Not fare (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The famous “Fares Fair" scheme, by which some Labour members of the Greater London Council tried to ease London Transport's financial worries (and win some votes), pleased some people but enraged just as many more. Some complained that reduced fares were being paid for by higher rates while businesses claimed the increase would drive them to the wall and cause even more unemployment.

In the end the scheme was thrown out by the House of Lords and LT fares were doubled in March. This decision greatly pleased those other reformers, the Tories, but it did not solve LTs financial problems — the consequence was a massive jump in fare-dodging.

This fare-dodging has been a longstanding worry for LT but just recently it has come to a head because of several articles in the London evening newspaper, the Standard. Its August 10 article Find the Fare Fiddlers was all too reminiscent of similar headlines during the last two decades.

Back in January 1971 the Socialist Standard carried an article on this subject. At that time LT claimed to be losing only £1 million yearly due to fare-dodging, but as the article in the Socialist Standard stated: "The signs are that London Transport’s figure of £1 million . . . will be shown to be hopelessly underestimated”. In 1972 LT admitted that the losses were £5 million. By 1978 the figure was £12 million and in 1982 the loss is expected to be an astonishing £30 million — or over 5 per cent of LT's total income.

In 1966 plans were made to instal automatic ticket gates to control passenger entrance and exit. This was to have cost £10 million at 1966 prices but the rapidly escalating costs of the system have resulted in its partial introduction only. As most stations have no automatic gates many passengers simply pay the collector at the other end a fraction of the real cost of the journey.

In the past you could hand over a fivepenny piece and walk through the barrier with no trouble at all. but nowadays there is a marked change in the attitude of the collectors. They arc much more zealous in their duties, not out of any new-found loyalty to LT, but because many of them realise that the more they collect in excess fares the more they can keep for themselves. LT reckon that another £10 million is being lost to staff using this method, plus a variety of ingenious variations.

Not that Underground employees gel all of this £10 million to themselves, for LT’s bus conductors also have ways of keeping part of what they collect. These include the use of Black and Decker drilling machines to wind back the counters on ticket machines and. according to the Standard newspaper article, more than 2,000 of LT’s 13.000 bus conductors have already been cautioned for fiddling fares.

This conflict between LT and its employees is actually part of the ceaseless struggle between employees and employers, whether the latter be private companies or state or municipal concerns. The main bone of contention is usually wages and conditions of work but workers will also claw back a bit of what they can't get legally. Rare indeed is the worker who never goes for a read or does a “homer” in the company's time, never uses the photocopier for his or her own purpose, never takes home the company’s stationery or arrives late or leaves early. And it’s the same with the army of fare-dodgers. True, they aren’t employees of LT (no doubt many of them think LT belongs to them!) but hard-up workers will always try to supplement their earnings with a bit of free travel if they can.

Vic Vanni

The Problem of Transport (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

A constant and pressing problem today, especially in a greater conurbation like London, is the problem of transport. Crowded trains, buses late or cut out, the constant whine of jet planes, dirt, noise and fumes — the list is endless.

At the heart of to-day’s transport problems is the motor-car, loved and hated to an immoderate degree, transforming the very face of the country, as a century ago the steam locomotive was transforming it. Any tenth-rate comedian can get a laugh by just saying ‘Barbara Castle’, as if a change of personality at the head of the Ministry of Transport would make an atom of difference to the problem.

In an effort to ease the jammed-up roads, pleasant gardens and tree-lined avenues are cut up for wider roads, while parks and squares are ruined to make car parks, and even the humble pub garden becomes a little asphalt desert. Motorways run like a scar across the countryside, and winding lanes are ‘improved’ out of recognition. Worst of all is the ever mounting toll of accidents.

None of this is particularly new; it is merely a change of form. That profit is the only serious consideration, with human comfort and happiness coming a very poor second, is true to-day and has been true for as long as capitalism has existed. London, and all big cities, have for centuries been very noisy places. Iron clad wheels and horses’ hooves, clattering over cobbles, made a terrible din and congestion in London was notorious.

Rowlandson, in a typically unflattering series of etchings, drew a picture of traffic chaos in the early 19th century. In the late 1850’s the London General Omnibus Company alone had about six hundred horse-buses, and horse trams appeared on the scene in the 1860’s. Congestion in the City gave rise to plans for a pedestrian bridge over Ludgate Circus, and the first underground railway (imagine the “Met” with steam engines) was put through to relieve congestion.

By the 1890’s there were over 1,700 buses and about 900 trams in central London. Over it all rode the locomotive, a smoky monster that blackened the working class districts through which it cut into London. The childish squabbles indulged in by rival railway companies, as in 1884 when the District Line chained a locomotive in a disputed siding at South Kensington Station and three Metropolitan Line engines tried to pull it out, make the snarling of motorists at traffic light to-day seem very tame.

The protests at Motorways ruining the countryside echo the protests of a century ago when the railways were doing the same thing. No, the problem hasn’t changed, but the vast increase in population, and the much greater powers of production, have made it more acute.

Now, the canals that once drove men and horses hard for greater speed and profit are pleasant, green oases in endless suburbs, and the once hated steam engine a romantic memory. It is the internal combustion engine that dominates the 20th Century.

No other modern industry has had such a profound influence on the social and economic life to-day as the motor industry. Its development has resulted in the decline of once important industries, and has given an impetus to a mass of others that were unimportant at the turn of the century. It was one of the main factors in the migration of industries, from the North of England to the South and to the Midlands, that took place between the wars.

