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From Socialist Worker, No. 106, 25 January 1969, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
WITH A FANFARE of publicity, London Transport has opened the first part of the new Victoria tube line.
Some Londoners are indeed favoured – not only can they read about it, they can, depending on geography, actually use a bit of it. And dream their dreams on the way to ... work.
The new line is a great leap forward, but it is not designed to meet the social needs of Londoners, only to get them to and from their labour.
The London Transport network does not enable us to live our lives as we choose. Though ‘publicly’ owned, it isn’t a social service.
It gets you to work – a service to the employers, paid for daily by those who operate it and those who use it.
Yet we can witness in this newness the possibilities for abolishing the shambles of the city. It would cost less in economic terms to have a completely free transport system than to remain lumbered with the cost of congestion.
But the human savings would be enormous. No cancer and TB in the air, an end to death on the roads. You could even drive a car for pleasure.
The mole of change tunnels deep, and you can see and use this underground, the creation of thousands of labourers, engineers, electricians, assisted by draughtsmen and surveyors.
You won’t remember the two men killed at Tottenham Hale in the making of the Victoria Line. You’ll have heard of the high wages, but not the foul conditions of sweated labour, 1969 variety.
You’ll not know that it was all a non-union job, and now that you do you’ll maybe not realise that this meant that while digging the bends the workers got them.
But you will guess that vast profits will have been made by those who do nothing other than lend their names to the hoardings outside the various site entrances.
In spite of the sweaters of labour and their vast profits, you can witness the wonderful product built by the collaboration or workers’ skill and labour.
You can chuckle with pleasure at your thoughts, for the moment private, which grasp the huge possibilities, for the transformation of a whole city, a whole world, that workers’ skill – set free through workers’ democracy – extends to you.
Yes, a whole city, a whole world, could be transformed ... if work were directed for use and need, not for profit and its wars, waste and permanent fear.
The workers who created the Victoria Line have built a huge sign without words that points to a society whose first concern is freedom and human need.
This too, out of all the struggles, sufferings and defeats, will be built. And afterwards, people might pause to indulge themselves for a while and organise an election to change the name.
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