Many years ago, Fred Hoyle, the eccentric astronomer, wrote a science-fiction story in which the Earth began mysteriously to expand and journeys over previously familiar distances grew longer, at first imperceptibly, then more dramatically. It ends with the hero, who lives in an isolated country cottage, waiting for his wife to return from the shops and gradually realising that she will never do so. Britain's rail travellers must now feel they are living in some version of this story, with the celebrated nine-hour journey from St Pancras to Nottingham taking on an epic quality.
Yet the minister for transport, Lord Macdonald, in an interview in this issue of the NS (page 18), tells travellers - as they sit staring at fields of oilseed rape while the time for another business appointment or job interview slips by - to "keep things in perspective". His lordship has "statistics" which show that only 3 per cent of trains are seriously late. It is not clear whether he is talking about lateness on normal timetables or lateness on the reduced expectations of emergency timetables. But it is utterly clear that Lord Macdonald has been more than usually afflicted by the departure from reality that marks all politicians who have been in office for a year or two. While other people hang about on railway stations, Lord Macdonald lives in the virtual reality world of Westminster and Whitehall where, if only 7 per cent of all journeys are made by train, and only 9 per cent of people put transport in their top ten political concerns, the issue lacks "salience". In other words, you little people should stop making such a fuss about nothing.
The truth is that the railways have been a political embarrassment for the government ever since it came to power. It inherited a botched Tory privatisation and that, along with years of under-investment, is to blame for much of the present chaos. But it dare not say so too often lest it raise further questions. Why does Labour propose to do nothing about it? Why is it so determined to drive through a scheme for the London Underground that looks suspiciously similar? Why is it wasting time on the privatisation of air-traffic control? This is not a matter of socialism, old or new, but of common sense. Railways meet the two main criteria for public ownership: they are natural monopolies and they are vital to the nation's comfort and efficiency.
In no sense can either Railtrack or the operating companies be described as independent, private businesses operating in the commercial sector. They are not subject to the fundamental commercial discipline of possible bankruptcy, since they know that governments will always bail them out. They are receiving, between them, £26bn in subsidies over ten years - more than British Rail got, and more than five times as much as the whole of BR was sold off for. They are subject to a web of regulation and ministerial intervention that grows by the day, with the Strategic Rail Authority shortly to come on stream, with senior figures from the industry in and out of Downing Street, and with the government talking about nationalising Railway Safety Ltd, a Railtrack subsidiary. This is not so much a lame duck as a legless one and, after a botched privatisation, we have what amounts to a botched renationalisation, in which bewildering layers of bureaucracy try to impose the government's will on the industry.
There are two alternatives for the future of the railways, and ministers would show they cared about rail passengers if they considered them seriously. The first is to unbotch the privatisation, and put track, signals and stations, as well as the train services, under the control of regional operating companies. Ministers would thus end the buck-passing over both safety and punctuality that now so infuriates passengers. The second option is to unbotch the renationalisation and restore the railways to outright public ownership. Rail nationalisation, in 1948, was the least contested of all the Attlee government's nationalisations because Conservative governments had found, over the previous 30 years, that it was quite impossible to keep their hands off the privately owned companies. By now, ministers should have learnt that lesson all over again. What holds them back is not pragmatism, but a form of ideology: a Third Wayist doctrine that nothing must be done that looks or sounds remotely like old Labour. And those in the grip of ideology always show, in the end, the disdain for mere mortals and their daily concerns that Lord Macdonald betrays in his interview.
