We need a high-quality, properly funded, free public transport system
Jay Coward, south east London Socialist Party
Under changes by the new Labour government, rail operators will be taken into public ownership when their private contracts end. Routes run by South Western Railway by May 2025, C2C in July 2025, and Greater Anglia in Autumn 2025 will come under a new arm’s length body, Great British Railway (GBR).
The government is choosing to let the companies continue to profit until their contracts expire rather than nationalise now. The question in most ordinary people’s minds will be: “Does this lower the fares?”
And therein lies the problem, rail fares are rising by 4.6% from March 2025. Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander described this as “the lowest absolute increase for the last three years.” Yet it is still an increase, and above the rate of inflation. Alexander also added “The primary aim of [GBR] is to improve reliability and clamp down on the delays, the cancellation, the waste and the inefficiency that we’ve seen.” And that “affordability is really important to people” but that “people were willing to pay for a good service.”
Nationalisation under Starmer’s Labour only means nationalisation which prizes ‘efficiency’ above the actual people using these services. Labour’s plans leave the rolling stock companies, which lease trains to the operators, in the hands of big business and leave the lucrative profits they extract from our rail system untouched.
The whole rail system should be nationalised now – no compensation to the fat-cat bosses, paid only on the basis of proven need. Properly funded and under the democratic control of the working class including the rail workforce and trade unions, the railway could be expanded, improved and made free to use. To get these policies into action, we need a new mass workers’ party with this as part of a fighting socialist programme.
