Preparing to hive off the railways

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Will Weighell's successor fight to stop rail lines closing? Se Et arI th CO tri of co ar+ th 1Y Cr ap to re:

Sel Ea Pa thi pr 1115 alt thi THE most fundamental change in the structure of British Railways since nationalisation in 1948 is now a year old. It is to divide off the profitable from the unprofitable that British Rail has introduced a whole new concept - Sector Management.

While eyes have been turned toward the disputes in the railways about Hexible Rostering, scrapping of guards and the 1982 pay claim, British Rail management have been steadily making preparations for new sections of the railways to be privatised.

They have almost sold off all the Hotels with little opposition - indeed, the NUR invested half a million pounds in the first group sold. They had a temporary setback with Sealink, when members of the NUS occupied on August 2 and prevented wage cuts and lengthening of hours. Now; they're going for train services.

Hotels

British Transport Hotels, alink and British Rail agineering (the workshops)

e all separate boards within e overall BR Board, and suld each be hived off as unit. But the same is not ue for the profitable part the train services.

Main line services to indon carvino husiness affic, for example, are ixed up with cross-country affic and rural lines in each Oil.- unminess Ine Taliway legions.

eight and parcels use lines at also carry inter-city affic.

The regions more or less intinue the structure and ea of the five companies at were nationalised in 148.

Hence Sector Manageent. In January 1982, rief Executive Reid pointed five Sector Direcrs, each with a new area of sponsibility.

They are provincial rvices; London and Southistern; Inter City, Freight;

rcels. The last three of ese are felt to have a ofitable future.

The rail nétwork, locootives. coaches and wagons • being divided between em. The railway tracks themselves will to Sectors on "prime-user" track and sign: ards and pay th Sector has to Sector's tracks, rental.

London and ern will deal suburban passenger ines into London and the rest of the South-East, provincial services will have what is left of the passenger lines, apart from Inter-City.

The Inter-City lines are the six major routes where the money is to be made. These are the East. Coast Main Line from Edinburgh to London; The West Coast Main Line from Glasgow to London, London to Bristol and South Wales, London to Plymouth; routes from North-east and North West be allocated the basis of determining alling standle costs. It a use another it will pay South-Eastwith most England to South Wales, the West of England and the South coast; and the Midland Main Line from Sheffield to London St. Pancras. In all this constitutes 2,000 miles of the 11,000 mile BR network.

In 1981 these Inter-City lines generated £472 million revenue against direct costs (train crews, fuel, rolling stock maintenance) of £344 million. This left £128 million to pay indirect costs (track, signalling, and electrification infrastructure) as yet unallocated between sectors.

The Inter-City Sector has been instructed to break even by 1985 and thereafter make a 5% profit. Sector that this wafer-thin majority gave any mandate, or that the ballot decided anything. In fact a resolution submitted earlier that the EC should recommend the AGM accept the ballot result was withdrawn.

The original authors of the 'consultative' ballot were obviously looking for a mandate for registration, which could then be used to pressure the AGM which formally had the 'final' deciDirector Cyril Bleasdale outlined his aims in the December Issue or the Br paper "Railnews" - a 20% reduction in costs and a 10% increase in revenue.

He expects cost savings to come from:

1. A 25% reduction in coaches without greatly reducing train mileage, with greater use of the High Speed Trains. Already this has meant the closure of carriage cleaning at, for example, the Nunnery in Sheffield.

2. Re-routing of InterCity trains onto tewer lines eg. re-routing the Northeast/South-west service via Doncaster and cutting out the present direct route, York to Sheffield. Bleasdale says this will save InterCity up to £18 million.

Such exercises will probof registration has now been overshadowed by the right wing's • proscription of Militant. The fact that the register still exists as a disciplinary and controlling device means that the fight for an effective boycott of it must go on, and the CLPD AGM 1 remains central to that..

But recent developments emphasise that the main issue is still opposition and resistance to expulsions, and ably mean closures. As InterCity withdraws from a line, the whole burden of maintenance will fall on (probably) Provincial Services, who may then argue that it is unviable.

3. Reduction of train maintenance costs from £4.0 million to £10 million. This has resulted in the closure of main line locomotive maintenance depots at Worcester (last June), Springs Branch, Wigan (last October) and left York with only stabling and refuelling since last January. Holbeck (Leeds) is now on the hit list.

Boost

How to boost revenue by 10%? Bleasdale explains the kind of service he is aiming for in the December issue of "Modern Railways"

He believes that average fares are low, doubts the benefit of 'ultra-low Saver type fares' , wants to emphasise looking after the business traveller in first or second class, and believes the first class traveller has a relatively poor deal for extra fare today.

Pullman

"We have to make sure that these passengers are looked after superbly - a return to Pullman-type individual service if you like."

Without ASLEF and NUR strikes the Freight Sector was expected to make €30 million profit in 1982 compared with £13.5 million in 1981. In the event the forecast is for £1.3 million on a turnover of £600 million. The process of trimming down continues: She has also submitted one of the constitutional amendments that aim to correct the widespread use of coopting votes onto" the EC during the last year through the 'key person' system.

In all, over 60 resolutions and. constitutional amendments have. been submitted for the AGM on January 29. They also cover the regularly recurring issues of whether and how to alter the Conference voting proportions between CLPs and trade unions and also whether CLPD should break from its practice of the last ten ycars and directly involve itselt in a campaign for trade union democracy.

The deadline for amendments to the resolutions, and also nominations for the new EC, is by first post on Friday January 14. the 135 marshalling yards are to be reduced to 72 by May 1984.

But the 85 daily Speedlink services are to be boosted to 150, supported by 300 trip and feeder services.

The . capacity will be equivalent to 3,250 32-tonne gross laden weight road vehicles, making Speedlink the biggest single 'trucking' operation in Britain ... and a very attractive business for sale at the right price.

Service

All Sectors will meanwhile develop a 'contractual' relationship with the Regions and with the central engineers' departments. The Regions will be instructed as to what service is required of them by the Sector Directors tor the price paid, while the engineers' departments