Like the steam engine that preceded it, the internal combustion engine began its existence as a static form of power, and was later adapted for locomotion. Steam cars had been in existence since the early years of the 19th century, but they were heavy and fuel was a problem. The internal combustion engine made possible a much lighter vehicle. More important, it could be run over existing public roads, unlike the railways which had to stick to a set route; this made for greater mobility. By the beginning of the present century the motor vehicle was with us.

Its application followed existing patterns, in the various forms of road transport in existence at the time—the private carriage, the bus and the wagon. In its early days the motor-car was still a luxury reserved for the type of people who could afford a carriage. The bulk of the population travelled by public transport.

The first motor buses appeared in Britain about 1898, and by the early 1920’s they had been joined by the long distance coach.

One of the selling points used by the promoters of coach travel before the war was that coaches took you through the heart of towns and villages, and gave you a better view of the country. Today more and more coaches trail along dreary motorways and by-pass towns and villages.

Slowly the motor buses pushed the railways into the background, and drove the tramcars off the road. The swing was first from the railways to public road transport; the golden age of the bus was the 1930’s.

But now, by changed production methods and a heavy reliance on hire purchase, the private car has become available to the mass of the people. There were four times as many cars on the roads in 1964 as in 1939 and the number is still growing. Furthermore, the number of people travelling to work from a fair distance away has grown steadily over the last 100 years. The resulting chaos has brought home the importance of the railways, with their much greater carrying capacity. Without their rail systems, cities like London woud seize up in the rush hour.

Since the war a favourite pipe-dream has been an ‘integrated public transport system’, with transport used in a balanced way to its best advantage. But capitalism doesn’t work that way. If profit can be made it will be made, however pleasant or unpleasant the result may be. If, on the other hand, something like the railways no longer pays, but is considered necessary to the general interest of capitalism, then it will be subsidised, but as cheaply as possible.

The grim railway arches that overshadowed the mean terraces of south and east London were held up as examples of the inhumanity of the Victorians, but the new fly-overs that overshadow houses to-day show the same contempt for the people who live underneath. Transport has changed. It will change again, we can only guess how; but one thing is certain. If capitalism remains the new transport will be as nasty as the old.

Les Dale

50 Years Ago: The London Bus Strike (by a busman) (2004)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

On October 18th, London was in the grip of an ever spreading bus strike. As each issue of daily and evening newspapers reported more and more garages affected and more services withdrawn, so the streets of London became increasingly crowded with motor cars and other vehicles and extra police had to be detailed for traffic control. The strike, which by October 18th embraced 43 out of 84 Central London bus garages was the boiling over of a feeling of resentment that has been simmering amongst busmen for a long time ( . . . )

    

As with every other commodity, the price of labour power fluctuates with variations in supply and demand, but the fluctuations are not automatic. They are brought about by the efforts of employers to obtain cheap labour power when the supply is plentiful and by the struggles of workers to get more when the demand exceeds the supply. London busmen are working on sound lines in using the present high demand for their particular brand of labour power to force up its price ( . . .)

   

It may seem to busmen and all other workers that the position is impossible of improvement. Not so. There may be improvements for some of the workers for a long time and for all the workers for a short time, but the range of improvements is very limited within capitalist society. Not a reduction in the amount of interest paid on investments but the abolition of investment; not struggles for higher wages but the end of the wages system; not joint consultation between employers and employees, but the elimination of employment and unemployment, a world wherein everyone produces to his best ability and has access to the wealth produced, in a word – Socialism. That is the only alternative to an indefinite continuation of the struggle to get enough to live on for those millions who constitute the working class.

    

Busmen have always had one weakness in their struggles – inter-garage rivalries, inter-section suspicions, inter-service jealousies and a lack of close communication to allow of concerted action. The overtime ban did much to overcome those difficulties and give it a common purpose. The strike, as it was not complete, has recreated the difficulties. To achieve Socialism there must be a breaking down of the rivalries and antagonisms between all workers in all industries and a unification, on the political field, on the basis of a clear understanding and awareness of their interests – AS A CLASS.

(From front page article by W. Waters, Socialist Standard, November 1954)

Matters Underground. (1932)

From the October 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since early this year, a wage cut of 2½ per cent. on all earnings has hung over the heads of the employees of the London Traffic Combine. The need for reducing expenses owing to the crisis, and the falling off of traffic are the reasons given, and a desire to cut the suit to the cloth. In other words the employers are pleading their “poverty.”

It is generally admitted that the Combine is one of the most efficient and prosperous concerns in Britain, but before we condemn the cry of poverty as a fraud, it will do no harm to glance at the results of the past few years. For this purpose we will quote from a pamphlet, “The London Traffic Combine,” issued by the Labour Research Dept., Doughty Street, London, W.C., at the beginning of the year.

Let us take the District Railway first. It does not look too bad: —

                                        1927 1929 1931

Profits in £1,000’s            369   490   458

Dividend %                       4      5             4½

Now for the basis (of control) of the combine —the tubes. Here no competition is to be feared, owing to their enormous cost and the need for Parliamentary powers, hence the dividend hunters and bondholders have swarmed round these like flies. Let us see the dividends paid and net profits of these concerns: —

                                           1927 1929 1931

London Electric               4%     5%   4%

Central London               4%     5%   5%

City & South London       4%     5%   4½%

                                   

                                                Net Profit in £1,000’s

                                             1927 1929 1931

London Electric                633   695   636

Central London                210   188   187

City & South London        131   122   126

Also let us see the percentage of “working expenses per tram-mile” to “traffic receipts” : —

Company                                  C.G.L.   L.E.R. District C.L.R.

