WHAT a summer! What a whirlwind! What a landslide! The new Labour government was elected on Thursday July 4; Keir Starmer, the prime minister — doesn’t that sound good? — appointed Louise Haigh as the new secretary of state for transport on the afternoon of Friday July 5; appointed Peter Hendy as the new rail minister on Tuesday July 9; and we met them at Great Minster House in Whitehall on the morning of Wednesday July 10. Lou and Peter could not have seen us sooner! 

We set out what we believed was needed to resolve our national pay dispute which has dragged on, under the Tories, for two years — we first balloted for industrial action in June 2022 and we first went on strike at the end of the following month — and they promptly appointed people to meet us, and the first formal meeting was scheduled for Tuesday July 23. 

After a couple more meetings, we got an offer on Wednesday August 14 — a good offer, a fair offer, and, what we have always asked for, a clean offer, without a land grab for all our terms and conditions — which we have put to our members at the 16 train companies involved: Avanti West Coast, Chiltern, c2c, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Greater Anglia, Great Northern Thameslink, Great Western Railway, LNER, Northern, Southeastern, Southern/Gatwick Express, South Western Railway and Island Line, TransPennine Express, and West Midlands Trains — with a recommendation to accept, in a referendum which went out on Wednesday August 28 and which will close on Wednesday September 18.