - I was well aware of the early 1990s recession, it's just that 1993 was a year or two after its peak and... well... maybe just a little bit of cynicism about politicians and their motives was creeping in.

 

[coppercapped]

Sorry - I was making some assumptions there. My understanding was that the normal rationale for privatisation was to introduce competition and a free market, and therefore lead to lower prices for consumers - and that state companies had to be privatised to make this competition 'fair'. But I am no expert in this area so apologies.

Also - I was well aware of the early 1990s recession, it's just that 1993 was a year or two after its peak and... well... maybe just a little bit of cynicism about politicians and their motives was creeping in.

If you are interested in finding out more about the events and discussions leading up to the privatisation of BR and the Railways Act 1993 I can thoroughly recommend the book “All Change. British Railway Privatisation” edited by Freeman and Shaw and published by McGraw-Hill in 2000 (ISBN 007 709679 7).

This shows that there were five models for privatisation put forward by different groups, these being the Cabinet Office, the DfT, the Treasury and outside parties at different times. Very briefly these models were:

• Regional - essentially re-creating the ‘Big 4’ (but could have been up to 12 separate companies)
• Track Authority
• BR plc
• Sectorisation
• Hybrid(s) of the above.

So several models were available - and the supporters of each produced their own arguments. The was no ‘basic premise’ apart from the feeling that costs could be reduced and the quality of service improved if the private sector were to be involved.

The first two options were produced by right-wing ‘Think Tanks’, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They both proposed breaking up BR before privatisation, but for different reasons.

The concept you mention, of on-rail competition was proposed by the Adam Smith Institute following a similar line of thought which led to bus privatisation and deregulation in 1985.

The results of the bus privatisation policy was not as successful as its chief protagonist, Nicholas Ridley, had envisaged, partly because of the weak financial position of many of the bus operators. This was even more obvious in the case of BR as it wasn't even marginally profitable but needed continuing subsidy so in the final run-up to the Railways Bill the idea of on-rail competition was dropped because the Government didn’t again want to suffer the bad press that it received after the bus business.

There were all sorts of arguments within the working groups on how to handle the necessary on-going subsidy and it became clear that bidding for paths on a monthly or bi-monthly basis was not applicable for railways because of the inter-related nature of its operations. A 'track authority' owning the infrastructure would have been needed to adjudicate between the bids as the responsibility for the infrastructure could not be given to a train operator which next week might not even use that bit of track. So that model was dropped as I wrote in my earlier post. It was decided the best way to handle the subsidy issue was for potential train operators to bid for a group of services - a clear figure was available for each area and any cross-subsidy between profitable and loss-making services was up to the individual operators to manage. This avoided the DfT having to identify costs and revenues on an individual service basis.

So, although on-rail competition was considered in the early phases of the privatisation debate it was dropped as it wasn’t compatible with the realities of railway operation.

There were arguments for and against each other the models which the book covers in detail. The whole issue was much more nuanced than one would imagine from the contents of many of the posts made in this Forum.

 

[High Dyke]

And don't forget the burden of funding being passed on to the taxpayers, not from the route operators.

 

[coppercapped]

And don't forget the burden of funding being passed on to the taxpayers, not from the route operators.

To what does this statement refer?

 

[tbtc]

ah, I see your point. I guess the only way to compare is then some sort of (inevitably difficult and complex to do) contrast with infrastructure prices in other, overseas say, equivalents over the same time period. I expect a tricky one to do given all the various factors involved.

That's the problem I have with these privatisation/nationalisation arguments - I feel that a lot to the things that BR did (or that happened in BR days) just weren't feasible nowadays - infrastructure costs, safety measures etc have become much more significant than the days when you could build wooden train stations for a few quid (as happened in West Yorkshire)... yet people hold up these "achievements" and their prices up as an example of what they think could have continued if only we didn't have private companies, which I don't think is fair at all

I don't know how to create a reasonable benchmark - and I'm open minded enough to believe that nationalisation or privatisation could be better models - I've no particular ideology here - I'll go with what works best - but a lot of the criticisms of privatisation seem pretty politically motivated or pretty minor (e.g. there are always going to be times when it's worth holding a long distance trains with hundreds of passengers so that a handful of passengers from a branchlike can connect, and times when it's not worth delaying the long distance service further... those can happen under any system... the idea that BR always held connections and private TOCs never hold connections is fanciful... same as complaints act privatisation means new uniforms and repainted trains every seven years when the franchise changes hands - if I'd been wearing the same shirt for seven years I think I'd want a replacement!)

