Badge - Save Our Trains
Object
Badge
Production date
1985=1995
Object number
2024.356
Physical Description
Circular badge, white background with black text. An illustration of a blue train on a black railway track.
Object history
The similarities in art style would suggest this is linked to the 'Save Our Buses' campaign (see 1987.8). Potentially connected with the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU)?
Personal experiences
Shared by Nik Wood, a Hackney based civil servant and activist:
The nationalised railway was one great big organisation. And it was big, and it was lumbering, and it was bureaucratic. And it worked. But it wasn't sellable like that. So what they did was they sold the tracks and the stations and the signal to an outfit called Network Rail, a sort of half privatised organisation, which proceeded to go bankrupt because it couldn't do it. And then what they did was they sold the passenger services and the freight services as franchises.
All of which meant you had lots and lots of people making lots and lots of money, and no one is ever responsible for anything in the railways. It's absolutely brilliant! And everyone whose rich makes a lot of money, everyone whose poor travels on it and gets misery.
I was in the middle of it for about a year. I eventually wound up working on the Department of Transport’s Railways division for the last year of my work. When I was there that was a shambles too, you could see from trying to sort it out, it's absolutely chaotic. One of the guys that was dealing with the trains program, he was from the railways, he opened a big meeting and said “Well of course we all know anyone with half a brain wouldn't have done it like this…”
Associated Person
Material
Metal
Plastic
Dimension
Circumference: 45mm
On display?
No
Inscription
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