The Crash That Stopped Britain
Ian Jack Granta, 96pp, £4.99
ISBN 1862074682
Easter 2001. Railtrack is warning passengers that there are delays on many lines because of major works across the network. What the company does not say is that most of these delays are the result of a crash that happened more than six months ago, and which threatens to wreak havoc on parts of the network for a further six months.
Hatfield was a relatively minor prang in the context of the great disasters of railway history. Four people were killed, a dozen or so seriously hurt - but then, just a couple of weeks later, six people were killed on the adjoining A1 and nobody noticed. But Hatfield, caused by incompetent management that allowed a rail to weaken and then break through, will be remembered as the railway disaster that exposed the soft underbelly of rail privatisation and laid bare the shameful lies with which the terrible scheme was sold by the Tory politicians who dreamt it up. They promised a great deal: we were going to get a safer, cheaper, less subsidised, more efficient railway, staffed by smiling workers immersed in a service culture hitherto not seen outside North America.
The reality could not be more different. In fact, privatisation has all but wrecked the railways, and the whole industry has been brought to its knees by an accident that, with hindsight, was inevitable. If Hatfield had not joined the roll-call of rail disaster history, it would have been the fate of some other unlucky town or village.
Ian Jack, the editor of Granta magazine, is deeply angry about all this. He is a railway aficionado, who recognises that the train is the most civilised and pleasant form of travel in the 21st century, notwithstanding the chaos of the past few months. Every page of this mini-book - a tract, really - reflects his smouldering anger.
To the proverbial Martian - or, indeed, to most Continental Europeans - Britain's destruction of its rail network is truly puzzling. How could the British think that the railways could be run as private sector companies with profit as their primary motive and no regard for the wider needs of society? Such a notion is so silly that it should never have been allowed out of the realm of think-tank wonkery.
And now we have paid the price. Jack examines the causes of the Hatfield disaster, both the immediate errors that led to the accident and, more important, the industry's fragmentation that created the preconditions for those mistakes to be made. For almost a year before the accident on 17 October 2000, the rail that broke under the strain of the 12.10pm from London to Leeds was known to be in poor condition. Indeed, it was almost replaced in March that year, but a cock-up on Railtrack's part meant that the wrong type of train was sent to the site and the rails could not be unloaded from it. Instead, the rail was scheduled for replacement in November 2000. The primary explanation for this lack of urgency is that the railways are expensive to close down for essential repairs be-cause operators have to be compensated. Therefore, the rail was left in place, rotting away until it eventually shattered into 300 pieces.
A number of errors by both Railtrack and its contractor, Bal- four Beatty, although insignificant on their own, together led to the catastrophe. What is most puzzling is why a speed limit was never imposed on what was clearly a severely damaged piece of track. The reason will be revealed only by the inquiry - which has been delayed while the police consider whether manslaughter charges should be brought.
It is what happened next, however, that is most inexplicable. Railtrack imposed hundreds of speed restrictions across the network out of sheer terror that another disaster was imminent. But it has found no rail in such bad condition as the one at Hatfield, and the company's panicky decision, which has wrecked the nation's train service, is widely thought to have been a huge overreaction.
It is difficult to believe but, until Hatfield, Railtrack - the company created to manage the country's rail infrastructure - had no engineering department and only one engineer on its board. Railtrack left all repair work to its contractors, on whom it never kept a tight enough rein. It did not have an asset register, so managers had no idea of the condition of the track and other infrastructure, nor did the company record faults centrally. Even now, only seven out of ten trains arrive on time. Railtrack's promises that the railways will be back to normal by 21 May are disbelieved by everyone apart from the company's own PR people. Financially, Railtrack has been ruined: it has resorted to begging for a £1.5bn subsidy in advance. To its discredit, the government agreed to advance the money.
In his wonderfully elliptical style, Jack tells this story by taking us from Babylonia more than 4,000 years ago, where prepared tracks were first used, to a rail exhibition in Birmingham, where he meets permanent way engineers deeply concerned about how the tracks are now maintained. He has no doubt who the guilty parties are. He does not focus on the hapless engineers who failed to impose temporary speed restrictions, but instead provides a roll-call of Tory ministers who contributed to the way in which the railways were sold off. Jack is infuriated that John MacGregor, Brian Mawhinney, George Young and John Major, whose constituency is just up the track from Hatfield, all sleep soundly in their beds while the railway minions fear criminal charges and the relatives of those killed continue to grieve. And Jack does not spare his wrath on their Labour successors, who promised to reintegrate the railway only to create an ineffective quango, the Strategic Rail Authority, while leaving the whole infrastructure unchanged.
Indeed, the most depressing aspect of the disaster that stopped Britain is that it seems unlikely to change anything much. Instead of recognising the flaws in the industry that cannot be addressed without major restructuring, the Labour government hopes to muddle through with a bit of extra cash and a plethora of working parties and task forces (sound familiar?). The ministers who are responsible for perpetuating the outrage of rail privatisation, and who have the power to reverse it, should be forced to read Ian Jack's tract. They will then find it awfully hard to live with their consciences if this ill-thought-out system claims yet more victims.
Christian Wolmar's book on rail privatisation, Broken Rails, will be published by Plantagenet later this year
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