1926                                             54    60           68            66

1930                                             59     53½    64            62

Such are the “mounting expenses” of the tubes and their poverty.

Now for the ‘buses; much the same story as before:—

                                                                1927 1929 1931

Profit in £1,000’s                                   608   671   740

Dividend, tax free                                     7%    8%    6¾%

Operating cost % of traffic receipts             94   93.3    93.1

In addition, the Combine has controlling interest in Overground, Ltd., and a working agreement with Tilling & British Automobile Traction Co., Ltd., and in the outer area it formed Green Line coaches to drive other operators off the roads.

Now for the trams. These consist of the London United, Metropolitan Electric, the Tramways (M.E.T.) Omnibus Co., and the South Met. Electric Tram and Lighting Co. All except the last have not paid a dividend on the ordinary shares for some time, probably owing to their being used as feeders to the tubes or the traffic being “squeezed” to the ‘buses; but the last-named concern has, since 1924, paid 5 per cent. This, on the face of it, looks bad, but the company controlling the tram undertakings (the London & Suburban Traction Co.) does not seem to he doing too badly; the profits during the last few years mounting steadily:—1927, £24,920;  1929, £60,864, and 1930, £89,640.

So far in our review, the net profits and dividends on ordinary shares have been shown. There are other shares as well, but we will pass them by for this article and have a look at the debenture holders, whose interest must be met before the others receive anything. In 1931, the L.G.O.C. loan capital totalled £5,561,000, and absorbed £276,500 for the year (4s. 3d. per week for every L.G.O.C. worker). But the tube bondholders draw the lion’s share. They carry a loan capital of over £36-millions, and draw an annual charge of £1,720,000 (or £3 6s. per week for every railman employed on the tubes). In addition, various means of speeding up and displacing workers are being resorted to with the view to increased profits : faster and heavier trams and ‘buses, faster and longer trains, with appliances for doing away with gatemen, liftmen, signalmen, ticket examiners, etc., and in view of this it can be safely said that the Combine’s plea of “poverty” is not made out.

Matters came to a head with a demand for wage reductions and further speeding up during September. The men declare that the speeding up is not safe, but the L.G.O.C. refused to withdraw from the position they had taken up. (Daily Herald, August 25th). After some negotiations the men’s delegates finally agreed by 39 votes to 21 to accept revised terms presented by the Company and recommended for acceptance by the Union. Although the demand for reduced wages was withdrawn, the new speed schedules will themselves involve some reduction in earnings. But according to the Labour Correspondent of the News-Chronicle (September 23rd) no one knows exactly what the effect will be. On one route, however, it is claimed that the new schedules will mean a loss of 8s. a week overtime pay. The Company promise to reconsider the matter in nine months’ time, but what exactly this means is not clear. The men fear that the acceleration will be used to reduce the number of ‘buses on the streets, and that the medical boards will get rid of redundant staffs by scrapping the older men.

We ask the workers in this and every other industry to note that such disputes will happen again and again so long as capitalism is allowed to continue. Why not set about ending the system that robs you ? Come to our meetings, hear our case, and question our speakers.

Get hold of our literature and think it over. Then, if you think we come up to what is required, join us. You will be welcomed, and will find plenty to do in the cause of Socialism. That is the only effective reply to the traffic or any other combine.

C. V. R.

"Tuppence all the way" (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Or three sections for a penny! Those workers who were familiar with London Passenger Transport at the time of the so-called General Strike, and subsequently experienced unemployment, will have clear recollections of the trams which in those days were still under control of the London County Council and competed with the “private enterprise” passenger transport provided by the then London General Omnibus Company (L.G.O.C.) and the "pirate buses."

It was of great advantage for an unemployed worker who signed on at the City Labour Exchange or at his Union offices, to be able to board one of “our” trams at Camberwell Gate Walworth Road, and travel to the Embankment (Blackfriars) for a penny! This midday travel concession could also be taken advantage of on buses where they ran on parallel routes with the Trams.

Those living further out, in Lewisham or Clapham, were able to take advantage of the concession that, providing you reached your suburban destination before 4.30 p.m., it was “tuppence all the way ! ”

Most of us are now familiar with the development of the Control of London Passenger Transport: and, now that it is under state control, midnight of Saturday, July 5th, saw the finish of the last London trams, operating from the New Cross tram depot.

The increase in the cheap midday fares and their ultimate withdrawal was the inevitable outcome of the elimination of competition resulting from the setting-up of the London Passenger Transport Board (L.P.T.B.) and its culmination in the present-day London Transport Executive (L.T.E.) which is merely a department of that State octopus, the Transport Commission.

The workers today then, who require transport to and from their place of employment, are given the “privilege” of travelling threepence all the way, provided they reach their destination before 8 a.m. On the return journey home from work it is full fare ! Gone are the tuppenny and fourpenny workman’s return tickets—such are the fruits of “ progress.”

While many of us, no doubt, will breathe a sigh of relief that our ear drums will not any longer be offended by the rattling, grinding crescendo of noise that indicated the approach of a tram, we should remember that the unpleasant noise of travel is infinitely preferable to the even more unpleasant noise of war.

For, workers should not be under any delusion that the trams have been taken off the main roads of London for philanthropic reasons. Our masters may be much concerned that their racehorses or prize cattle are conveyed by the most up-to-date methods of transport. But we doubt that they lost any sleep on behalf of the crowded workers who endeavoured to keep on their feet—or their last meal down—as they swayed, swerved and rattled on their way to and from work, packed together like the proverbial sardines!