As someone who works in a bureaucracy, I appreciate that there are a lot of times when things can't happen - but that can be public or private - I think there's sometimes an attitude that BR worked a bit like the Fat Controller, casually lending locomotives around the country whereas the private TOCs have a "computer says no" attitude - but any organisation as big as the British railways is going to have an element of accountancy and organisation that means sometimes things can't be done. Comparing today's "private" railway to 1980s BR just seems unfair - a better comparison might be to something that remained mainly "public", like the NHS - sometimes different Trusts will co-operate, sometimes you can't do something that may seem "simple" to a member of the public.

On your second point, isn't that not very different to BR Regional Railways 'Alphaline' product on selected routes? (with then new 158s, branding, on board service like trolley etc etc) something that it didn't really take privatization to achieve as BR had already shown an ability to do just that. Or indeed in earlier eras under BR with products like Transpenine DMU service (tho Alphaline a more relevant comparison with citylink just a rebranding of the former BR RR Alphaline really anyway).

Good point - I forget about Alphaline sometimes because it was more of a "south" thing - my first experience was on the Wales & West 158s, only realising later that it was a brand inherited from BR

My point stands that, if I were a user of the West Midlands - East Anglia line, I'd rather my route was the "big fish in the small pond" of a Central Trains franchise than the "small fish in the big pond" of the Cross Country franchise

Possibly - but I'd want to check the figs for donations to Tory party from First, Stagecoach, Abelllio et al - easy to look up if you have the time I guess. I'd have thought the unions would have published it? All has to be declared AFAIK.

If there are big donations from a branch of the Dutch Government to the UK Conservative party then that would indeed be a big story

However the only political donation from anyone linked to a TOC management that I am aware of is the money that Brian Souter gave to the SNP (as a private individual, rather than on behalf of Stagecoach) - there may be more donations that I'm not aware of though

 

[Ken H]

Sorry - I was making some assumptions there. My understanding was that the normal rationale for privatisation was to introduce competition and a free market, and therefore lead to lower prices for consumers - and that state companies had to be privatised to make this competition 'fair'. But I am no expert in this area so apologies.

Also - I was well aware of the early 1990s recession, it's just that 1993 was a year or two after its peak and... well... maybe just a little bit of cynicism about politicians and their motives was creeping in.

I think the driver for the privatisations as to remove investment from the treasury. We discussed PSBR higher up the thread. It was vital to the monetarists who were in charge in the 1980's. Too much PSBR was inflationary, and inflation was a Bad Thing. But if you could offload investment onto the private sector, you could get improvement off balance sheet. Same as they did with PFI.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

But if you could offload investment onto the private sector, you could get improvement off balance sheet. Same as they did with PFI.

If such financing structures were, to all intents and purposes, still being guaranteed or indemnified by HM Government, directly or indirectly, were they truly ever off balance sheet?

 

[WesternLancer]

If such financing structures were, to all intents and purposes, still being guaranteed or indemnified by HM Government, directly or indirectly, were they truly ever off balance sheet?

That was the big question at the time IIRC.
I think the Office of National Statistics - ONS - (or some equiv body) make a ruling on that which the finance industry seems to generally accept. IIRC this was an issue at the start of NR's creation, with a structure that the govt devised that was designed to leave NRs debt off balance sheet. After some time (possibly post 2010 change of govt), ONS ruled that NRs debt was in fact govt debt, on balance sheet, and HMG had to accept that. Probably caused some curses at the Treasury. I seem to recall a few good articles by Mr Wolmar in Rail about it at the time. Probably on the artcile archive on his website but I can't recall the exact dates to look for.

Common sense told me that it wasn't ever really off balance sheet, and thus ONS ruling on the matter made sense (at least to me!)

 

[Annetts key]

On or off the government balance sheet, it’s all just different ways of showing, separated and or comparing figures.
No different to buying two different things using different loans rather than having one loan. You still have to service the running costs and interest charges.

