General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Labour’s rail plan leaves private profiteers still riding the gravy train
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how rolling stock companies like Angel Trains will continue milking taxpayers for billions even after renationalisation, as Canadian pension funds and Texan oil billionaires cash in on our daily commutes
Thameslink train
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
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Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
LABOUR’S case for renationalising the railways is strong. But even after this renationalisation, all the actual trains themselves will still be privately owned. Recently published accounts for Angel Trains — one of the three companies that own our trains — show why this is a problem.
Labour’s renationalisation case is this: since Covid, passenger numbers collapsed and are only now beginning to recover. Without passengers, the train firms would have gone bust, so the Department for Transport gave the train operating companies — the firms that you buy a ticket from and run the trains, like Northern, Southern, Thameslink, or Crosscountry — new contracts.
Private train operators still run the railways, but the government collects all train fares, paying rail operators with a mix of those fares and taxpayer subsidies to make up the shortfall. That subsidy is huge, around £30 billion since 2019.
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