2025 may be the 200th anniversary of the railway, but train drivers’ union leader Mick Whelan isn’t celebrating.

“We’re not part of the Railway 200 celebrations,” he observes. The reason? A rail sector degraded by 30 years of privatisation, chronic underinvestment and a lack of long-term planning, meaning Britain’s network lags most European countries’ in speed and reliability, while costing passengers more.

“We go from parliament to parliament. In any other reality, having spent as much as we did on HS2, you wouldn’t stop, especially when it costs half what it would to finish just to put it into mothballs.

“While we’re doing that, the little bit we have made is being trimmed, so we’re going to end up in reality with the one thing we didn’t want: another line to Birmingham.”

So the system is a mess. But Whelan thinks the left should not be totally dismissive of the progress the Labour government is making.

“For the best part of a quarter of a century we’ve been fighting for a nationalised railway. Now we have the opportunity.

“We’ve had nationalised railways in Wales for a couple of years. That’s allowed all new trains, a bigger vision for rail,” he says, giving the example of the new Ebbw Vale service doubling the number of trains serving the area. “The problem is: will they have the money to maintain the momentum?

“Under an SNP government we managed to get renationalisation of the railways in Scotland. We ran a peak fares campaign, that did away with peak fares in Scotland for a period of time.

“They got 8 per cent more people travelling, then they stopped it claiming they needed 10 per cent more for it to work. We’re campaigning again for that” (Scottish Labour has announced it would bring back the ban on peak fares, which hike up prices at the busiest times of day, if elected at Holyrood).

“In our view the system has been designed to put prices through the roof at certain times of the day to discourage anything but business travel — because we don’t have the capacity we need.

“And the only way we’re going to get that is through an integrated rail system where you get the benefits of cross-subsidy.

“You can take away all this nonsense like ‘you can’t use that company’s ticket on this service.’

“Now we have the political will to renationalise. We don’t just want renationalised rail of course — we want nationalised utilities, gas, water, but this is a start.

“We immediately, quite rightly, get criticised for the fact that we haven’t nationalised all of it. The Roscos” (the rolling stock companies, which lease trains and carriages back to train operating companies extracting fat profits in the process). 

“We’ll go through that process. When you have a renationalised railway you can then look at procurement in a different way, taking into account social impact — supply chains, job creation. 

“These are multi-billion venture capitalist companies that could have kept us in court for decades, and nationalisation wouldn’t have happened.”

The other key area left private is freight, but Whelan points out that Direct Rail Services is already a publicly owned freight operator, maintained partly to keep control of transporting nuclear flasks (shipping containers carrying active nuclear materials), and you can expand that to begin taking freight back.

Timing can be important. In New Zealand, after a 20-year battle, railways were renationalised just as the bankers’ crisis of 2008 shook the global economy. “So there was less demand, they cut services and nationalisation got blamed.

“If we were doing this five years ago pre-Covid the whole world was going to go green. Now things are different. We’ve got the policy of nationalisation. But we know we’re not going to be at the forefront of investment, when there’s housing, hospitals, poverty. We know that while there’s a willingness to work with us to change the railway. They could have said, there’s a £22 billion black hole, we need to put nationalisation on the back burner. They haven’t done that.”

But isn’t Labour’s claim that money is tight itself open to scrutiny, given it refuses to raise taxes on profits or wealth?

“Yes, and we do make those demands. But even if we win on them, we know any extra funding isn’t all going to go straight into the railway.”

Whelan takes a “build it and they will come” approach, pointing out that in Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram’s plan to build new urban stations in deprived areas is attracting people to those areas.

“Look at the Elizabeth Line. All we had for years was, it’s late, it’s over budget. But the first day it opened up, like every major project we’ve ever had in the UK, it was oversubscribed — 140,000 more people than expected used it.

“Five million have so far. It will pay for itself in five years.”

Whelan notes that Britain, unlike France, Spain or Germany, doesn’t have a rolling project of civil engineering works, meaning every project is bespoke, involves reskilling and retraining, and costs far more.

But isn’t that a reason for Labour to be more ambitious, not less? I contrast Labour’s haste to legislate when it comes to looking tough on immigrants to what seems like foot-dragging on trade union demands — such as the Employment Rights Bill, which won’t take effect for two years. Already the delay is allowing all kinds of corporate lobbying for it to be further weakened or scrapped.

Whelan argues we should demand more while recognising progress as progress. Some delays are nothing to do with government, he points out, with not all unions on the same page in meetings with ministers on the detail. 

He stresses positives such as the determination to introduce collective bargaining in social care, where it can be a springboard to be rolled out more widely, and to stop fire-and-rehire P&O style. 

While big business are taking to the media to try to undermine the Bill, trade unions are also doing so, collectively, to defend it — there’s an active battle going on.

“The Morning Star gives us a voice. It answers the negativity that’s out there about unions.” It can also help put pressure on Labour to be “less fearful of internal criticisms,” he says. “I believe Zarah Sultana should have the whip back, Sam Tarry should be an MP.” 

“I’d rather be where we are, where we’re going to have a Bill, than otherwise. Of course it takes time to come into force, you have to consult.”

But does Labour have time on its side? All polls suggest this is a deeply unpopular government. The far right are on the march internationally and Reform UK is surging. If Labour’s positive reforms are enacted so slowly people haven’t noticed any improvement by the next election, the party could be toast.

“Labour needs to be calling Reform out every day as the racists they are. They should be ready to call Trump out, too.” On this he includes Ukraine, acknowledging he will disagree with many Morning Star readers. “I understand the concerns about Nato’s role, Nato enlargement. But Trump and Putin meeting without Ukraine is not a good idea.

“We must also challenge the madness out there about illegal immigrants costing us. Illegal immigrants can’t even get benefits. We need to make the arguments that people’s problems getting housing, oversubscribed services, are due to funding shortages. It’s capitalists who don’t pay you enough who are responsible for falling living standards, not people coming here.

“So I hope Labour doesn’t try to park its tanks on the Tory or Reform lawn. That won’t resolve the issue and it won’t beat Reform.”