Press Release on the Nationalisation of the East Coast Line

The Campaign for Public Ownership welcomes the news that the government has refused to re-negotiate its contract with failed privateer National Express and is to take the East Coast railway line into public ownership. But the CPO believes that rather than being a one-off emergency measure, the decision to nationalise the East Coast Line should be the first step in the complete renationalisation of the entire network.

Is there anyone- outside the extreme neoliberal ideologues of the Adam Smith Institute- and the directors and shareholders of the profiteering rail companies- who still thinks railway privatisation has been a good idea? The government has been paying over four times more in subsidies to the private train operators than the much-maligned British Rail received in its final years. And for that the travelling public has received a far worse service.

Renationalising the railways would save the government and the British taxpayer
a small fortune. It would also be a very popular move by the government, opinion polls show that over 70% of the public support renationalisation.

The Campaign for Public Ownership calls for the immediate renationalisation of Britain’s railways and the reintroduction of a simple, easy to understand distance-based pricing system.

Thirteen years on from the disastrous privatisation of British Rail, it’s time to call an end to Britain’s Great Train Robbery.