The antiquated London trams—often referred to by some workers as boxes on square wheels—could have been removed long ago and replaced by more modern and comfortable means of transport. But what this would have cost in millions of pounds far outweighed any alleged consideration for those workers who are not in a position (by reason of the limitations of the contents of the pay packet) to take advantage of other and more congenial forms of transport.

We would remind workers in London and elsewhere that it is also the intention of the transport authorities to cease from extending the trolley-bus services and to replace these also with the modern diesel-engine omnibus.

Workers might well ask themselves what all this points to. The cessation of trolley-bus services means an economy in the upkeep of a costly overhead system necessary to convey precious electrical current. The obsolete tram lines will yield thousands of tons of precious steel so necessary to the armament programme of British capitalism and its “allies.” Steel that Mr. Winston Churchill pleaded for in America recently. Steel that is required to build the weapons of war! For it is in war that capitalism finds the need for a modern and efficient fleet of mobile buses which, when workers are not required to shed their blood in their masters’ interests—will continue to convey them to and from their place of employment, on payment of the due fare, despite damage to roadways through bombing.

We saw the result of bombing in London during the second world war and its effect on passenger transport vehicles. If the overhead system of a trolley-bus service is laid on the ground as a result of “enemy” activity then those vehicles are immobile until repairs are effected; this makes apparent the limited availability of the trolley-bus in time of war and its inferiority compared to the independent diesel-engined modern bus, free to come and go !

Likewise the tram track which has been "hit,” necessitating a trunk bus service over that part of the tramway that is out of action. While it is possible to push trolley-buses off main roads, it is not a practical proposition to push a tram up a side street if the track is damaged or the tram has been put out of action. So, in addition to questions of relative cost the powers that be have also, no doubt, been influenced by the fact that it would be impossible to maintain an outmoded tramway system in an important metropolis like London in the event of World War III with possibility of large-scale devastation, resulting in streets made impassable by debris and craters and stranded trams adding to the chaos.

In war an important consideration would be facility for moving troops rapidly through London should the necessity arise. To this end a large fleet of modern double-decker buses could be a useful contribution. And it won’t be "tuppence all the way ! ”

Guido.

These Foolish Things: “Scientific” research (1995)

The Scavenger column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger who will publish the best.

“Scientific” research

Increasingly, large companies are shedding their own research departments and “buying in” research from specialists. The obvious advantage of this is that work does not have to be found for idle researchers.

But, more importantly, the external professionals can be assumed to be impartial in their findings. On the other hand, any findings they produce which are not to the liking of the commissioning firm can be referred back for “further confirmation”.

Gray Robertson, President of Healthy Buildings International, USA, a research company, did not wait for this. He personally altered the figures his researchers had established for cigarette smoke levels in buildings. He crossed out the figures and wrote in numbers half as high. This made it possible for the American Tobacco Company to deny knowledge of the addictive and damaging qualities of their products.

The annual budget for the US intelligence empire is S29 billion.

Transporting live cattle

The Transport Minister, Stephen Norris, has opposed the pressure for the government to spend large amounts of money on public transport systems to cut vehicle exhaust pollution. He said that the private car was: “extraordinarily convenient. You have you own company, your own temperature control, your own music and you don’t have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting alongside you.”

Know your place

This month, at the beginning of the new tax year, the government is abolishing the 120-year-old rate levied on field sports—or, more precisely, on the land used for shooting and fishing.

This should raise the market value of thousands of acres of wild, uncultivatable land in Scotland where the price has been depressed in the last few years. Estate agents calculate the value of such land by averaging the number of grouse shot, deer killed or salmon caught. The current value of a brace of grouse in this calculation is about £2,500, a stag at about £18,000 and a salmon in rich rivers at anything up to £10,000.

This is the main reason why Kristiansen (the Lego manufacturer) recently paid around £3 million for the Strathconon estate. The 20,000-acre Tulchan estate in Morayshire fetched £12 million and the rich 32,000-acre Yorkshire estate of Gunnerside was bought by Robert Miller, the American, for approximately £10 million. If you want to enjoy the same sort of freedom to slaughter wildlife, the 6,000-acre Lyon estate in Perthshire is on the market at £2.5 million. A bargain, by the look of it, because it has its own hydroelectric plant.

To be fair, not all such landowners buy the land for blood sports. For some, the objective is simply guaranteed privacy. They want to leave behind the places—and the people—that their wealth comes from. They want that essential quality of private property—to keep everyone else out

“The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself ” John Kenneth Galbraith. .

The Scavenger

Safety and Profits. (1925)

From the December 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The summoning of a motor-bus driver at Marylebone Police Court recently, for driving in excess of the speed-limit, gives one more illustration of the dangers that attend the running of industries for the profit of shareholders, instead of for the use of everybody.

The case was reported in the Observer (22/11/25) as follow’s :—

George John Hickling, when summoned at Marylebone Police Court yesterday for driving a motor-omnibus in the Bayswater Road at twenty-seven miles an hour—fifteen in excess of the speed limit—told the magistrate he was trying to make up lost time. He had since been dismissed, he said, for not going fast enough.

“What is to be done?” asked the magistrate. “The safety of the public makes it necessary that buses should go at a reasonable speed.” The magistrate then read the notice of dismissal, which stated, “I have tried you with two conductors of experience, and they both complain that they cannot earn money with you in the way you work the road, leaving us no option but to make a change.” ”I suppose,” said the magistrate, ”that means that you are not going fast enough?”

The Defendant: That is so.

The magistrate said it was “very hard,” and, instead of fining the defendant 20s., he ordered him to pay 10s., saying he must fine him something to protect the public.

