Skip to main content
Donate to the 95 years appeal
We need to run our own railway
Grant Shapps has admitted that 26 years of rail privatisation hasn’t delivered for passengers, staff or taxpayers. MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers' union, argues that it’s time to bring our railway back into public ownership

WE ARE waiting, with some trepidation, for the publication of the much-delayed Williams rail review and an indication from the Department for Transport of what it has in mind for the future of our railway.

There have been signals — Grant Shapps has been busy briefing his friends in the right-wing papers — of what he might have in mind. 

Adrian Quine was prompted to write a piece in the Daily Telegraph asking, plaintively: “Are our trains to be nationalised in all but name?” 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander (right) speaks to SWR train drivers ahead of boarding the first operational renationalised train service at Waterloo train station in central London, May 25, 2025
Railway / 25 May 2025
25 May 2025

But unions warn renationalisation must not be fudged

A train crosses over the Ribblehead Viaduct with the snow ca
Editorial: / 13 February 2025
13 February 2025
Britain / 9 December 2024
9 December 2024
A South Western Railway train in a siding near Basingstoke R
Britain / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024