Weren't the 90's known as a period of strong economic growth? This was when the railway went private.
Absolutely, but Beeching and all the Industrial unrest, the 3 day week, the oil crisis was in the 60's and 70's into the 80's when the UK was known as the 'poor/ sick man of Europe' when inflation etc was so out of control, the UK had to introduce statutory control over price increases.
De-nationalisation first started back I believe in the late 40's/early 50's with British Road Services went private, followed by not in any particular order eg British Coal, BL, British Steel, GPO, ICL, British Ports Authority and so on over the decades till it was Railways time. It was clear that the government's polices weren't going to .or could afford to continuously fund out of taxpayers money an highly inefficient and with massive industrial unrest nationalised industries forever. The growing pension bill alone in the nationalised industries was becoming unaffordable back in the 70's let alone the enormous capital requirements necessary to modernise our nationalised infrastructure. Each nationalise industry had it's militant union leader, eg the car industry was Red Robbo who caused more wild cat strikes over nothing, an almost daily TV news item in the Midlands when I was growing up. Not help by failures of management and a complete lack of spare cash to do anything. all of which contributed to the breakup of the monopolies which crippled the UK Industrial base and eventually lead to more and more offshoring
