Off on the wrong track?
The announcement in early 2011 of plans for a new
high-speed rail link has already generated a great deal of debate in the
media and the communities affected by the project, as well as on the
letters pages of The Socialist newspaper. In a further contribution to
the debate, NEIL CAFFERKY outlines the main issues raised.
THE PLAN IS to build a high-speed line from London
to Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham with expected costs varying
between £32 and £37 billion. The project has been dubbed High Speed 2
(HS2 – HS1 being the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, connecting London to
Calais and the wider European continent, and the north Kent high-speed
train). The first trains are expected to travel to Birmingham in 2026
and Manchester in 2032-3. There are also provisional plans to upgrade
two lines, on the north-east and north-west coasts, to bring Edinburgh
and Glasgow into the HS2 network at some future date.
There are various arguments put forward in
favour of HS2. The official government website,
www.hs2.org.uk, promises readers: "The new scheme will improve
capacity across the rail network, shorten journey times between
Britain’s major population centres, boost the economy and create
thousands of jobs". The website comes with video simulations of a
space-age bullet train powering through the bucolic English countryside.
The live twitter feed makes a number of claims about the environmental
impact of the project in an attempt to answer local critics. Clearly,
the government is preparing the ground for a major PR battle in favour
of the project, which is unsurprising given the controversy that has
surrounded the building of a high-speed rail line in northern Italy.
Objections to the plan revolve around two issues.
Firstly, there is the environmental and social impact of the project,
particularly on communities where the HS2 will be built. Much of the
media has focused on the objections of the residents of the Chilterns,
an area of ‘outstanding natural beauty’. However, according to the
Camden New Journal, over 500 homes, many of them council houses, in the
vicinity of Euston station, London, will face demolition. This has
prompted a vigorous campaign by local people and small-business owners
affected by HS2 construction. Socialist Party members are also involved
in an anti-HS2 campaign in Aylesbury.
Secondly, there is what can broadly be called doubts
about the economics behind the scheme. In particular, there are doubts
about whether HS2 will double rail use by 2043, as the government
claims, or that it will really drive job creation and economic
regeneration in the North of the country.
The great train robbery
FOR SOCIALISTS, WEIGHING up the pros and cons of
projects like HS2, the first question is: whose interests are served in
this project? In answering this, it is worth looking at the wider
context of the railway industry in Britain. On the surface, investing
£32 billion seems like a vote of confidence in the rail system. The
question is: what kind of railway system does the government and big
business envisage? The answer can be found in the McNulty report, which
outlines the biggest restructuring of Britain’s railways since
privatisation in the early 1990s.
The actual method and conclusions of McNulty are a
laboratory example of big business finding empirical facts, then drawing
conclusions that are directly contradictory to them because they suit
their own short-term commercial interests.
In the executive summary of the report, McNulty
concludes, unsurprisingly, that the rail network has suffered serious
fragmentation since privatisation. This has led to a number of problems
that will be more than familiar to the travelling public. The most
obvious is the blatant profiteering by the train operating companies
like Virgin and First Capital Connect. There can be no greater
condemnation of privatisation and marketisation on the railways than
McNulty’s comparison with similar rail networks in Europe that are
largely publicly owned. While taxpayers in Britain fork out on average
30% more in subsidies to the rail network (read private companies) than
other publicly-owned European rail networks, the average cost of tickets
is 30% higher!
The obvious conclusions that socialists, and most
likely the hard pressed rail commuter, would draw is that the rail
system should be brought back into public ownership. This is the
position that has been put forward by the National Union of Rail,
Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) in its response to McNulty.
However, re-nationalisation is not even considered by the report.
Instead, McNulty recommends less government regulation. More power would
be given to the train operating companies to drive down costs on the
network. In other words, more privatisation and marketisation to cure
the problems caused by privatisation and maketisation.
Attacking pay and conditions
McNULTY IS ALSO explicit about the need to destroy
the terms and conditions of railway workers. Point 15 of the executive
summary states: "The industry also has weakness in HR/IR [human
resources/industrial relations] management which have allowed excessive
wage drift, at all levels, and the continuation of inefficient work
practices".