It is curious that a case like this should come before the courts at a time when a certain amount of feeling is being stirred up by the frequency of road accidents. It suggests, to those who care to give the subject proper consideration, the real cause of many of the street accidents that occur in London, and other towns, where there is a good deal of road traffic, leaving aside for the moment the accidents caused by the rich pleasure seekers, who smash each other up as well as other unfortunate people, using the public roads as if they were private racing tracks.

When men are employed as drivers of this commercial motor vehicles, whether passenger or goods carriers, the job goes to, and generally stays with, the driver who is the most profitable to employ. Such a driver is the one who can get over the ground the fastest. Consequently, haunted by the fear of losing a job, the drivers tear through the congested streets as fast as they dare. If there is an accident, it is not the employers who are hauled before the courts, but the drivers, and consequently the outcry against increasing accidents is directed at the drivers, and not those who spur the drivers on to excessive speed. Here and there, to avoid responsibility, employers point out that they distribute certificates and good conduct stripes to the drivers who have the record that is clearest of accidents, but they omit to add that the drivers who cannot get through an average day’s work that is steadily increasing are sacked as incompetent drivers.

Motor drivers are in the same boat as other workers ; they must work at the very top of their capacity in order to compete successfully for jobs. The difference between them is only this, that when a driver has gone past the point at which bis capacities allow him to work properly, or when the strain has reached breaking- point, there is frequently an accident. Here as in other spheres of employment the cause of things going wrong must be sought in the same place. It is not the man who should be blamed when an accident occurs, but the system which compels men to endanger their own lives, as well as the lives of others,in order to gain a livelihood.

Gilmac.

Transport : Future Travel (2020)

From the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Travelling Hopefully

It now sounds massively out of date, but Jules Verne’s 1872 novel Around the World in Eighty Days pointed to the increased speed of travel, as the result of the expansion of railways and the opening of the Suez Canal. For transport is not just a way of travelling from one place to another, and technological developments in means of transport have both reflected and contributed to the rise of global capitalism. For centuries relatively few people travelled far outside their local areas, though there were exceptions (soldiers, sailors, explorers, merchants, slaves). But travel is now a part of people’s lives, from the daily commute into work to the annual holiday, and also an essential part of how capitalism operates, including travel for business meetings, movement of raw materials and finished goods and also of armed forces to protect the interests of rulers. At the same time, transport raises various issues, the efficiency, reliability and safety of travel, and its environmental impact all being crucial.

State-owned British railway services were sold off from 1995 onwards, though in many cases the new ‘private’ franchises are part-owned by other governments, such as the French and German. These companies receive massive subsidies, and sometimes have to walk away from contracts that are still not profitable enough. Even the Conservative government has had to take back two failing rail franchises, Northern and East Coast. There is a plethora of companies and tickets, and woe betide you if by mistake you get on a service run by the ‘wrong’ company so that your ticket is not valid for it. Delays and cancellations have become so commonplace that they are no longer a surprise. TransPennine Express had to cancel some services as they had apparently not realised that drivers would have to be trained to run their new trains. At least things are not as bad as South Africa, where passengers travelling from Johannesburg to Cape Town were recently left stranded for over a day. Of course, neither state- nor privately-owned rail systems, or some mix of the two, are really run in the interests of passengers, because transport is run to make a profit rather than to meet people’s needs.

Bus services, especially in rural areas, have also suffered from cut-backs and the concerns of profit. Though half of low-income households have no car and so are reliant on public transport, it is difficult to run buses at a profit in many areas. While some routes have been subsidised, austerity has led to reductions in subsidies, resulting, for instance, in plenty of places – especially outside big cities – having unaffordable fares and effectively no bus services of an evening. So many people are isolated, and, while it is all very well for pensioners who have free bus travel, it is no use if there are no buses to catch.

Earlier this year the Centre for Cities think-tank issued a report Cities Outlook 2020, which included a chapter on poor air quality in cities. Transport is not the only cause of air pollution, and some pollution is blown in from outside cities (including across the English Channel). Nevertheless, transport, especially road transport, is the main source of nitrogen dioxide pollution, though it has a less central role in pollution from fine particulate matter. The Daily Air Quality Index (DAQI) prepared by the Met Office is based on five pollutants; it varies greatly from one area to another. In 2018, DAQI was at a level likely to affect those with pre-existing health issues on 62 days in Bournemouth, but only seven days in Belfast and Edinburgh. In London nearly 40 per cent of monitored roads were on average above the legal limit for nitrogen dioxide. And poor air quality is a killer: fine particulate matter is estimated to have caused 14,400 deaths of those aged 25 or older in UK cities in 2017. Living near a busy road can increase the chance of a hospital admission for a stroke, and stunt lung growth in children.

And it is not just air pollution, but also the impact that transport can have on carbon dioxide emissions and hence climate change. Air travel is responsible for just 2.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, but is expected to increase massively by mid-century, and there are other damaging emissions as well, such as particulates and water vapour. Ryanair were recently refused permission to advertise themselves as a ‘low CO2 emissions airline’, on the grounds that no airline could be. Flying is energy-intensive, and a very small number of people who fly a lot produce very high levels of CO2. Even a return flight from London to Edinburgh will produce more CO2 than the carbon footprint for a whole year of the average person in Uganda. Just two or three return flights can more than offset a person’s attempt to minimise their carbon footprint (such as being a vegan and having a reusable coffee cup). Sustainable fuels, such as biofuels, remain very much in development. A frequent flyer levy is sometimes proposed, but may have little overall effect as air travel increases.

