One month ago, on Sunday 8th September 2024, the Green Party of England and Wales passed a motion entitled “A Green rail strategy for the Midlands and North“. The party’s new policy supports not only the full completion of HS2, but also a High Speed Transpennine line (known as Northern Powerhouse Rail or NPR) from Liverpool to Hull via Manchester, Bradford and Leeds.
After the Labour Party conference has ended we still have no clarity on our new government’s position on HS2. But if you’re a Green Party member or supporter or voter, things could not be clearer!
How did the Greens get here?
Back in the 2010s, it was an article of faith for Greens that HS2 was a bad thing. If you asked a random person what the Green Party was about, often one of the first things they’d say would be “stopping HS2” – it was all over our social media and regularly mentioned by our leaders. It had become a very visible part of our identity, and huge amounts of time and energy were put into opposing the project.
However, in 2019, recognising that our position on HS2 was at odds with the need for radically improving rail transport in the UK, a group of members got together under the banner of Greens4HS2 and set about patiently and politely trying to shift the party’s policy. The group includes diverse representation from right across the party – young and old, culturally diverse, councillors, activists, new members and old hands, spread right across England and Wales – including many northern voices.
We decelerated, came to a complete standstill, walked the length of the train to check everyone was OK, and awaited authorisation to proceed in the opposite direction. That authorisation arrived at the party’s annual conference in Manchester. On the same stage where Rishi Sunak cancelled the majority of HS2, the Green Party now officially voiced its support for high-speed rail in the UK.
High-speed rail done right
The opportunity to address the division in the Green Party of England and Wales on the subject of high-speed rail, is not just about trains nor ecological destruction or profligate profiteering at the expense of the environment. At its heart is an opportunity for us to explore the connection we make between environmental and social, while including race. It is also an opportunity to explore how we, as a party, can truly represent the whole of the countries and communities we strive to serve.
This article attempts to explore these opportunities in conversation between Ekua Bayunu and Sam Easterby-Smith, reflecting on the arguments made for and against the motion, how we can learn from them and better plan for the future of transport across the UK. Both Sam and Ekua stood as parliamentary candidates for the Green Party in the 2024 general election, and both came second.
About Ekua: I am a 63-yr old black woman who has lived half my life in Manchester. And have lived all my life fighting for social justice. The connection to environmental justice came later. But it came in hard and holds fast to my beliefs.
About Sam: I’m a 45-yr old father of four, software engineer, transport campaigner, and one of the founders of the Greens4HS2 group. Climate change is with us now, and already causing deep consequences for our society. I want a world in which our children can explore and make connections – not a world full of war and hardship. To make that happen, we must change the system.
Have you tried getting on a train in the north?
Sam: Back in 2018, I was commuting by train between Manchester and Leeds. My train would normally be OK in the morning, but by the evening a cascade of late and cancelled trains would mean once a train arrived it would be rammed.
That was the year that the Transpennine and Northern trains had a timetable meltdown. They tried to squeeze more out of the infrastructure than it could cope with. To compound the omnishambles, the new trains to run it weren’t ready and a new section of track in Manchester, the Ordsall Curve, turned out not to be the magic bullet that would unclog the local network: it made things worse.
For many, the solution to bad rail services is the car
Ekua: However, lower income households are less likely to own a car, whilst road building, pollution, congestion and traffic accidents disproportionately affect working class people and people from the global majority.
Hulme ward, where I served as a Green councillor, has some of the poorest air quality in Manchester, which already fails World Health Organisation guidelines on air pollution levels. Also, according to the 2021 census, 53.5% of households in Hulme don’t have access to a car or van.
Decarbonising transport
Ekua: Across the UK, transport is a troublesome sector to decarbonise. In 2021, domestic transport 26% of our carbon emissions alongside 32% of nitrogen oxide emissions and other pollutants. The vast majority of that, of course, comes from cars, vans and HGVs.
Sam: Electric cars are becoming more widespread now – and they are much better than diesel or petrol – but they will not save us. We’re just moving the deckchairs on the Titanic; energy still needs to be generated, particulate matter from tyres still fills the air, while the lithium gets extracted from exploitative and ecologically catastrophic mines in South America and Africa. That, and the inequalities you mentioned, remain baked in.
