GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

the Supreme Court, whilst DfT dictat and incompetence has now led to a legal

challenge from commuters.

5

Conference calls on the GFTU to support the People’s Railway

campaign and work for publicly owned and publicly accountable railway.

He said: Sisters, brothers, clearly moving motions 11 and 12. They are

actually related. The first one is about private ownership of our railways. I was

on a train yesterday, I came up from London. We cannot have public

ownership of the railways, but the train I came up on yesterday and the

franchise is owned by the Dutch Government and when you look across our rail

network it is the Dutch, it is the French, it is the Italian Governments who are

running our railways. People must think we have got “mug” written on our

foreheads, because we are allowing them to come here and make profits that

they can then take back to France, to Germany, to Italy to make sure that their

rail fares are kept down. Since privatisation in 1995 average fares have risen

by 25% above inflation. I repeat that, 25% above inflation. Chris Grayling who

is now the Transport Secretary, he spent weeks going around the country

saying that we were going to take back control if we left the EU. He has been

Transport Secretary now for a while and do you know what he has done in this

time he has been Transport Secretary? He has done nothing about taking

back control. What he has done is allow other countries to come in and take

over our railways. He may have been anti-EU, but that did not stop him getting

the Italian State Railway who had never operated a franchise in Britain to take

over one on his watch. They are just lying, aren’t they? I will use the word “toe

rag”. I was going to use something stronger than that. (Laughter) But that is

what they are, they are absolute liars.

Today is a good day for us as a union. We have campaigned long and hard to

make sure that Labour had a manifesto commitment to bring our railways back

into public ownership. We used to win the debate hands down at the Labour

Party Conference, with the support, I hasten to add, of many of the unions that

are sitting in this room. We used to go, put the motion and then the Labour

Party leadership would say, “We hear what you are saying, but we are not

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