Road transport can produce carbon emissions too. The government has announced a plan to ban the sale of new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars by 2032, but it is not clear that they have any concrete ideas on how to ensure there is enough electric or hydrogen charging infrastructure available by that date.

Let’s look at some realistic ways in which a socialist world could address these problems, without in any way predicting how things will be. We might suggest that in socialism there will be far less long-distance travel for work purposes. After all, most ‘business trips’ nowadays are for purposes of marketing and profit-making, and there are plenty of journeys for governmental or diplomatic reasons. Already video conferencing is beginning to take the place of some face-to-face meetings. We cannot say anything definite about commuting to work: maybe there will be fewer big cities, or people will live closer to where they work and so need less commuting. Nor can we comment on the transport of raw materials. There might certainly be less air travel, as people elect to travel by more leisurely means in order to enjoy the journey. New car-sharing trends are starting to emerge even today, and it is likely that there will be far fewer private cars in socialism, with the emphasis on public transport instead. But whatever happens, transport policies will address issues of safety, the environment and meeting people’s needs, not of profit-making.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: Busman’s Half-Holiday (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

London Busmen’s Half-Day Strike—By a Busman

With tales of workers walking home from work in the pouring rain and children disappointed at being unable to visit the pantomime, the press and radio stimulates animosity between workers in different industries. Remember Mr. Attlee during the 1948 Dock Strike? “You strike against your mates, strike against the housewives,” a “strike against the ordinary common people.” (News Chronicle, 29/6/48.) Now it is the busmen against the dockers and others. “Public opinion” it is called. It is really a lack of understanding that all workers have a common interest as workers, not as busmen, bakers, dockers, dentists, hauliers or housewives.

There is one type of strike that the busmen have not tried yet. One that would not alienate “public opinion.” One that would not interfere with the normal running of the services. One that would show who had the welfare and interests of the “public” at hearts. One that would make the newspapers turn about face. The Busmen have not yet tried to gain their demands by running the buses, giving a good service, but not collecting the fares. That would solve most of their strike problems—and other people’s too. It would show who really had the sympathy for the poor tired worker trudging home in the wind and the rain.

(From an article by W. Waters, Socialist Standard, February 1949)

Observations: Santa on the spot (1986)

The Observations Column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Santa on the spot

Playing Santa Claus can be an extremely disagreeable way of contributing to a Christmas party. It's not just that all those robes and false whiskers make you feel like the pudding in the steamer, nor the physical assaults which must be uncomplainingly absorbed from impatient, disappointed or inquisitive children. There's also the fact that you're being set up to work a deception on people who, by their age, are assumed to be nicely vulnerable to it.

Whatever the hazards faced by the amateur Santa Claus they are as nothing compared to those of the professionals, those derelict actors who seem ready to take almost any risk for the sake of a bit of work in the Christmas spending spree. This year it promises to be even worse; if there are any Santas getting job satisfaction by resisting the idea that Christmas is a vast festival of commerce, 1986 should make them change their minds.

The pressure is on, in all the big stores, for the jolly Santas to turn in higher sales figures and some decidedly unromantic methods are being used in the process. Harrods, where Santa has always wandered freely about the toy department chatting with the kids, are now confining him to his enchanted castle because, the store say, the old method was too random to ensnare all the possible children. Hamleys, where they have never had a Santa before, now have three of them working shifts in a magic forest where the time and motion people roam among the clockwork animals. Each child is allocated 25 seconds to state their dearest Christmas wishes and the Christmas sport of mishearing the child's name, traditional but time-consuming, has been eliminated through a system of name cards.

It is worse outside London. In Glasgow and Manchester Santa had to bid perilously for publicity by shinning up a 100-foot ladder, amid exploding fireworks, onto the roof of the store. In Chester he was winched up to a high window by the fire brigade. For all this, of course, youth and fitness are needed; Santa, like so many other jobs, is no longer for the older man.

None of this is calculated to bring a magic sparkle to a child's eyes, but to enliven the sales figures. Selfridges are planning to process a quarter of a million children through Santa's grotto this year — a quarter of a million spenders, that is. Maximising customers, to use the stores' jargon, means maximising profits, which is a nice seasonal present for the shareholders.

It gives a new meaning to the old saying about Christmas being for the children.


Bus de-regulation

The recent de-regulation of buses is absurd even by the warped standards of capitalism It is the latest outcome of the Tory Party's central economic tenet: "If it's profitable then privatise it”. The result: total chaos in many towns and cities outside London as hundreds of private bus operators compete for a limited number of profitable routes; inner city streets in towns like Glasgow congested with hundreds of almost empty buses looking for passengers, while on the outskirts of the city and in rural areas people stand at bus stops waiting for buses that no longer run. paying the price for living on "uneconomic" routes.

For such people some form of public transport will still have to be provided: employers will still expect their work force to get to work on time. So the local council will be obliged to lay on public transport on these "uneconomic" routes. In other words the state will still be involved in public transport provision, albeit on a more limited scale.

The reason why utilities and services like transport, gas. electricity and water were nationalised in the first place was because it was recognised that it was more efficient and cost-effective for the state to run certain essential services than private capitalists. But it looks as if the Tory obsession with privatisation now means that that lesson must be learned all over again. In the meantime it's workers who will suffer as a result of the chaos — capitalists may run bus companies, but they certainly don't have to travel by bus.


Undeserving poor

In the nineteenth century the Poor Law made a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. The "deserving" poor, people like widows and the long term sick or disabled, were granted Poor Law relief: the "undeserving", especially the able-bodied unemployed, were subjected to the workhouse test to see if they were really desperate or just shiftless scroungers. The idea was that only the really desperate who had no other alternative would put up with the brutally punitive regime of the workhouse.

