I HAVE spent most of my adult life working in Britain’s railway industry. And I have spent all my adult life as a member of a trade union. I joined the railway as a guard in 1984 — joining the NUR which, a few years later, when it merged with the National Union of Seamen, became RMT — and then, when I became a train driver, driving freight and passenger services, I joined Aslef, the train drivers’ trade union.

As a railwayman — as a guard, as a driver, and as a union rep — I have always been acutely aware that the railway is a safety-critical industry.

Because when things go wrong — with the technology, the infrastructure, the signalling or the rolling stock — people get hurt and sometimes people die.