It then goes to explain: "The expectation that
salaries, at all levels of the railway industry, will increase ahead of
inflation has to end. Indeed, with many passengers and taxpayers having
their salaries frozen at present, even the granting of inflation-level
increases must be questioned". Further: "The overall trend to reduce
continually the length of the working day and the working week is
unsustainable. A starting point would be to review the salaries and
employment terms for new entrants to the industry".
The unquestioned assumption in McNulty is that rail
workers’ living standards must fall in order for costs to be driven down
and profits maintained. In practice, the only way to achieve this would
be to take on the railway unions in a manner similar to the harsh
methods used in the British Airways cabin crew dispute. There can be no
clearer example of economic decisions taken to benefit big business at
the expense of workers.
The practical effect of McNulty is spelt out quite
clearly by the RMT in its response to the report, Paying for
Privatisation. Greater freedom for train operating companies will see
thousands of jobs going as ticket offices are closed and stations are
left undermanned.
McNulty is highly relevant to the debate on HS2
because it reveals the future plans for the railway system. HS2, if it
was run along the lines envisaged by the McNulty report, would be a
playground for private operators to charge whatever prices they liked
while relentlessly driving down the pay and conditions of the workers
who would build and operate the railways.
It could also be argued that HS2, as it stands, is a
massive distraction from a coming crisis in the network. This has been
put forward by the president of the RMT, Alex Gordon, in the pages of
the Morning Star (22 January): "The hypocrisy at the heart of the
Con-Dem coalition is that on the one hand it is proposing to spend £37
billion on HS2. And on the other it is endorsing the slaughter of jobs
and funding for the rest of the network being proposed by the McNulty
report".
The interests of finance capital
DEFENDERS OF THE HS2 project, particularly the
Department of Transport, often point to the effect HS2 could have in
driving much needed economic growth in northern England. Before
examining this claim it is worth taking a step back and considering why
it is necessary to kick-start economic growth in this region. To put it
another way, why does economic performance in the North of England lag
behind London and the South East?
Industrial production, traditionally based in the
Midlands and the North, has declined massively, while the financial
services industry based in the City of London has risen remorselessly.
This is often presented as a natural development of a ‘mature’ economy
as manufacturing moves from ‘high wage’ western countries to lower wage
countries in East Asia, Latin America or Eastern Europe.
This supposedly ‘natural’ process hides the reality
that the decline of manufacture in Britain was a conscious political and
economic choice of a majority of the capitalist class. Investment in
British manufacturing declined from the 1960s onward causing it to lose
out in the battle with its German and far eastern rivals. Instead, the
emphasis was placed on finance capitalism, on speculation and gambling
in the City. The effect of this has been two-fold. Firstly, the British
working class can be said broadly to have lost out as relatively well
paid, often unionised, manufacturing jobs have moved abroad to be
replaced, if at all, by low wage, insecure service industry jobs.
Secondly, the finance-capital wing of the capitalist
class has been politically strengthened at the expense of those
capitalists who remain based in the manufacturing sector. This means
that national economic decision making tends to favour the needs of
finance capital, based in the City and the surrounding region. The bias
towards London and the South East can be seen in the HS2 project which,
far from benefiting the economy of northern English cities, may in fact
cause them to fall further behind London.
The most glaring example of this is the impact HS2
will have on those cities that will not be connected to the route, such
as Coventry and Stoke. Routes to other cities not part of HS2 will be
cut in order to allow HS2 to make fewer stops. Therefore, many cities
will find they are actually more isolated from the transport system.
For those cities that are connected to HS2 the
evidence of economic benefit is scant. In France, more businesses have
located to Paris since the opening of the high-speed Lyon to Paris line
in 1981. A similar pattern was repeated in Spain with the opening of
high-speed rail between Seville and Madrid in 1991.
It is worth considering whether the billions spent
on HS2 will actually create a jobs bonanza in the North of England. It
could just as easily be argued that shaving off the journey time from
Manchester and Leeds to London will allow London-based employees to take
advantage of lower house prices in the North and still commute to work.
Even the government’s own figures predict that seven out of ten of the
new jobs created by HS2 will be in the South East.
A much more immediate and cheaper boost to the
economy in the North of England would be to raise national pay rates in
the public sector, rather than cutting the wages of public-sector
workers in poorer cities as part of an austerity programme aimed at
subsiding private banking debts. This is not to counterpose
infrastructure spending to wage rises. It is to illustrate how the
economic policy of the government is geared at all times towards the
needs of big business in general and finance capital in particular, and
not the needs of workers.
