Union's demand "never again" eleven years after Tebay

The commemoration will take place on Sunday 15th February at the Tebay memorial site just to the south of Tebay village off the A685 at 12:00.

The underlying causes of the tragedy were the chaos of fragmentation that followed rail privatisation and the lack of compulsory secondary protection at Tebay on the West Coast main line in Cumbria that morning in 2004.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said that the union has continued to question why the long-promised secondary protection devices are still taking so long to introduce.

“Tebay was not simply an accident despite what some have attempted to claim. The events of that night came about as a direct result of the privatisation and fragmentation of our railways. Those dangers still exist on the railway today and RMT continues the fight for proper protection systems to be introduced right across the network.

“Eleven years after Tebay, we still have a mess of contractors, subcontractors and a host of labour-only agencies – often using zero hour contracts in a race to the bottom. That’s a breeding ground for over-riding core safety considerations.

“It also means there is no consistent application of safety standards and no central line of command and communication which in turn means we are constantly running risks that could be eliminated if the fragmentation was dealt with once and for all by bringing all works in-house,” he said.

He said that Network Rail had brought rail maintenance back in-house for reasons of safety and efficiency and it should finish that job and bring renewals work back in-house too.

“We should remember again this weekend those who were killed and injured at Tebay but we should also pledge to fight on to end the ludicrous set-up that caused the disaster,” he said.

Mick Cash pointed out that the death of a track worker at Saxilby in 2012 whilst working for contractor Sky Blue had shone a spotlight on the dangers inherent in the current working environment of track workers on Britain's railways and that a spate of runaways over the past year since the last Tebay commemoration shows that lessons are still not being learnt.

"Those ever present dangers are compounded by the use of contractors and agencies and the growth of zero-hour contacts and casualisation in this safety critical environment,” he said.

ENDS