Whilst John Major hung his hat on Railway Privatisation, like much else during his time as PM he managed to end up making a complete mess of it.
Until we experienced Bliar and Brown I did not think we could have had a more incompetent PM, now with recent experience I think we can put Major down as being "too nice". He did not have the ruthless streak that is required of a good PM.
I believe he regarded Railway privatisation as the thing by which he would be remembered, and indeed he has, but for all the wrong reasons.
There are a couple of matters of historical fact which tend to be overlooked deliberately by those who wish to portray Privatisation as a wholly Conservative supported idea.
Firstly, as I have said many, many times over and over again, the money needed to bring about modernisation of the Railway network could never have been afforded from taxation income alone, this made it inevitable that the Private Sector would need to be involved.
Secondly the EU Directive was ringing the doorbell and the Government needed to move ahead with compliance. The only European Country up to them which had Privatised a state run system which appeared to be running well, was Sweden, and it is upon the Swedish model that the UK Privatisation was implemented. It was NOT something that the Conservatives dreamed up, indeed there was considerable internal opposition to Privatisation behind the scenes and in some cases openly (Thatcher/Ridley, being good examples).
The Treasury wanted a Privatisation model that removed as much State support as possible and one that would increase taxation revenue, hence they made the strong argument about breaking up the Railway into the many different Business Units. Sold off they would result in multiple taxation revenue income streams, with the increased costs of management and profit being gained through "efficiency" savings.
What of course the Civil Service did not understand or was incapable of understanding, was that we had already squeezed the orange dry. We were not as incompetent as Major alluded to, because we had managed for years to continue to run with ever decreasing real-term increases, and thus we had brought in all the efficiencies that were there.
This of course was something that was learnt the hard way by some of the Investors, especially SWT in the early days.
Labour of course who made much of immediate Nationalisation (the Friday after the Election was the boast by those such as Bliar and Prescott in the months leading to the Election when asked) but they already knew that they could NEVER do this because of the money required. Instead they went even further than Major ever promised to do, and not only sold every remaining part of the Railway off, but also in the next 13 years they sold just about every part of our public services, including large parts of our non-operational defence, air traffic control, research facilities, etc, etc. Indeed looked at today the biggest Privatisers every was actually the last three Labour Governments who have sold the largest proportion of our national assets off, including much of our NHS property.
It is very fair to say that Railway privatisation was a very key and fundamental part of the 1992 election manifesto, and for those who were around at that time, they should be able to recall the continued criticism and castigation of the Railways not only in the Right Wing press but also in the Left wing press as well who certainly left no opportunity to castigate and deride the Railways, and indeed the Left Wing press was always worse at having a go.
Ironically it was Linda Lee Potter (a long term critic of the Railways) and a Daily Mail writer who first started the criticism of Railway Privatisation, indeed the Daily Mail became very critical of it. That of course stopped when Dacre a big chum of Gordon Brown became editor and led it down the road it has taken in the last two decades.
Labour had 14 years and many opportunities to re-nationalise, look at SET for example, but never took any opportunity, indeed in the case of SET which was being run again by BR, Bliar and Brown actively prevented the BR Management team from being allowed to bid for the Franchise themselves or have any input to any Franchise offer.
I agree that the way Privatisation developed later was completely and has done much damage to the Industry but remember that the Railways were Private under the Conservatives for at the very most 3 years (Railtrack 1994) whereas they were under Labour control for 14 years, and during this period the greatest majority of the Industry was Privatised.
I think that says much, and maybe we can get away from this tortured Political Dogma of blaming the Conservatives for being the only Party to carry the blame. They only had the Swedish model to go on. Labour with the benefit of emerging experience had many, many opportunities to change things as and when re-franchising came around. Their only contribution was to cynically destroy GNER (as the only franchise to pay into the Government coffers) as a result of Dogma, Political in-fighting and point scoring, personal grudges, Political preferrment.
and on another occasion managing to turn over a section of LWR and then being unable to right it back up again.
is as always anothers prompt departure
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