To decarbonise transport, to get us out of our cars as much as possible, and to address those inequalities, we have to provide meaningful alternatives, at every scale.
For short journeys, that means walking, cycling, scooting – which, critically, needs to be safe. Again, cars themselves represent a huge threat to this, both in terms of physical safety and air quality. That’s why we must embrace traffic reduction measures such as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and dedicate more space to pedestrians and cycles.
Ekua: Going a little further, the bus should turn up frequently, be run for the public good under local control, and cost nearly nothing. Currently bus journeys account for 22% of journeys made to leisure activities, 27% of journeys taken by students to schools and colleges, 22% of journeys made to shops and 22% of journeys took people to work.
If we use the figures offered by the Confederation of Passenger Transport:
- A fully loaded double decker bus can remove up to 75 cars off the road
- Euro 6 diesel cars emit 10 times more nitrogen oxide emissions per passenger/km than a Euro 6 diesel bus
- Buses and coaches account for just 2% of the UK’s road transport nitrogen oxide emissions and 1% of particulate matter emissions, compared to cars and taxis which account for 32% and 20% respectively
- Of greenhouse gas emissions from transport, cars account for 52%, with just 2% from buses and coaches
It’s easy to see why improving bus travel locally is essential in our battle for net zero.
Capacity, capacity, capacity
Sam: Beyond buses, we need to look to the train. We need both frequent and reliable local trains, and frequent and reliable and affordable long-distance trains. I’m going to be generous here and include trams, metros, and light rail too.
The key is capacity. Our Victorian-designed railways are limited in what we can squeeze out of them. Shoving a mixture of fast and slow services down a single pair of tracks means both lose out in terms of both frequency and reliability.
By shifting the fast trains to their own tracks, you can run the local trains more frequently. Instead of one train per hour if you’re lucky, you suddenly have room for one every 10 minutes. It becomes the obvious choice, just like getting a tube in London.
Ekua: Across the north, access to employment and educational opportunity is severely curtailed by the lack of an environmentally efficient train network. Building HS2 in full offers us a railway in public hands, with the chance to hugely improve those local services. A railway with affordable and accessible trains across the north connecting this country as a whole. A railway that will keep cars off the road and planes on the ground.
“When you’re in a hole don’t keep digging” – Natalie Bennett
Sam: Phase 1 of HS2 is mostly built but, if we only do the Old Oak Common to Birmingham section, it becomes the white elephant that anti-HS2 campaigners predicted. For the sake of all of those who have been affected, we have to make it worthwhile: that means we need to finish the job. If we are serious about decarbonising transport we must do this and a lot more in our efforts to hold the project to account. We absolutely need to keep digging.
All aboard the HS2 gravy train
Sam: Among those speaking against the motion there were accusations of HS2 being a gravy train, of corruption and huge salaries, of wealth extraction and vested interests. They aren’t wrong. The mismanagement of the project both from successive governments and the construction industry is deeply questionable.
Taking government first, the big issue is one of indecision and changing the plans. As parts of the project have been changed and cut, they end up taking longer and costing more. Shutting down a building site like Euston safely is way more complex than telling everyone to pack up and go home. When you eventually come to start it all up again, you have to somehow re-design, re-plan, and re-hire all the people you made redundant, if you can still get them.
There is a big point there that this is about real jobs for real people. A friend recently got made redundant because of the cuts to HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail. He was expecting years of work on the projects but now he’s going to struggle to find work in the UK and is very likely to have to take his talents abroad, somewhere where rail infrastructure is a priority.
Ekua: On the construction industry, this is a deeper problem. The big contractors employ multiple tiers of subcontractors, creaming off a margin at each level, until you find the people at the very bottom being paid a fraction of the true value of their work. This is as true for house building as it is for rail infrastructure, and it’s high time that we both more tightly regulate the industry, and look to create publicly-owned and worker-owned companies to deliver our Green industrial revolution.