As with any other aspect that involves the railway network of mainland U.K., it’s all rather complex...

I personally think that whatever you want to call what the conservative government of John Major did, the end result at the time was a ridiculously over complex system. And it was the artificial complexity compared to what went before it that caused the majority of the problems. It increased the amount of paperwork and hence the amount of time staff had to process said paperwork by a large amount.

It stopped dead cooperation between the different former parts of BR, because the mantra was, that’s nothing to do with us anymore, we are now only to do what we are instructed (and paid) to do.

In terms of safety, do we have better safety now? Most likely yes. But under BR safety was already improving (kicked along by Lord Hidden and due to some internal BR investigations on staff safety). So it’s hard to say what would have happened if BR had continued. Certainly not all the private infrastructure and contract companies always took safety seriously. Some were absolute cowboys (apologies to any respectable genuine cowboys).

Was BR wonderful, absolutely not, they had numerous projects that did not go to plan. But at least they could put together rolling programmes (admittedly some of which slowed down when funding got tight).

And BR did open some new stations before it was chopped up, so it was not all about closures.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Good and thoughtful post - but Railtrack costs were going through the roof before publicly owned NR came along (WCML modernization being the extreme example)

Network for a long time was only pseudo public owned, because it pretended to be a private sector company and maxed out its credit card, before the government called a halt.
The regulator decided how much funding NR got, not the government.
NR has plenty of cost overruns against its name.
Things are different now I think.

 

[Pinza-C55]

Well fancy that. 'Privatisation' has been a failure. Who would have thought it? Countless millions wasted to satisfy Tory backwoodsmen, the problem being that those who hailed the break up of British Rail will now be shouting how GBR is the way forward. It would be nice to hear some of the Tories who have wasted all this money admit that they were wrong. The whole saga has seen fortunes made by contractors sucking up sums of money BR could only dream about. The guilty politicians will, of course, blame the Pandemic and claim that they are riding to the rescue, conveniently ignoring that the rest of the world is facing the same problems. Forward the railway with a silly name. Surely something like British Railways or British Rail would be more appropriate. Still, I suppose that Northern Ireland Railways will carry on being state owned as before as a prize for not being privatised in the first place. What goes round comes round.

Since your post is political in nature, could you explain to me why the Labour governments from 1997 - 2010 did not reverse the privatisation ? When Blair took over in 1997 privatisation had been going less than a year. BTW I voted Labour from 1997 - 2010.

 

[WesternLancer]

Since your post is political in nature, could you explain to me why the Labour governments from 1997 - 2010 did not reverse the privatisation ? When Blair took over in 1997 privatisation had been going less than a year. BTW I voted Labour from 1997 - 2010.

I think commentators would give 2 responses to that:
a) labour was very frightened about 'frightening' the city and the financial markets, creating conditions that were akin to the problems previous lab govts faced in say 1968 and 1976 vis a vis the City and international finance too. Reversing rail privatisation would have been symbolic in the eyes of those orgs, or so it was thought (so in that analysis labour put up with a wasteful legacy they may well have not really felt comfortable with, but on an issue they did not regard as totemic for a majority of voters, who never travel on trains anyway I guess. A sort of 'let sleeping dogs...' sort of approach.

b) the argument put forward on the left that the '97 labour govt was not 'true labour' / was a betrayal of party traditions etc etc and was too pro private sector / PFI etc as they were 'red tories'. This stance fuels the vitriolic approach advanced by the so called 'cobynistas' in recent years, where they deny the '97 govt did any good at all and wish to reject what it stood for / achieved.

The politics of the topic is not simply summed up by one party for, the other party against - since the parties themselves encompass a wide range of political stances.

That's the problem I have with these privatisation/nationalisation arguments - I feel that a lot to the things that BR did (or that happened in BR days) just weren't feasible nowadays - infrastructure costs, safety measures etc have become much more significant than the days when you could build wooden train stations for a few quid (as happened in West Yorkshire)... yet people hold up these "achievements" and their prices up as an example of what they think could have continued if only we didn't have private companies, which I don't think is fair at all

I don't know how to create a reasonable benchmark - and I'm open minded enough to believe that nationalisation or privatisation could be better models - I've no particular ideology here - I'll go with what works best - but a lot of the criticisms of privatisation seem pretty politically motivated or pretty minor (e.g. there are always going to be times when it's worth holding a long distance trains with hundreds of passengers so that a handful of passengers from a branchlike can connect, and times when it's not worth delaying the long distance service further... those can happen under any system... the idea that BR always held connections and private TOCs never hold connections is fanciful... same as complaints act privatisation means new uniforms and repainted trains every seven years when the franchise changes hands - if I'd been wearing the same shirt for seven years I think I'd want a replacement!)

