The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 19th May 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 19th May 2023
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
This week we focus on transport matters. Before turning to our customary present-day industrial disputes we take a slight detour to Little Missenden in Buckingham where a 3–4 metre deep hole was reported on Monday. This suddenly appeared above one of the tunnels presently being dug for the new High Speed 2 (HS2) high-speed railway.
This raises some interesting questions about trade unions and the environment. HS2 has been strongly opposed by various environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion. Construction was held up by people who dug themselves into tunnels at London’s Euston Station. Their protests cost £3.5 million and they later found themselves in other secure enclosed spaces after court appearances.
The only anger expressed by trade unions has however been to complain about delays and cutbacks to the HS2 schemes. All three rail unions have denounced delays and various cutbacks to its planned length. We saw something similar with the expansion of Heathrow Airport, where Unite the union was a strong supporter on the grounds it would provide jobs for workers who would pay union dues both during the construction period and afterwards. It even temporarily revived some hitherto defunct trade union councils in the west London area to fight the cause. No worries about carbon emissions from jet planes.
In November 2021 RMT denounced the Government’s Integrated Rail Plan for the North, declaring that Manchester would not be connected for another 20 years was an “historic betrayal of the people of the North”. RMT claimed this “U-Turn proves that these plans will not nearly go far enough to reduce CO2 emissions from transport”. Arguing that HS2 would reduce CO2 omissions is somewhat debatable as Britain already has a rail network.
More recently, last month to be precise, The Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA) accused the government of causing the “slow death of HS2” when the Transport Secretary admitted that that no money would be saved by a two-year delay in building parts of the route that might not reach London until 2040.
TSSA’s Interim President, Marios Alexandrou, said of the decision: “That is not serious politics and I suggest the Secretary of State takes a longer view, changes his mind and gets fully behind the clean, green, high speed railway Britain badly needs.”
Drivers’ union ASLEF also weighed in: “HS2 was never only a high speed rail link. Detractors like to say it only shaves a few minutes off the time between Birmingham and London. But HS2 was meant to make it quicker and easier to travel the length and the breadth of our country and to free up pathways on the East and West Coast main lines for more passenger services and for more freight trains as we move to a carbon neutral future.”
Claims that faster railways would automatically lead to a green utopia need to be tested. When railways first came on the scene it was said that horses would go out of fashion, but instead the number increased to convey passengers and goods from stations to homes and shops. Whilst some environmentalists would have us back in the Stone Age some of them should be heeded, at least on some occasions. Reductions in journey times are not a serious matter on a small island. Serious discussions, on such matters need to take place between unions and the more sensible environmental activists.