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| Billie Reynolds (fourth left), John Partington (seventh left) and James Parker (ninth left) of RTUC join Labour Party comrades at Reading Railway Station |
On 3 January 2017, the day rail
fares in Britain went up by an average of 2.3%, the Reading Trades Union
Council and the Reading & District Labour Party stood shoulder to shoulder
in protest.
Assembling at both the north and
south entrances to Reading Railway Station, activists distributed 2000 leaflets
and spoke with regular commuters, occasional rail travellers and even persons who
rarely or never used the train.
The hottest topics were the year-on-year
fare increases (up 27% since 2010), government subsidies for private rail firms
and the extraction of profit from the railways while fare-payers and taxpayers
foot the bill.
Despite the near freezing
temperature, the public were willing to share their real sense of anger – and the
mood of protest in the air suggests that 2017 will be a year when the
government will have to rethink some of its attacks on public services and squeezes
on hard-hit taxpayers and fare-payers.
