On November 5, 1993, John Major’s right-wing Tory government passed the Railways Act. The act moved ahead with what even Margaret Thatcher had considered a step too far: the privatization of Britain’s railways. Since then, at least £31 billion has leaked out of the network and into the hands of the private sector, and we — the workers and passengers on Britain’s trains — are living with the dire consequences.

In the preceding years, Thatcher’s government had already sold off public assets including energy, water, and buses, but even she believed that the railway was “a privatization too far.” The public agreed. But after the Tories kicked her out like, in Dennis Skinner’s famous words, “a dog in the night,” the 1992 Conservative manifesto promised rail privatization. And with an unexpected election victory on their hands, the Major government went ahead.

The deregulation of the railways had been initiated by EU Directive 91/440 in 1991, which demanded, among other things, open access operations on EU railway routes by companies other than those that owned the rail infrastructure. The Railways Regulations 1992 was introduced in Britain under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 to comply with the EU directive.