 | 'Asked about Labour's own past commitment to public ownership of rail and the decision to reverse that policy, Dr Reid said: 'I would not accept that Labour has made a U-turn.' Pressed on his party's strong opposition to rail privatisation and its many pledges to bring the infrastructure back into public ownership, he repeated his denial that there had been a U-turn. 'If someone wants to have a press conference about the Labour Party's 1983 election manifesto, interesting though that may be, it is hardly relevant to the Scottish people in the next nine months.' But the timescale between Labour subscribing to a publicly-owned rail network and then accepting this reality was not 14 years but three weeks, according to the record. The then Shadow Scottish Secretary launched a series of promises in a document launched in Stirling just two months before the General Election last year, called the Covenant with Scotland. It stated: 'Labour's Covenant with Scotland sets out the pledges we make now before the General Election -with the commitment that we will carry them through in Government...We will create a publicly owned, publicly accountable railway system.' Robbie Dinwoodie in the Herald, 14 th August 1998. |  |
