THE result of the general election last week was not what we wanted, what we expected or what we worked so hard for.

It was a defeat across Britain for Labour. Although it is worth noting that while the Conservatives won England, the SNP won Scotland, Labour won Wales and the DUP won Northern Ireland, which may say something about the state of the United Kingdom.

But that doesn’t mean we give up or stop working for what we believe in. And it doesn’t mean that what we believe is wrong. On public ownership, for instance, those of us who work in the rail industry know — because we see it every day — that privatisation hasn’t worked. And we know that even Conservative voters would like to see the railway in this country brought back into public ownership.

So the question for Labour now is whether the platform on which the party stood on May 7 was too bold, as those who are close to Progress are saying, or whether it was not bold enough.

Some people in the last Labour governments — the New Labour governments from 1997 through to 2010 — were afraid of the n-word and the s-word. They didn’t like nationalisation and they didn’t want to talk about socialism.

I’m not afraid of the n-word because I believe wholeheartedly in nationalisation, in the people of this country owning and running our railways, bus services and vital public utilities, all of which are natural monopolies and which should be in the public, not the private, sector. And I’m not afraid of the s-word because I am proud to say I’m a socialist.

The aims of my trade union are quite clear and enshrined in our rule book. Aslef exists to secure the best terms and conditions for train drivers, to negotiate on behalf of our members with the train and freight operating companies, to promote a pride in the job we do, to champion equality in our industry, to provide education services for our members and to work for a fairer, more just and more equitable society.

A socialist society, that’s what we want: a Labour government committed to socialist values. And that includes bringing back into public ownership the key parts of the British economy which belong to the British people.

Britain’s railways were first nationalised in 1948 by Clement Attlee’s great reforming post-war government. Attlee, who swept to power on an avowedly socialist platform in the Labour landslide of 1945, was determined to seize the economic levers of power in this country.

He did that by bringing Britain’s strategic heavy industries, and our key public utilities, into the public sector. This was partly because the private sector had failed and partly because the Labour government led by Attlee, and which included people such as Stafford Cripps, Nye Bevan, Hugh Dalton, Ernest Bevin, and a very young Harold Wilson at the Board of Trade, had to rebuild a shattered country after WWII. It was also partly because they wanted to remake Britain as a better, fairer country: a country which worked for everyone, not just a few.

“The Labour Party is a socialist party, and proud of it.” That was what it said in its election manifesto in 1945. And a country tired not just of the deprivations of war, but of the way the Tories, and the Conservative-led national governments, had run, and ruined, the country in the 1920s and ’30s, voted overwhelmingly for that platform. Labour won 393 out of 640 seats in the House of Commons (the Tories got just 210) with 47.7 per cent of the vote. Labour had a staggering majority of 145 over all other parties.

The railways were nationalised to rebuild the network, the infrastructure and the rolling stock after the devastation caused by the Luftwaffe during nearly six years of bitter conflict. The coal industry was nationalised a year earlier, iron and steel a year later. Water, gas, electricity and the Bank of England were all brought into public ownership by a great reforming Labour government which also created the National Health Service — its enduring achievement — and the welfare state.

Nationalisation gave the government, and the people of this country, control over our national assets, the commanding heights of the economy. It ensured a co-ordinated approach to production and supply to ensure economic efficiency, survival and revival as post-war reconstruction got underway. The advantage of a nationalised rail network, as with other natural monopolies, was that central planning could help create a more organised and better co-ordinated service.

The post-war consensus meant that the Conservative governments of Winston Churchill (1951-55), Anthony Eden (1955-57), Harold Macmillan (1957-59 and 1959-63), Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64) and Edward Heath (1970-74) also believed that public ownership of key parts of the economy was best for Britain.

It was Margaret Thatcher — influenced by Sir Keith Joseph, the “voodoo economics” of Ronald Reagan (the damning verdict of his fellow Republican George Bush) and Milton Friedman’s Chicago School — who tried to turn back time.

Though ironically this arch-privateer balked at privatising the Royal Mail and the railways. In fact, when John Major brought in the Railways Act 1994, Thatcher described it as “a privatisation too far.”

When Major privatised the railway he promised three things — competition, innovation and investment. Competition, he said, would drive innovation and investment. But there is no competition: the privatised train operating companies all have protected routes, private monopolies. There is precious little innovation — the privatised train companies were against the introduction of Oyster cards — and all the investment in the industry comes from central government.

Fares have gone up, not down (we now have the highest rail fares in Europe) while trains have got more and more crowded. Overcrowding has reached the point where passengers, even those commuters in south-east England who usually vote Conservative, are calling for a return of the railways to public ownership.

I know why the train operating companies like privatisation. When they talk about “risk and reward,” they mean there is no risk — it’s all reward. But the model is broken. It doesn’t work. It’s no way to run a railway in the 21st century.

Labour said the rail franchising system “should be put in the bin” and pledged to change the law to allow a public-sector provider the opportunity to run trains. It is time to be bigger, braver and bolder than that. For the sake of passengers and taxpayers, as well as those of us who work in the rail industry, it is time to rediscover a political purpose and promise to bring the railways back into public ownership.

• Mick Whelan is general secretary of Aslef.