TIME was when Britain’s bus services were run by local councils on behalf of the people they represented.

I well remember Leeds Corporation’s buses. They were painted green. Bradford Corporation’s fleet were painted blue. Or was it the other way round? No matter.

In Sheffield — part of the nicknamed “Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire” in the 1970s — there were concessionary fares. On Sundays bus travel was free to all retired people. The buses were packed — old Nellie going to visit her sister at the other side of the city. That sort of thing.

When Thatcher’s Tory government was elected in 1979 all that changed. The bus operations were confiscated from elected councils, and handed to private firms whose sole motive was, and remains, profit.

The privateers soon discovered that not all bus routes made profits. So they dumped those services. Concessionary fares for retired and disabled remained in place, but only if local council tax payers funded them. When austerity was launched under yet another Tory government (well, Lib-Dem-Tory coalition to be accurate) local transport authorities couldn’t afford to pay the subsidies for concessionary travel, so a lot of them were next to be chucked out of the bus window.

Today people who live in some rural areas are completely without public transport, because if a bus service doesn’t make a profit for shareholders it’s dumped.

But people are fighting back. There’s the well-publicised Freedom Riders of South Yorkshire, retired and disabled people who boarded trains en masse, refusing to pay fares, after their free travel was abolished.

But there are many more, less-publicised campaigns to save our bus services. Our Campaign of the Week is one of them.

It’s called “Celebrate the Bus” and it’s up and running in the Midlands. Yvonne Washbourne is one of its organisers.
She said: “Midlands TUC Pensioners Network identified that buses play a vital role in our economy, carrying commuters, shoppers and often those who would be unable to travel around the neighbourhood.

“The concessionary bus pass is a vital benefit to older and disabled travellers. But 3,000 bus routes were reduced or cut between 2010/11 and 2017/18 in England. The amount spent on supported bus services fell in 2018 for the eighth year in a row. Fares outside London have risen between 2.4 per cent and 7.9 per cent. However more people use buses than trains.”

The aim of the campaign is to defend concessionary bus travel, protect bus services, and the jobs of the transport workers who run them. The campaigners also want responsibility for provision of bus services to be taken back into public control and ownership — with local councils.

The campaigners have encouraged hundreds of local residents to write to their MPs and are staging events at bus stations across the Midlands region.

They are being supported by Midlands region of the Trade Union Congress, Unite the union, Communist, Labour and Green Parties, and local campaign groups. Now they want to spread their campaign nationwide.

If you want to fight to save your local bus services, contact the Midlands campaign group at [email protected]