All Aboard The Renationalisation Express

The Guardian still has its moments, such as this, by Neil Clark:

The 50th anniversary of the Great Train Robbery of August 1963 has been marked with a plethora of articles and the publication of new books.

But why all the fuss, because the reality is that we're living through a Great Train Robbery which makes the activities of Ronnie Biggs and Co look insignificant.

While Biggs and his gang only got away with £2.6m, the privatised train companies have (perfectly legally it must be said) taken billions from the public purse since 1996 – and have had the chutzpah to also charge us the highest rail fares in Europe.

Now, commuters face another 4.3% rise in January, meaning that fares will have increased by 40% since 2008.

And this is at a time when average weekly wages have fallen by 5.5% since mid-2010. Isn't life in coalition Britain wonderful?

Supporters of privatisation are in denial about the consequences of the railway sell-off, which they enthusiastically urged in the 1990s.

A few weeks ago, I was in a radio debate with a member of a pro-privatisation thinktank. Public ownership of the railways was no solution, he argued, because it would mean higher taxes on account of subsidies to the state-owned train company.

I pointed out that subsidies to Britain's privatised rail companies have been up to five times higher than those received by British Rail.

It's a mistake to call the system which has operated in Britain since 1979 a "free market": what we have under neo-liberalism is socialism and subsidies for the rich, and free market, sink-or-swim capitalism for everyone else.

Billions of pounds of public money is transferred to privately owned rail companies, whose shareholders and owners gorge themselves on the profits they make from charging us exorbitant rail fares. It's a massive transfer of money from ordinary working people to the fat cats.

But despite the prospect of more eye-watering price rises in the new year, there's renewed hope that the misery that rail commuters have faced since 1996, will, at some point in the next few years, be coming to an end.

When I set up The Campaign for Public Ownership with like-minded friends in 2008 to fight against privatisation and make the case for the re-nationalisation of assets sold off in Britain since 1979, we were a lonely, isolated voice.

Now we've been joined by other pro-public ownership groups, such as Bring Back British Rail, We Own It and campaigns such as Action for Rail and Keep East Coast Public.

Today, anti-privatisation campaigners – myself included – took part in protests at railway stations across Britain: protests that will only grow in intensity until we get a change to the present system. 

We're not likely to get it from the Conservatives, or from the Orange Book Lib Dems; he Royal Mail privatiser Vince Cable has even spoken favourably about road privatisation.

But Caroline Lucas of the Greens has put forward a private member's bill in parliament calling for the renationalisation of the railways and Labour has a great opportunity to get behind an issue supported by the overwhelming majority of the electorate.

Will Ed Miliband climb on board? It remains to be seen.

Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber of 1963, was eventually apprehended – and if we keep up the pressure, then the Great Privatisation Train Robbery can be consigned to the history books too.

For make no mistake, there's a train heading towards platform one called "railway renationalisation" – and it is not going to be delayed – or derailed.