From rail and water to schools and healthcare, Britain’s essential services are crumbling.
For decades, the British ruling class – and their representatives in government – have failed to invest in the basic infrastructure that workers need to get by. These capitalists and politicians have proved themselves to be absolute parasites.
While Starmer’s government nationalises the railway, passengers are feeling these decades of neglect from privatisation even more acutely.
No wonder: ‘Sir Keir’ has no real plan to modernise the service. How can he, when his capitalist bosses are demanding cuts to budgets across the board?
The sorry story of South Western Railway’s first few days under state control are a foreboding tale for the water companies’ future, should they become nationalised too. In the meantime, these leeches will continue sucking every drop of blood out of the service until their time runs out.
Workers all over Britain are suffocating under the impact of austerity. We say yes to nationalisation – but of the profits, not the losses!
Nationalise the profiteers, not just the bankrupt companies! Nationalise them immediately, without compensation! Nationalise them under workers’ control!
Only then can we overturn decades of capitalist decline, and put the immense wealth accumulated by today’s parasites towards the embetterment of ordinary people’s lives.
Rail nationalisation – parasites still chooing
On Sunday 25 May, South Western Railway became the first rail company to be nationalised under Starmer. Labour’s desperate zig-zag to rescue the least profitable sectors of the economy is off to a shaky start.
Immediately a row broke out between the outgoing operator and the transport secretary Heidi Alexander. Only five of the new “Arterio” fleet of trains out of 90 are available, and these were meant to roll out in 2019!
This is an abject indictment of the parasitism of privatisation. Evidently train companies like First Group, who operated SWR, were even less motivated to modernise when the threat – or rather, safety net – of nationalisation loomed.
First Group and the rest of the train companies deserve to be expropriated for their crimes against the British public! Instead, Starmer’s government is letting the leeches profiteer “until their contract ends”.
Even worse: Labour intend to leave the most parasitic parts in private hands: the rolling stock companies, who make billions out of their cartel monopoly, leasing Britain’s train fleets.
While many workers and youth will understandably be enthusiastic to see a pillar of the infrastructure going into public ownership, most train operators already rely heavily on public funding to keep them afloat. This costs the state at least £2 billion a year (according to Alexander).
Labour is merely nationalising the losses: passing on the debt to the working class. Like blaming the Tories for “the mess they left behind”, blaming train operators won’t fix the railways.
Without nationalising the profits, they will have no money to invest in already neglected infrastructure and poor safety, which led to the Stonehaven rail crash in 2020.
Nationalisation is a start but we need to go further. Nationalise the railways fully – without compensation!
George McCaffrey-Williams and Nick Oung, Lambeth
Fat cats don’t eat sewage rats
On 28 May, the UK water regulator, Ofwat issued a ‘record’ fine to Thames Water – £104.5m for pumping raw sewage into UK waterways, and £18.2m for ‘undeserved dividends’, totalling £123m.
The government and press are touting this as a big win. Environment secretary Steve Reed declared: “the era of profiting from failure is over”.
But this is nothing more than hot air. Reed is unprepared to take any decisive action, beyond appealing to the “sense of fair play”, and other such empty moralism.
In 2024 alone, Thames Water declared £140m profit after tax, and have paid out almost £200m in dividends since October 2023. Overall, the water monopoly’s international billionaire shareholders have pocketed upwards of £7.2 billion in dividends over 32 years.
This measly £18m fine is a drop in the bucket. While Ofwat have implemented a temporary ‘cash lock-up’, meaning that no more dividends can be paid without regulatory permission, this is far from a “break with the past’’.
The fact alone that this is the largest fine ever issued to a water company is proof that Ofwat is a meaningless body. Thames Water have been completely neglecting any investment into infrastructure for years, and now face the prospect of complete collapse.
66 percent of wastewater sites are at capacity, 73 percent of storm overflows spill routinely, while raw sewage discharges have risen 50 percent in the last 12 months – 300,000 hours of raw shit spilling into our rivers.