I’m a member of the Green Party’s Trades Union Group (GPTU). As a local councillor, I built close working relationships with the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), especially on the picket line when we stood together against the planned closures of ticket offices.
GPTU will be encouraging our members, councillors and MPs to develop positive working relationships with the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) which was founded specifically for professional railway staff over 120 years ago, and is the recognised union for directly employed HS2 staff.
Acknowledging the environmental concerns
Sam: We need some perspective on this. Green Party member Phil Sturgeon runs a reforestation charity, and has taken a close look at the amount of ancient woodland involved in the construction of phase 1: “The UK has 609,990 hectares of ancient woodland, and I don’t want to lose any of it unnecessarily, but 20.6 hectares is 0.003% of our ancient woodland being swapped for critical green infrastructure.” To put that another way; the average 18 hole golf course occupies 45 hectares. The amount of ancient woodland destroyed by HS2 so far is the equivalent of less than half a golf course.
Another important thing to bear in mind is that agricultural land is not natural. It may be beautiful, but it’s actually an industrial landscape shaped by human hands over millennia, and we have a duty to continue to shape it for the better.
Ekua: Yes, we recognise that as HS2 continues, there will be an impact on nature. Greens increasingly in positions of power have an opportunity to reward those solutions that do as little damage to the environment as possible by encouraging solutions that propose innovative ways to address these challenges. We are serious about redressing the balance, and about supporting rewilding and nature conservation efforts right across the UK.
Ekua: Or as one of my comrades wryly put it when I told her I was writing this article: “Isn’t that finished with🤣🤣🤣 we all gonna be saying goodbye to the Chiltern hills, peak district and lake district so we can chug chug along in a really straight line.”
Yes, HS2 in my back yard!
Sam: The planned route of HS2 phase 2 runs right under my back garden. I stand to be directly affected by the line, both during the construction phase and during operation.
I advocate for HS2, because this is about more than my personal discomfort or the value of my house. As a Green, I understand that it’s essential both that we do this, and that we do it properly; that engineering standards are high, that environmental standards are set and met, that residents affected by the line are adequately communicated with and compensated where appropriate.
The track record of HS2 Ltd (a company wholly owned by the Department for Transport) and their contractors on phase 1 has been a mixed bag. As Greens, it’s essential that we hold them to account, minimising the short term impacts and maximising the longer term benefits to our communities that having a modern and fit-for-purpose transport network will bring.
The big ambition
Sam: As Greens we need to articulate what we do want, and what we need to achieve our climate goals. If we want to cut domestic and short haul flights, we need to provide an alternative. We need to support not just a line, but a network of dedicated long-distance high-speed trunk routes, extending from Scotland, through England and Wales to the continent.
The first thing to do would be to look at further extending the line towards Glasgow and Edinburgh: the more time we can shave from that journey, and the more seats we can provide, the more we can eat into the 5.6 million people per year who fly between London and the Scottish Central Belt.
When the channel tunnel opened, we were promised international services from the north. They even bought the trains to operate them. But they never ran, because we lacked the political will. You could fit all 1721 people who fly each day from Manchester to Paris comfortably on two trains, and with an HS2-HS1 connection (yes, that got axed too), achieve it in three and a half hours. When you start eliminating short-haul flights, there’s a lot of carbon to be saved, as is being proven in other European countries.
The political solution
Ekua: if you’re not already convinced, let me share an example from the freedom struggles of colonised people of Africa. We need to learn the lessons of the past if we are going to make any headway into the future. When Europe was forced to withdraw from the west of Africa the damage they did to the infrastructure of countries is legendary. The removal of every lightbulb from government offices, of every blueprint to the cities, burning the maps to the sewage network or road traffic management systems. But the one that really burns are the bribes that were paid by one well known German luxury car manufacturer to win the contract to provide fleets of buses to a country without roads. On the condition that the country ripped up its existing rail network. Check out Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”.
Let’s not under-develop the north. Or Wales and Scotland for that matter.
More people are joining the Green Party because of our new commitment, why don’t you?
For more about the Greens4HS2 group: https://hs2.green
