County Council Labour leader Peter Clarke (letters 27/5/03) is right to criticise the Tories for the  decades of underfunding and privatisation that has left the rail network in crisis. However Labour must take their share of the blame.

Labour have quite clearly failed to sort out the railways. Indeed the state of the rail network has been made worse by the privatisation of its maintenance.

Labour has also cut £300million from the Strategic Rail Authority's budget but pledged hundreds of millions of pounds on motorway widening. Train services are being cut and many of the upgrades necessary to get freight off the roads and onto the railway are being deferred. That means more traffic and more traffic jams. Exactly the opposite of what should be happening.

The answer is simple. A publicly owned railway like the world class French rail service. Peter Clarke and 76 per cent of people in polls support this.

Greens recently sought to introduce a bill to take the railways back into public ownership and re-integrate the operation and maintenance of tracks and trains. This could be funded by scrapping the government's road building plans. The profound lack of support from Labour members to this move was most interesting, given that their party was committed to a publicly-owned British Rail as recently as 1996.

Isn't it time the former Labour faithful abandon their forlorn hope that as long as they keep quiet Labour may come to its senses. The only way to get the railways renationalised is a large vote for the only major party which promotes this policy, namely the Greens.

Philip Booth, Gloucestershire Green Party.