That same mentality has always been present in the modern system of welfare benefits (hence the different benefit rates for unemployed and other claimants). So the government's latest "available for work" test is just the last in a long line of methods for sorting the "deserving" from the "scroungers" (with the added bonus of bringing down the embarrassingly high unemployment figures before the next election).

The unemployed are to be required to fill in a new questionnaire when they claim benefit to enable (according to Lord Young) "a proper assessment to be made of a person's entitlement to benefit". The claimant will be asked a series of trick questions: if they give the wrong answer then they are likely to have their benefit suspended. Questions like:

• Are you immediately available for work? (Correct answer: "Yes")
• What wages will you accept? (Correct answer: "I'll take anything, no matter how low, that is offered me").
• Do you have children or a disabled relative to care for? If so can alternative arrangements for their care be made immediately? (Correct answer: "A neighbour or relative has promised, that in the event of my being offered a job. then they would be prepared to step in to look after baby/granny/disabled relative").
• Are you prepared to accept work in another town? (Correct answer: "I'll get on my bike and go anywhere just so long as you 'll give me a job").

Although the government has dismissed claims that they are merely trying to fiddle the unemployment figures Kenneth Clarke. Paymaster General, said that if the new scheme reduced the number of claims allowed by less than two per cent then it would pay for itself, including the £14 million cost of employing 1,400 extra benefit staff. A senior civil servant wrote a letter to all regional benefit managers saying: "We may be able to deter two to four per cent of fresh claimants who are not serious about looking for work and disallow another two to three per cent who are not available".

Free Transport (2019)

Book Review from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free Public Transit and Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Escalators. Ed. Judith Dellheim and Jason Prince. Black Rose Books. 2018. 274 pages.

As the subtitle suggests, it is not the idea that people should be able to travel for free from one part of a city or town to another that is odd but that they should have to pay to do this. They wouldn’t have to in socialism but in a number of places this is not the case under capitalism either. Fares-free public transport for all users exists, we are told, ‘in as many as 97 cities and towns worldwide’ (56 in Europe, 27 in the US, 11 in Brazil, 2 in China and 1 in Australia). Partial free transport, where a section of the population such as pensioners can travel without paying is much more widespread.

The book, made up of articles by various authors, covers the subject comprehensively, both past struggles and current arrangements. It begins with the free transport policy introduced in Bologna, in Italy, for a while in the 1970s and covers failures, as in Montreal and Toronto, as well as successes, including Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, the biggest place to have introduced it.

The authors approach the subject from an ideological point of view, seeing free transport not just as an answer to the pollution and congestion caused by private cars, but as a move towards a change of society, writing of ‘socio-ecological transformation’ and ‘decommodifying public services.’ However, where it has been introduced, this has been more for more pragmatic reasons. In the US the driving force has often been ‘downtown’ businesses wanting to encourage customers to visit their stores. In France schemes are partly financed by a tax on employers, who benefit from not having to include an element for travel to and from work in the wages they pay. In some small towns it has been a cost-saving exercise as, given the relatively small number of users, it has proved cheaper to subsidise the service from local taxes than to erect a superstructure to charge and collect fares.

Since under capitalism money has to be found to pay for everything, how free transport is funded is a big issue. Various ways have been advocated or implemented – national or regional subsidies from general taxation, local taxes, one author here suggests a tax on land values near stations and bus stops.

The ideologically-motivated campaigners have often ended up relegating free transport for all (let alone socialism) to a long-term aim and concentrating on obtaining it only for disadvantaged groups as ‘transport justice’, clearly a reform to capitalism’s poor law system rather than a step towards a change of society. As reforms go, not having to pay for local public transport is unobjectionable, even of benefit to workers, but it’s not a step towards free access for all, although it does show that there is nothing unfeasible about this given the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life.

Adam Buick

One way to solve the traffic problem (1964)

From the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is always pleasant to see non-Socialists putting forward views in support of our case even though sometimes they go further than we ourselves are prepared to go.

In our special issue last January we discussed the motor car and how capitalism was incapable of coping with it. What it was unable to reconcile, we stated, was social production with individual ownership; the cars come rolling off the lines in millions to be used to a negligible extent by millions of individual owners. Perhaps, we suggested, society already had more than enough cars, and all that was necessary, as would be the case under Socialism, was for them to be used sensibly as a supplementary to a comfortable, convenient, and generally well run public transport system.

Now Dr. E. J. Mishan. Reader in Economics at the London School of Economics, has put forward proposals even more far-reaching. In the March issue of the F.B.I. Review, hardly a Socialist paper, he says:

  Indeed, the one radical alternative we should take a long look at before contemplating compromise solutions is that of a gradual but total abolition of all privately-owned motor cars.

Such a solution, he goes on to say, would point a much simpler and less expensive way to a sane and sensible pattern of living:

  For a small fraction of the money we are currently spending on the maintenance of private cars and on all the Government services necessary to keep the traffic moving—to say nothing of the enormous investments required to implement the Buchanan proposals—we could simultaneously achieve three socially desirable objectives:
  1. Provide a comfortable and highly efficient (and in the interests of amenity) preferably electrically powered public transport service, bus and train, in all major population areas;
  2. Through Government control of public transport to restrain and perhaps reverse the spread of population that has followed in the wake of post-war speculative building which has done so much to ruin the beauty of the countryside; and
  3. To restore quiet and dignity to our cities and to enable people to wander unobstructed and enjoy once more the charm of historic towns and villages.
  Motorised freight should be minimised, substituting as far as possible the use of railways in built-up areas.
  London's underground, for instance, could be adapted to carry freight loads during the small hours, with shop deliveries taking place when people were off the streets.