As someone who works in a bureaucracy, I appreciate that there are a lot of times when things can't happen - but that can be public or private - I think there's sometimes an attitude that BR worked a bit like the Fat Controller, casually lending locomotives around the country whereas the private TOCs have a "computer says no" attitude - but any organisation as big as the British railways is going to have an element of accountancy and organisation that means sometimes things can't be done. Comparing today's "private" railway to 1980s BR just seems unfair - a better comparison might be to something that remained mainly "public", like the NHS - sometimes different Trusts will co-operate, sometimes you can't do something that may seem "simple" to a member of the public.



Good point - I forget about Alphaline sometimes because it was more of a "south" thing - my first experience was on the Wales & West 158s, only realising later that it was a brand inherited from BR

My point stands that, if I were a user of the West Midlands - East Anglia line, I'd rather my route was the "big fish in the small pond" of a Central Trains franchise than the "small fish in the big pond" of the Cross Country franchise



If there are big donations from a branch of the Dutch Government to the UK Conservative party then that would indeed be a big story

However the only political donation from anyone linked to a TOC management that I am aware of is the money that Brian Souter gave to the SNP (as a private individual, rather than on behalf of Stagecoach) - there may be more donations that I'm not aware of though

Thanks for those responses to my observations. Good points that you make.

 

[Irascible]

Since your post is political in nature, could you explain to me why the Labour governments from 1997 - 2010 did not reverse the privatisation ? When Blair took over in 1997 privatisation had been going less than a year. BTW I voted Labour from 1997 - 2010.

Should be pointed out again that renationalisation was right there in the Labour manifesto for the 1997 election, wasn't just something people might expect they wanted to do. ( I also voted Lab most of the time since I could vote, including 1997. Recently I've been rather in despair at finding someone to vote for... ).

 

[43096]

I think commentators would give 2 responses to that:
a) labour was very frightened about 'frightening' the city and the financial markets, creating conditions that were akin to the problems previous lab govts faced in say 1968 and 1976 vis a vis the City and international finance too. Reversing rail privatisation would have been symbolic in the eyes of those orgs, or so it was thought (so in that analysis labour put up with a wasteful legacy they may well have not really felt comfortable with, but on an issue they did not regard as totemic for a majority of voters, who never travel on trains anyway I guess. A sort of 'let sleeping dogs...' sort of approach.

b) the argument put forward on the left that the '97 labour govt was not 'true labour' / was a betrayal of party traditions etc etc and was too pro private sector / PFI etc as they were 'red tories'. This stance fuels the vitriolic approach advanced by the so called 'cobynistas' in recent years, where they deny the '97 govt did any good at all and wish to reject what it stood for / achieved.

The politics of the topic is not simply summed up by one party for, the other party against - since the parties themselves encompass a wide range of political stances.

Those are all sound points.

The problem for the left of the Labour Party is best summed up by their election record since 1979:
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat
Blair win
Blair win
Blair win
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat

 

[WesternLancer]

Should be pointed out again that renationalisation was right there in the Labour manifesto for the 1997 election, wasn't just something people might expect they wanted to do. ( I also voted Lab most of the time since I could vote, including 1997. Recently I've been rather in despair at finding someone to vote for... ).

