Tony Donaghey interviewed by Nick Mitchell

Oral history interview with Tony Donaghey, conducted and recorded by Nick Mitchell in London on 18 June 2018. Duration: 1 hr. 1 min. 20 sec. Education; start of railway career, station worker, guard at Marylebone; early union involvement, applying to same Euston guard role as his mentor Asquith Xavier, removing application, racism issues, origins of Race Relations Act, guard at St Pancras; [00:08:45] trade union experience, local representative, pay issue with stationmaster, union activist, dealing with variety of issues, elected to NUR executive committee, alternating guard role at St Pancras and four union executive mandates; [00:13:55] personal views on state of British Railways after 1939-1945 Second World War; nationalisation, modernisation, limited investment capability, praising railway staff accomplishment, dieselisation, Advanced Passenger Train (APT); [00:20:45] privatisation; initial reaction, role of the RMT in fighting privatisation, protecting workers’ rights, negotiations with British Railways Board (BRB), culture shock, problems with contesting government action; [00:27:30] developing new procedures; 1956 machinery of negotiation discarded, new procedures with individual companies to cope with fragmentation, negotiating with people who had little railway knowledge; [00:32:30] back as a guard at St Pancras; working for the new Midland Main Line (MML), company councillor, negotiating revised terms and conditions; [00:35:30] adverse effects on staffing; shortage of train drivers, inequalities in pay between drivers and other grades; [00:41:00] other issues; railway pension scheme; [00:42:20] further RMT service; support for RMT 3-year executive committee terms, President of the RMT, work as President; [00:48:10] example of negotiations; preserving travel facilities, discussions with Railtrack Management and Department for Transport (DfT); [00:54:30] personal views on current railway system (2018); [00:55:50] personal reflections on privatisation; sadness, retrograde step, disadvantages outweigh advantages [01:01:20] [end of interview]

One of over 150 oral history recordings made as part of the Britain’s Railways All Change (BRAC) archive project. BRAC was set-up to cover gaps in documenting the railway privatisation process in the United Kingdom, between 1994 and 1997, when the government-owned British Rail was dismantled into over 100 privately-owned companies. The interviews capture the recollections of people involved in the planning and implementation of the privatisation process, the management of change and running the railway during privatisation.