But Dr. Mishan, like Professor Buchanan, reveals himself as yet another idealist. All that he suggests, however sensible and desirable it may be, hasn’t the slightest chance of coming about while capitalism lasts. He talks of his proposal “being worthy of consideration in a nation that prides itself on its political maturity”; unfortunately for him, the greater part of the nation are not politically mature. If they were, they would no longer tolerate a system of society based on the profit motive and on the belief that everything must be subservient to it.

The great majority support such a system. They think it right and normal for the wealth of the world to be produced primarily for sale at a profit, to be owned individually and used individually. The idea of giving up their private motor cars is as far from their minds as is the idea of Socialism itself; Dr. Mishan is yet another, therefore, who sees clearly where reason and common sense lie yet fails to see that the particular problem he is concerned with is only part of a wider issue — the issue of Socialism versus capitalism.

Dr. Mishan is at least able to see some things free from the gloss of the shallow and the spurious which capitalism attaches to everything in the modern world. His aspirations are worthy ones —he seeks to “recapture the lost sense of community and citizenship, a more leisurely and dignified way of life" — but such aspirations are doomed to failure from the start in a framework of thought which accepts capitalism as eternal.

He talks of a radical alternative, but it is in fact nothing of the sort. The radical alternative is to get rid of capitalism and replace it by Socialism.

Stan Hampson

Car wars (2015)

Film Review from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Bikes vs Cars’, (2015, Directed by Fredrik Gertten)

Public spaces ought to be for public use, right? And one of those public uses might be safe affordable transport for all, right? Wrong, according to the automotive lobby. For it, roads should be planned around cars (not bikes, buses or pedestrians) because people drive cars through free choice; increased car dependency represents progress or is at least ‘natural’; and cars provide jobs. Never mind, say its opponents, that cars pollute through both noise and air, are inefficient, expensive and driven by dangerous road hogs.

The widely rumoured claims that US public transport has been historically actively sabotaged by the car industry aren’t proven, just blithely repeated in the film. The film  belies its title, too, as it shows that different modes of transport historically co-existed happily and that more car lanes aren’t always the answer to the problem of more car traffic.

Counterposing Bikes vs Cars is, however certainly the case made by the likes of crack-addled Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who views his removal of bike lanes as part of the war between bikes and cars.

This is a well-produced documentary film which raises questions about all the myths around urban planning and car dependency. So the lesson is not so much ‘socialism can only arrive by bicycle’ as was once stated, but how capitalism tends to prioritise the more lucrative forms of transportation in so-called public spaces.

Cooking the Books: Fareless Transport (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the headline ‘German cities to trial free public transport to cut pollution,’ the Guardian (14 February) reported on a letter from German ministers to the EU Environment Commissioner. Their idea was to encourage people to use public transport rather than carbon-burning individual cars (and avoid Germany being fined for not meeting EU antipollution targets).

Free transport will be a feature of socialist society as part of general production to directly meet people’s needs. So, there would not just be free transport, but also free health care, education, communications, restaurants and laundries. There would be no charge to enter museums, parks, libraries, theatres and other places of entertainment and recreation. Houses and flats would be rent-free, with heating, lighting, water, telephone and broadband supplied free of charge.

Free public transport on its own within capitalism is a different matter as under capitalism everything has to be paid for. As the system’s defenders put it, there is no such thing as a free lunch. In the case of public transport, the body operating it has to spend money to provide the service, on buying and maintaining the buses, trams or trains, on maintaining the tracks, on fuel and electricity and general running costs, as well as on the wages and salaries of its employees. If there is no money coming in from fares, somebody has to provide the money to pay for all this. The transport authority has to be subsidised, from central or local government which will have raised the money from taxes and borrowing.

One capitalist justification for such a subsidy is that it would save money that would otherwise have to be spent on something else. The Guardian mentions that, according to the EU, ‘life-threatening pollution’ affects 130 cities in Europe ‘costing €20bn euros (US$24.7bn) in health spending per year in the bloc.’ Another reason might be to avoid employers in city centres having to pay higher wages because of the high cost of workers getting to work; in effect, a subsidy to these employers.

Free transport has in fact been introduced in some cities, and has worked to refute the silly objection that opponents of socialism have predicted will happen when anything is made freely available.

When in 1970 the GLC was considering whether or not to introduce free transport in London one Conservative councillor predicted that everybody would rush to take free rides and a contributor to the Local Government Chronicle (15 August) opined: ‘individual charges are a form of “rationing by the purse”, but they are rationing. If there were no individual payments and thus no rationing, buses and trains and so on would surely get even more overcrowded than they are today; powerful and unscrupulous would-be passengers would get places in the vehicles, but what about old people, children, and the disabled? They need transport most of all, but they would be likely sufferers in a free-for-all.’

This has not happened in the places where free transport has been introduced. In a follow-up article on the German proposal, the news website, the Huffington Post (22 February) reported on two cities which already have unlimited public transport free at the point of access. In Tubingen, in Germany, where residents pay a tax of €15 (about £13) a month towards the cost. In Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, there is also fareless public transport. In neither case has free transport led to a free-for-all as the physically strong push aside pensioners to grab a seat, nor to people ‘joy riding’ or ‘free loading’ just because it’s free. People only use the free transport to get from A to B when they need to for one reason or another. As they can be expected to do in socialism too,