Environmental factors
A SLIGHTLY LESS mainstream argument in favour of HS2
is environmental. The development of a modern rail network is seen as
essential in weaning people off more polluting forms of travel such as
road and air traffic. Socialists would agree with this is general.
Within a socialist plan of production, it would be possible to develop a
modern rail network as a key part of an integrated transport system.
However, the particulars of how HS2 would operate,
as it currently stands, seem to point in the opposite direction. Freight
will be excluded from HS2 entirely and will be shunted onto the more
‘conventional’ rail network. Thanks to the complicated franchising
process designed to incentivise private train operating companies there
is already a bias towards passenger rather than freight travel.
With longer journey times and higher prices many
companies will switch to more polluting road haulage. This will have a
knock-on effect on the already overcrowded road network causing longer
delays and hence more pollution. Once again, this is a symptom of the
bias towards the finance capital of the South East, whose primary
concern is the rapid transport of people into and out of London, against
the needs of manufacturing, which relies on the swift transportation of
goods and raw materials.
The unforeseen consequences of transport policy also
underline the need for democratic and centralised planning in order to
achieve the optimum environmental impact.
Undermining local decision making
THE FINAL POINT relating to the impact of HS2 is the
effect it will have on the communities it passes through. Protest
campaigns objecting to various aspects of the project have sprung up
across the country. The motivations for these objections are diverse and
could take up an article in themselves. Whatever the merits of the
various objections, one consistent aspect socialists must take into
account is the democracy of the decision-making process.
Previous points in the article highlighted the
priority given to the needs of the capitalist class in shaping economic
policy. This is not to say that big business entirely dictates how
economic policy is implemented, however. A degree of democratic control
does exist in the planning laws, where a certain amount of oversight is
given to locally elected councils. It is important not to overstate the
amount of democratic control that local councils exercise. The
capitalist class has huge financial resources with which it can wage
campaigns in favour of any given project, through the media, court
challenges and so on. There is also the obvious problem of a lack of
political representation at local council level where all three main
political parties, which make up the majority of local representatives,
are essentially pro-big business.
Nevertheless, the fact that these democratic
channels do exist, for all their flaws, is a point of pressure that a
community campaign can use if it wishes to object to a development like
HS2.
This is all set to change with the draft National
Planning Policy Framework, where the Con-Dem government is attempting to
erase almost completely any local democratic control of planning policy.
The crux of the new laws is that any planning application will have a
"presumption in favour of sustainable development". This will tip the
balance decisively in favour of developers and make it extremely
difficult for councils to object to new development projects.
The brutal methods employed to force through
high-speed rail in northern Italy illustrate what can happen when local
democracy is bypassed and developers and governments are insulated from
any democratic control and oversight. In the years to come, HS2 will
certainly see campaigns and protests against it. It cannot be ruled out
that similar methods could be used in Britain against local campaigns
that are pushed into direct action once all other channels of protest
are closed off.
The case for socialist planning
THERE ARE TIMES when the needs of broader society
must take precedence over the objections of one part of the community.
However, the best way to reach a true consensus is not through
concentrating more powers in the hands of developers. Instead, a more
democratic and accountable economic system can ensure the best economic
decisions can be reached. Such a system is impossible under capitalism
as economic decisions are taken in the interests of a small clique of
billionaires.
Under a socialist government the key sectors of the
economy, including transport, would be publicly owned. This would allow
democratic input into decision making from transport workers, local
residents and the working class as a whole. A socialist economic plan
would bring trade unions, locally elected councils and a government
based on the interests of the working class into the heart of the
decision-making process. All of those people charged with making and
implementing economic policy would be subject to recall. There would be
full freedom of information to ensure there were no vested interests
driving economic policy.
In such a system, geared towards the needs of the
majority, a proper transport policy could be drawn up as part of an
economic plan to develop the whole of the country, ending the necessity
for people to travel long distances to one particular area of the
country to find work.
The root cause of the problems outlined in this
article can be said to be the monopoly of power exercised by the
capitalist class in the economy through the private ownership of the
most vital parts of the economy. The task of the working class is to
wrest that power and ownership from the capitalists through the building
of our own democratic organisations, our trade unions, our community
campaigns and our own political party, and to lay the foundations for
the democratic control and ownership of the economy.
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