But was it in that manifesto? I went to check and the problem is it wasn't - I too had thought it was but just checked and it says (cut and pasted extract from 97 Manifesto):

• Railways​

  The process of rail privatisation is now largely complete. It has made fortunes for a few, but has been a poor deal for the taxpayer. It has fragmented the network and now threatens services. Our task will be to improve the situation as we find it, not as we wish it to be. Our overriding goal must be to win more passengers and freight on to rail. The system must be run in the public interest with higher levels of investment and effective enforcement of train operators' service commitments. There must be convenient connections, through-ticketing and accurate travel information for the benefit of all passengers.
  To achieve these aims, we will establish more effective and accountable regulation by the rail regulator; we will ensure that the public subsidy serves the public interest; and we will establish a new rail authority, combining functions currently carried out by the rail franchiser and the Department of Transport, to provide a clear, coherent and strategic programme for the development of the railways so that passenger expectations are met.
  The Conservative plan for the wholesale privatisation of London Underground is not the answer. It would be a poor deal for the taxpayer and passenger alike. Yet again, public assets would be sold off at an under-valued rate. Much-needed investment would be delayed. The core public responsibilities of the Underground would be threatened.
  Labour plans a new public/private partnership to improve the Underground, safeguard its commitment to the public interest and guarantee value for money to taxpayers and passengers.

from : http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1997/1997-labour-manifesto.shtml

Like me, were you recalling Blair saying "there will be a publicly owned, publicly accountable railway"?

So I looked that speech quote up and the section is from a Party Conference speech in 1995 it seems - again cut and pasted, my bold

extract
"We will sweep away the dogma of the market in transport and the environment. Our cities are congested, our roads a driver’s nightmare, our railways reduced to such a state that their latest timetable has as many false promises as a Tory Party manifesto. This nation needs a proper national, integrated transport system that serves the people and safeguards the environment. We should sit down and plan it, not wait for the free market to build it - but plan it together - the market where it works, where it does not, we do it. Let me make one thing clear: I do not give blank cheques in any area of policy, including this, no matter what the pressures, but to anyone thinking of grabbing our railways, built up over the years, so they can make a quick profit as our network is broken up and sold off, I say this there will be a publicly owned, publicly accountable railway system under a Labour government. We can then save the hundreds of millions of pounds being wasted on selling our railways to upgrade the service and modernise our lines. That is new Labour too."

from:

British Political Speech | Speech Archive

Welcome to the archive of british political speech. The archive contains speeches from 1895 to the present by political figures from all political parties.

www.britishpoliticalspeech.org

So for whatever reasons, what was said in 1995 did not, in my view, make it into the 1997 manifesto - for whatever reasons. I suspect Blairites at the time would have said 'things have moved on since 1995' and trotted out their fairly inaccurate excuses about it costing too much etc etc (demonstrating they didn't actually know that much about how it had been privatised and franchised, I always recall thinkign at the time).

That may be politicians being slippery - but I do not read anything in that 1997 manifesto quote that states rail would be rensationalised or taken back under direct govt control.

It does seem to set out reasonably well more or less what chapped under Labour in 1997-2010 - in my view also something of a failure, but that's different to the point of this post!

Those are all sound points.

The problem for the left of the Labour Party is best summed up by their election record since 1979:
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat
Blair win
Blair win
Blair win
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat
Defeat

Quite probably so - but kind of think the problems of the left of the Labour party are a bit tangential to this thread (for example, the left of the Labour Party, in my view, didn't run the Party in 1979 or 1992 for starters, but we are in danger of going off topic!)

 

[Pinza-C55]

Should be pointed out again that renationalisation was right there in the Labour manifesto for the 1997 election, wasn't just something people might expect they wanted to do. ( I also voted Lab most of the time since I could vote, including 1997. Recently I've been rather in despair at finding someone to vote for... ).

I didn't know it was in the manifesto, I thought it was simply something he had alluded to.

I think commentators would give 2 responses to that:
a) labour was very frightened about 'frightening' the city and the financial markets, creating conditions that were akin to the problems previous lab govts faced in say 1968 and 1976 vis a vis the City and international finance too. Reversing rail privatisation would have been symbolic in the eyes of those orgs, or so it was thought (so in that analysis labour put up with a wasteful legacy they may well have not really felt comfortable with, but on an issue they did not regard as totemic for a majority of voters, who never travel on trains anyway I guess. A sort of 'let sleeping dogs...' sort of approach.

b) the argument put forward on the left that the '97 labour govt was not 'true labour' / was a betrayal of party traditions etc etc and was too pro private sector / PFI etc as they were 'red tories'. This stance fuels the vitriolic approach advanced by the so called 'cobynistas' in recent years, where they deny the '97 govt did any good at all and wish to reject what it stood for / achieved.