Despite all this, there’s been radio silence from the government regarding any renationalisation, and Ofwat consider enforcement action ‘inappropriate’, meaning they will not take any further action beyond the fine.
While horrific, this comes as no surprise from this big business Labour government, who have shown time and again that they serve the interests of the global investment fund managers, not the British People.
All this means more yachts and tropical island getaways for the fat cats, and piss all for the rest of us!
Ben Campbell, Bristol
Nationalised trains and fined water companies: we say take the lot!
Recently, we’ve seen South Western Railway nationalised under Great British Railways, and Thames Water slapped with a £123 million fine.
While waiting on the platform for my ‘first nationalised train ride’, I overheard someone talking gleefully about how GB Railways will eventually save every train operator from the glut of privatisation. But we say this is far from enough!
Ironically, my first adventure with a government-run ride ended as a rail replacement bus. We were waiting on that Sheffield platform for a train delayed by 40 minutes, which led to its early termination. I sat in a Mcdonalds for 4 hours, due to the total lack of late night travel!
This calibre of rail disruption is commonplace across the UK. Many of the rail companies still operate noisy, fossil fuel powered trains.
The shambles of water privatisation fares no better. Anglian Water, just after their £1.42 million fine, has injected itself with half a billion pounds of shareholder equity – £300 million of which is being used to repay credit and bonds!
This is the same company who have said they will try to finish a pipeline through Lincolnshire next year, 7 years after it was initially announced.
And while Yorkshire Water yell that the reservoirs run low due to poor rainfall, they are awfully quiet about the criminal investigations launched against them.
All workers deserve free water and reliable mass transportation! We say don’t just nationalise these companies, but fully expropriate them!
We deserve the money from those fines, not the big business government! Fine them, again and again! Empty their coffers into our hands!
Scarlet Harvey, Lincoln
Suffering schools
My dad went to university as a mature student when I was a child to become a primary school teacher, because he was so passionate about the development and education of me and my brother.
Through the years, I’ve watched as he lost his love for his job completely. Now, he jokes that teachers in the UK will talk about their time teaching through this turmoil like war veterans do, and that he should just become a professional bomb defuser, because it will be less stressful.
When I was younger, I saw him prepare elaborate lessons with props and costumes to really engage with his children, because he is someone who really cares.
Now, he has no time for this. He’s just getting by. The turnover of staff at his school is higher than he’s ever seen it, and many teachers sign off citing stress.
The children of the working class in this country, especially children with special educational needs, are not being given the care that teachers would like to give them. Meanwhile, the children of the ruling class flourish in private schools.
My dad is a socialist and unionised, and he feels all the time that he’s not being represented properly. He told me that, right now, if the government proposes anything less than 4 percent, funded, he’ll strike again, but that even that is not good enough.
Under this system, they’ll never give enough. I’m a member of the RCP for many reasons, and one is that I want to see socialism in my dad’s lifetime.
Will, Leeds
Save our walk-in centre….again?!
Recently I received a flyer through my door from local labour MP Clive Lewis. He was asking me to sign a petition in hopes of saving one of Norwich’s NHS walk-in centres, which due to budget cuts is facing the chopping block. The only problem is, this is the second time this has happened in two years!
The centre sees 72,000 patients each year and has been described as a crucial service for the city, but due to £280m shaped hole it is becoming impossible to run.
Even with a Labour MP who has been in office since 2015 and a local council which has never been out of control of the ‘left’ parties we are seeing critical infrastructure being stripped away.
The crisis of capitalism is the crisis of reformism. Our elected officials can only make gestures towards social good when in reality they have no power to maintain the services we need, let alone introduce any new ones.
As always the government must put profit first and that means unless something radically changes we will keep having to fight tooth and nail just to save the bare minimum for another year.
Despite its crumbling infrastructure, Britain remains one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. The money needed to keep vital services running has been funnelled away from them and into the pockets of the billionaires. It is high time that we expropriated them!
Tom Fowles, Norwich
