Speech delivered at Sands Films Studio event for THE MAN WITH THE PLAN on 12th and 13th April 2025
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00:00Welcome up here. Please welcome Simon Pirani from Fairfree, London.
00:11Yeah, thanks very much.
00:15A couple of things about William Beveridge.
00:18When he wrote the report, 1941, it was a real moment of crisis.
00:23The Battle of Stalingrad had not happened.
00:25Nobody knew how the genocide and war that had been brought to Europe was going to be stopped or whether it was going to be stopped.
00:34And so the report was written in those crisis conditions and it had a vision.
00:39And it was a utopian vision.
00:42After the war, when that vision was implemented, there was a lot that fell short of what was in the report in many ways.
00:51I think somebody earlier asked about Clement Attlee.
00:56Clement Attlee had big social movements around him pushing him.
01:00That's what made the difference.
01:02And now we've gone through this whole historical cycle.
01:06We've had that welfare state of the 50s and 60s and 70s.
01:09Then since the 80s, it's pushed back the other way with neoliberalism.
01:14And those processes have culminated in the frightening world that we live in today, with the would-be dictator let loose in the US and their Labour government redoubling the attack on those gains of picking on the benefits of disabled people.
01:27So we've come round.
01:29And the point I want to say is the Labour movement and social movements need to respond to this with even more utopianism than beverage.
01:38We cannot limit ourselves to piecemeal or defensive strategies.
01:48We once again need to challenge the relationship of people and wealth, of society and state.
01:55And I hope that Fair Free London, which campaigns for free public transport...
02:00Someone's already made the sign.
02:03I hope that we do that.
02:08And I know there's a lot of other campaigns trying to reverse the cuts in the NHS.
02:14We have Fuel Poverty Action, which calls for a sufficient amount of energy and electricity heat to go into every single home for free.
02:23We have people campaigning for universal basic services.
02:27So all those campaigns are raising that vision.
02:31And when we talk to people about our campaign for free public transport in London, and this theme's already been touched on, they say, well, that's a great idea, but how are you going to pay for it?
02:45And here we need some utopianism or at least some imagination.
02:49Because as it's been pointed out, the money is there.
02:52Wealth can be taxed in numerous ways.
02:55And in fact, even without going as far as the offshore that the previous speaker has spoken about, or those piles of banknotes that Kate spoke about, in the case of transport, you only have to go to other cities.
03:10Land value capture, which they use in the city of Hong Kong.
03:16So all those Barrett's homes and Barclay homes that they're going up in Southwark make those people pay for the fact that the tube is there.
03:25And so those people are able to go to work easily.
03:29Taxes on companies used in Paris.
03:30They have a small payroll tax paid by the companies that employ people in Paris that go to work on their beautiful and comparatively cheap metro system.
03:39Or, of course, taxes on property.
03:41Taxes on property which could raise billions and billions and billions.
03:45So the funding basis of the transport, the funding basis of the other services, the NHS, the funding basis has to change.
03:54Now, I just want to tell you a little bit about how our campaign began.
03:58It grew out of another campaign that we've had in eastern-south-east London for many years, as she first started in 2012 against the Silvertown Tunnel Project.
04:12Unfortunately, we lost that campaign.
04:16The tunnel opened just last week.
04:20But the way we look at it is we've lost a battle but not the war.
04:25The problems associated with that tunnel have not gone away.
04:28We still have a car-centred transport policy at London level and at national level.
04:35And this means that transport is socially unjust.
04:39It means that transport contributes to this city's chronic air pollution problem.
04:45And it means that transport is being done in such a way as to prevent London from making any serious contribution to tackling climate change.
04:55So last year, I know from this audience, I can see a lot of you have been in this situation.
05:02We were sitting there in one of our meetings and we were all talking about, you go down to North Greenwich, you see it's like a flaming building site.
05:09The tunnel's going ahead.
05:11And we decided we wanted to carry over the unity of purpose.
05:16We wanted to carry over all the positive energy we built up in the communities, in trade unions, in environmental organisations, fighting against the tunnel.
05:27We weren't going to let that slip away.
05:28And so we decided for a new campaign, a campaign for public transport as a public good.
05:35And I really remember how at that meeting, one of the people who was there, same age group as me, we've got the Freedom Pass.
05:46And she said, the day I got that pass, it was like a liberation.
05:52It's like a liberation for me.
05:57It opens the city up.
05:59It opens the city up to the people who live there.
06:03And that's why we've got Fair Free London.
06:05We've won the support of the London Transport Regional Council of the RMT Union, that represents all the people who work on the Tube and in the TFL offices.
06:17We've won the support of the Doctors in Unite, the international workers of GB Union.
06:24We've won the support of a lot of different community organisations.
06:27So we're getting going with this.
06:29And we know that while London's public transport is great by UK standards, it places a frightful burden on low-income households.
06:38When we go out and give out our flyers, people tell us that they're making their long journeys to work on the bus because they can't afford the extra money for the Tube.
06:47In the sixth richest country in the world, supposedly.
06:51And the government, instead of switching investment to public transport and active travel, is planning further expansion of the road network.
06:58A six-lane motorway under the Thames at the Medway, the Lower Thames Crossing has just been approved.
07:05So we've got a campaign against that as well.
07:08We've also formed links with transport campaigners in other countries where free public transport has been introduced and it works.
07:16In Brazil, there are 120 municipalities that have free public transport.
07:22There are towns in France, in Italy, in Estonia that have free public transport and the whole of Luxembourg.
07:29In Karnataka, in India, a couple of years ago, they introduced public transport free for women.
07:37In the first year of the scheme, two billion trips were taken on that scheme.
07:41Two billion.
07:43So please take our flyers.
07:45Keep in touch online.
07:46Find us on the internet.
07:47Fair Free London.
07:48Set up a Fair Free London group where you live.
07:50Get support from your trade union, from your community group.
07:53We're not going away.
07:54Thank you very much.
07:58Thank you so much.
08:00That was great.