The politics of the topic is not simply summed up by one party for, the other party against - since the parties themselves encompass a wide range of political stances.


Thanks for those responses to my observations. Good points that you make.

I don't buy argument a). Blair, like Thatcher . had a majority big enough to do whatever he wanted.

Argument b) is closer to the mark but I'm not sure there has been a "true Labour" government since Clement Attlee.

 

[35B]

Did we even have full privatisation?

Perhaps things weren’t privatised enough to deliver the efficiencies desired? We had a typical half measures approach incorporating loads of duplication and then are surprised when it didn’t perform as intended.

I’m not necessarily in support of the above view, just putting it out there and challenging the narrative.

You’re almost there - we didn’t have privatisation, but contracting out. Only if you look at franchises like outsource contracts does the model make sense. Privatisation would have seen the BR businesses sold and allowed to operate under a regulator, not let on a short lease.

I didn't know it was in the manifesto, I thought it was simply something he had alluded to.



I don't buy argument a). Blair, like Thatcher . had a majority big enough to do whatever he wanted.

Argument b) is closer to the mark but I'm not sure there has been a "true Labour" government since Clement Attlee.

Blair had the majority to legislate, but he was afraid of the voters - especially “Mondeo Man” type voters, who’d not previously voted Labour.

 

[WesternLancer]

I don't buy argument a). Blair, like Thatcher . had a majority big enough to do whatever he wanted.

Argument b) is closer to the mark but I'm not sure there has been a "true Labour" government since Clement Attlee.

Always amused by your point made in b when I hear it (sorry not sure if you are old enough to have been alive during that govt, I wasn't) - since I recall plenty of histories of the era and comment from the era at the time from the left, that Atlee's govt was 'not left wing enough' - and plenty of evidence about that indeed they weren't. This is the argument that the 1945 government mostly focused on implementing and cementing a lot of the wartime co-alitions policies, albeit with more radical approach then Tories would have done by any regard.
Also lots of critics of the models of state control of industry / nationalisation adopted by the 1945 govt
eg Ken Coates, who I recall hearing speak on several occasions on the topic.

Ken Coates - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But again how 'left wing' or 'true labour' the labour govt of 1945 actually was, is probably well off topic!

On a) you are correct I am sure, but I think the point is Blair didn't want to nationalise anything, unless it was unavoidable (Railtrack). I agree with @35B ref that point.

 

[35B]

Always amused by your point made in b when I hear it (sorry not sure if you are old enough to have been alive during that govt, I wasn't) - since I recall plenty of histories of the era and comment from the era at the time from the left, that Atlee's govt was 'not left wing enough' - and plenty of evidence about that indeed they weren't. This is the argument that the 1945 government mostly focused on implementing and cementing a lot of the wartime co-alitions policies, albeit with more radical approach then Tories would have done by any regard.
Also lots of critics of the models of state control of industry / nationalisation adopted by the 1945 govt
eg Ken Coates, who I recall hearing speak on several occasions on the topic.

Ken Coates - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But again how 'left wing' or 'true labour' the labour govt of 1945 actually was, is probably well off topic!

On a) you are correct I am sure, but I think the point is Blair didn't want to nationalise anything, unless it was unavoidable (Railtrack). I agree with @35B ref that point.

The politics of the Attlee government are on topic to the extent that their policies defined, for good or ill, the idea of nationalisation in the UK as being based around national scale corporations, operating very closely with the dominant union(s) in that industry, wholly owned by the state and existing as much as a means of fulfilling government policy as to operate either commercially or to satisfy their consumers. As a piece of language, it has cast a long shadow over any attempt to break up that centralised model and either respond to changes in demand or simply realise efficiencies, as Nye Bevan's desire that the patient in Tredegar would blow like a gale through Whitehall has been fulfilled, and constrained ministers ever since; hence the use of "privatisation" as a description for the passenger railway franchising of the 1990s.

I see the current changes to create "GBR" as being on trend with previous changes to the organisation of the railway, focusing on large scale reorganisation of one part of the transport infrastructure without really considering it's place within the wider whole. It stymied BR in the 50s, and will undermine GBR now.

