Power For The People!

9th January 2014 | Media Coverage / News

, Bring Back British Rail’s Ellie Harrison explains how her concerns about climate change led to her to start campaigning for the public ownership of our public transport system, and why she is now determined to do the same for the energy sector with Power For The People.

Together, the two campaigns – Bring Back British Rail and Power For The People – aim to hightlight the disastrous consequences of the privatisation of our essential public services in the ’80s and ’90s which has caused prices to soar whilst standards have fallen, and to ensure that the history of our once proudly publicly owned services and utilities is not forgotten.

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Response to Network Rail Bonuses

30th May 2013 | Media Coverage / News

Evening Standard

Evening Standard (page 57)
Thursday 30 May 2013

With ever increasing inequality in this country, the news of Network Rail chief’s big bonuses makes sickening reading for the growing numbers of normal working people who struggle to pay extortionate train fares.

The big question here is not the size of this specific round of bonuses (most alone are more than four times the average UK salary), but more whether such a fundamental public service as our railways should be run by the same loathsome bonus culture that dominates our disgraced banking sector.

This culture has, of course, resulted from the disastrous privatisation of British Rail in 1994, which attempted to ‘introduce a market’ into a sector where it is completely illogical to do so. Numerous private companies running different sections of the railway now ‘compete’ with each other when what we really need to make sure trains run on time, is cooperation.

The aim of a public transport system should be to provide the best possible service for everyone. This is essential in an age where we must drastically reduce our collective C02 emissions by encouraging more people to use trains rather than gas guzzling cars or short-haul flights. The only way we will achieve this is by bringing back British Rail and creating a newly reunified public transport system run for people not profit.

But in the short-term, while we continue to fight for this common sense solution to become a reality, we must demand that these bonuses are not handed out to individuals (who have failed to do their jobs), but are invested back into the railway network for the benefit of all.

Ellie Harrison
Founder, Bring Back British Rail

Press Coverage

16th August 2012 | Media Coverage / News

There was a huge amount of press coverage for the campaign following the demonstration against rail fare rises at London’s Waterloo Station on 14 August 2012. This included images in The Guardian and Metro (see below) and interviews with Ellie Harrison on Sky News, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 5 Live.

Metro
Metro (p.9) Wednesday 15 August 2012

The Guardian
The Guardian (p.4) Wednesday 15 August 2012

Radio Interviews

16th August 2012 | Media Coverage / News

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Vanessa Feltz (sitting in for Jeremy Vine) interviews Ellie Harrison from Bring Back British Rail and Stephen Cornish a former British Rail employee.

Gareth Evans (sitting in for Danny Kelly) interviews Ellie Harrison from Bring Back British Rail about the benefits of renationalising our railways.

Wednesday 15 August 2012

Shelagh Fogarty chairs a live debate about the West Coast franchise decision between Ellie Harrison from Bring Back British Rail, Mike Williams a Virgin Trains passenger and three MPs: Gordon Birtwistle (Liberal Democrat), Simon Danczuk (Labour) and Graham Evans (Conservative).