Thu 17 Oct 2019, 13:36 PM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member
Channel 4 recently did a documentary charting the rise and fall of Britain’s oldest travel agents. The collapse of Thomas Cook resulted in the loss of 21000 jobs worldwide, with 9000 of them in the UK. It also resulted in the largest peacetime repatriation of people in British history as 150,000 holiday makers, in 18 countries, had to be brought home at a cost to the Government of £100 million, using 100 aircraft.
To keep afloat, the company had needed a loan of £200million.The banks were unwilling to support the company because it had debts of over £1 billion. Thomas Cook had little in the way of assets as most of the planes they used were leased. There are many factors for the collapse of this 178 year-old company. Staff at a protest meeting drew attention to the salaries of the CEOs past and present. They chanted, “fat cat bosses have taken our money!” One commented that Thomas Cook was a sheep to be sheared, but in the process the sheep was killed.
The programme highlighted the lack of protections that British workers have. Unite the Union are having to take legal action over unpaid wages and accrued holiday pay. Many of the staff feel that they were left in the dark about the real situation and the initial shock turned to anger. They also feel that if the Government can bail out the banks then they can bail out Thomas Cook, which used to be a publicly-owned company anyway, before Thatcher privatised it.
Analysts have traced the company’s problems to major acquisitions of other High Street travel agents just prior to the financial crash; it was described by some as an analogue company in a digital age, priced out by low-cost carriers and on- line booking companies. External factors included the terrorist attack in Tunisia, the 15% fall in the value of sterling and a good summer in the UK, all given as some of the reasons for Thomas Cook’s demise.
The Tories have refused to give financial support to the business. As supporters of capitalism, they regard business failure as part and parcel of the system.
What should the attitude be for a Labour Government? Thomas Cook developed alongside the railways and was originally state-owned as the holiday travel arm of British Rail. With the development of commercial aviation the packaged holiday was born. The Tories have always flogged off profitable parts of the nationalised industries and Thatcher returned Thomas Cook to private ownership. There’s a strong historical case for renationalization alongside the public ownership of the Britain’s transport system.
Some argue that the days of package holidays are over. The economist Will Hutton argued that there was still a market for specialised package holidays. Hutton’s view has been born out by events. Since this programme, another travel company has expressed an interest in taking over some of the TC shops on the High Street. In my view, it’s not just desirable, but essential that holiday travel is an arm of the publicly-owned transport system as a whole.
