Call to renationalize UK rail service

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Thu Oct 7 15:32:15 PDT 1999


Well spotted. Risk is one of the achilles heels of capitalism. Insurance gets increasingly complex and the sense that somehow the state or the collective should ensure basic human safety is widespread across many strata. So this letter from the Daily Telegraph of all papers is an interesting straw in the wind.

The privatisation of rail has not been totally illogical if it is a way of promoting a culture of individual responsibility in individual teams. By contrast the challenge in state centralised economic systems is to try to be satisfied with your own job, but to be disgruntled about how nobody else helps you.

But although individual profit-making teams put quite a premium on cooperation, they still do not see the overall picture. A National Railways Board would have been very cautious about any innovation and there would have been a culture of avoiding blame. However as the story starts to unravel about this disaster it seems likely to be a combination of systems without a sufficient margin of tolerance for disaster, coupled with human error.

Having different companies for the trains and for the rail track, may have added to this, even though at airports it is common for such division of commerical responsibility to occur between many companies.

The driver of the slower train is thought by some to have driven through a red light. However he would also have driven through two yellow warning lights before hand. These automatically create a noise in the cab. The driver can over-ride the noise and cancel it. One hypothesis is that the driver, who had passed his test only a week ago, came to the third light which was red, but was up on a gantry with some other lights including another yellow one. He may have got confused about which light was for him, overridden the warning again, and trundled ahead into the path of the oncoming fast passenger train.

The lay-out of signs may have been cluttered because of piecemeal development at this crowded junction.

The other issue under debate is that overhead powerful electricity lines had been suspended to power the Paddington to Heathrow Express. Meanwhile underneath a large concentration of old diesel engined trains use the tracks. The impact must have ruptured at least one diesel tank. It may have sprayed diesel over the passenger train. The ignition point could have come from the electric cables but it could have come from a number of other sources in a busy commuter train.

Switching to a system of higher train safety may cost another billion pounds nationally. The question is whether this will come from the national exchequer or from raised fares, or possibly lower profits. But if the third, how will capital be raised for newer more integrated developments.

There is no doubt the pressure for national responsibility to be taken. This is expressed in a number of the memorial flowers that are being left. The technical details of risk management however are complex, and have a price tag for producing better safety even if there is no such thing as perfect safety.

That this area not of production but of distribution should be controlled by social foresight, is however powerfully felt. The Labour government is riding the tide of this. There is a solidarity of consumers that stretches across the strata of working people.

Chris Burford

London

At 10:19 07/10/99 EDT, Carl wrote:
>[The following is a "Feedback" submission in today's Telegraph concerning
>Britain's worst rail accident in over 40 years. I certainly hope it is
>indicative of a wider change in public sentiment.]
>
>From: A A Pike, London
>apike at wandsworth.gov.uk
>Re: Blame goes right down the line
>Date: 7 October 1999
>
>SIR - As the horrific toll of yesterday's crash becomes more evident and as
>shock turns to anger, I think any enquiry should look at the way the railway
>industry is now set up and whether it will ever be possible, under the
>current system, to establish where the responsibility lies [80 bodies may
>still be trapped in wreckage, 6 October 1999].
.....


>I never thought I would hanker for nationalisation - but in certain key
>industries it is the only way.
>
>[end]



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