 

[WesternLancer]

The politics of the Attlee government are on topic to the extent that their policies defined, for good or ill, the idea of nationalisation in the UK as being based around national scale corporations, operating very closely with the dominant union(s) in that industry, wholly owned by the state and existing as much as a means of fulfilling government policy as to operate either commercially or to satisfy their consumers. As a piece of language, it has cast a long shadow over any attempt to break up that centralised model and either respond to changes in demand or simply realise efficiencies, as Nye Bevan's desire that the patient in Tredegar would blow like a gale through Whitehall has been fulfilled, and constrained ministers ever since; hence the use of "privatisation" as a description for the passenger railway franchising of the 1990s.

I see the current changes to create "GBR" as being on trend with previous changes to the organisation of the railway, focusing on large scale reorganisation of one part of the transport infrastructure without really considering it's place within the wider whole. It stymied BR in the 50s, and will undermine GBR now.

Those are points well made I think.
Unions of course were critical at the time that there was no significant management change post nationalisation, and the industrial relations in the industries concerned would seem to have remained conflictual over the course of the history since the 1945 era in the industries concerned. Not that I think it is right to focus on that alone when looking at the overall question.

I've not studied them carefully enough but it seems like the pre war state ownership models were a bit different perhaps? I'm thinking LPTB, BBC.

I suspect that for many commentators the 1945 Attlee govt's socialist status rests on the creation of the NHS, but even there I suspect a strong dose of mythology has been overlaid. Medical services prior to 1948 being a patchwork of provision but with much local authority (ie state) involvement by 1939, but probably with considerable differences by area. Then with elements of insurance based schemes on top - that people to this day erroneously believe are connected to the current National Insurance system and a non existent relationship with the NHS.

But as I think you mean, I agree the 1945 model of nationalisation has certainly influenced thinking on the left ever since with regard to the industries concerned or the services they provide. So perhaps that has prevented debate about better models for the provision of services in the areas concerned.

 

[Pinza-C55]

Always amused by your point made in b when I hear it (sorry not sure if you are old enough to have been alive during that govt, I wasn't) - since I recall plenty of histories of the era and comment from the era at the time from the left, that Atlee's govt was 'not left wing enough' - and plenty of evidence about that indeed they weren't. This is the argument that the 1945 government mostly focused on implementing and cementing a lot of the wartime co-alitions policies, albeit with more radical approach then Tories would have done by any regard.
Also lots of critics of the models of state control of industry / nationalisation adopted by the 1945 govt
eg Ken Coates, who I recall hearing speak on several occasions on the topic.

Ken Coates - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But again how 'left wing' or 'true labour' the labour govt of 1945 actually was, is probably well off topic!

On a) you are correct I am sure, but I think the point is Blair didn't want to nationalise anything, unless it was unavoidable (Railtrack). I agree with @35B ref that point.

I'm 62 so I can remember back as far as Harold Wilson. The Attlee government built council houses, created the NHS and nationalised the core utilities and railways. Although the Tories brought Beeching in, Labour carried out most of the closures. "In my opinion" since Harold Wilson with the minor blip of Thatcher both parties have grown closer so there's not much difference between them now. The pundit Peter Hitchens described the Tories and Labour as "a pair of corpses propped up against each other".

 

[35B]

Those are points well made I think.
Unions of course were critical at the time that there was no significant management change post nationalisation, and the industrial relations in the industries concerned would seem to have remained conflictual over the course of the history since the 1945 era in the industries concerned. Not that I think it is right to focus on that alone when looking at the overall question.

I've not studied them carefully enough but it seems like the pre war state ownership models were a bit different perhaps? I'm thinking LPTB, BBC.

I suspect that for many commentators the 1945 Attlee govt's socialist status rests on the creation of the NHS, but even there I suspect a strong dose of mythology has been overlaid. Medical services prior to 1948 being a patchwork of provision but with much local authority (ie state) involvement by 1939, but probably with considerable differences by area. Then with elements of insurance based schemes on top - that people to this day erroneously believe are connected to the current National Insurance system and a non existent relationship with the NHS.

But as I think you mean, I agree the 1945 model of nationalisation has certainly influenced thinking on the left ever since with regard to the industries concerned or the services they provide. So perhaps that has prevented debate about better models for the provision of services in the areas concerned.

The word “mythology” is all important - as becomes evident whenever anyone challenges the perfection of the NHS.