Beeching

[RichW1]

I think it's less to do with political persuasion and more of that nasty word 'economics' where the government of the day would have privatised because they saw no way out of the mess the railways were in and knew that to reverse fortunes would take even more money over a longer time period and I think that scared them. Privatisation was seen as a way to get cash injected into the system whilst simultaneously producing a winfall for treasury coffers in the short term. I'm not saying I agree with it, just that I think it was broadly the way it was.

I had a look at that rail documentary from the early 1990's on youtube yesterday 'Trouble on the Line' and much as I loved BR, my god the railways were a mess. You could argue they have their faults now, of course you could and they certainly do (being too damn slow is one of my complaints) but we have a much improved system and many new trains (more needed obviously) as well as station improvements beyond my wildest dreams in BR days. There's a lot to smile about but a lot still to do.

Beeching annoys the hell out of me because of the capacity constraints now placed on the system because of those cuts. Whilst we should criticise him (after all he saved peanuts with the culling of the lines and services) it should also be remembered BR was cutting services too. The biggest error I feel wasn't only Beeching, it was the attitude of subsequent governments on rail that failed to invest in signalling and electrification to the necessary coverage or standard. This has left us with a unique system in Europe, stuck with 125mph broadly diesel running and no scope for faster services also due to capacity constraints as there's not enough track!! Passing loops and platform numbers have disappeared, track lifted which is completely insane. Now we have a mountain to climb and the last 10 years or so has only been the start. I think we do well with what we have but I'm looking forward to the future investment promised and already going in.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I'm not so sure about that these days. Labour went ahead and part privatized Air Traffic Control despite opposition of the unions. The unions don't have as much influence in the Labour party as they used to and it's strange that they even still support Labour when many of their socialist principles have been abandoned.

You certainly have made your point well on this matter, especially with regard to the final point.

 

[exile]

Trade Unions and Socialism are only distantly related. The job of a trade union official is to get the best deal for their members. If their members are bank executives, senior civil servants or university professors, that means getting more money for people who are already better off than the majority. Trade Unions have also rarely shown much concern for the unemployed who are not their members - but then, why should they? They're not political parties.

On the other hand, the Unions helped to found the Labour Party to represent union interests in Parliament. Ever since the 1st Labour government of 1924, Labour has had to juggle this against the wider national interest and their non-trade unionist voters.

If Labour were in power today they'd be trying to enforce cuts against the opposition of trade unions. I have a feeling some senior people in the Labour Party are quite glad they lost last year.

 

[Greenback]

It was said before the 2010 Election that no party really wanted to win. The economic problems could well ensure that any government will be unelectable agin by the time of the next election.
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I think it's less to do with political persuasion and more of that nasty word 'economics' where the government of the day would have privatised because they saw no way out of the mess the railways were in and knew that to reverse fortunes would take even more money over a longer time period and I think that scared them. Privatisation was seen as a way to get cash injected into the system whilst simultaneously producing a winfall for treasury coffers in the short term. I'm not saying I agree with it, just that I think it was broadly the way it was.

I had a look at that rail documentary from the early 1990's on youtube yesterday 'Trouble on the Line' and much as I loved BR, my god the railways were a mess. You could argue they have their faults now, of course you could and they certainly do (being too damn slow is one of my complaints) but we have a much improved system and many new trains (more needed obviously) as well as station improvements beyond my wildest dreams in BR days. There's a lot to smile about but a lot still to do.

I think that there was a real and strong desire to get the rail system out of government control. Partly this was due to ideology, and partly because it was still felt in some circles that rail was in decline, and private companies would be able to close and rationalise lines without the government being blamed.

The argument that privatisation has led to loads of new trains and station imporvements is put forward frequently. My problem with it is that it may be true, but there's now ay of knowing what would have happened had BR been allowed to continue, and received the same level of support that now pours into the industry.

BR had many plans for new rolling stock and improvement schemes, all of which were abandoned once they were put on notice that privatisation was coming. This would definitely have been after the 1992 election, but I suspect that BR management were privately told to prepare for privatisation before that. The privatisation process itself consumed several years when there were no new train orders and hardly nay investment at all, yet where billions were being spent on preparing the sell off.

So to say that privatisation was better than keeping BR, or that keeping BR would have been better than privatisation is a bit pointless, as it can't be proved either way. Who knows what sort of stock we would have running around now under BR - mark V's, mark VI's, Pacer replacements? We can't know, we can only imagine!

 

[Batman]

I still think if BR plc had been floated on the FTSE in about 1986 it would have worked.

Lets look at another nationalised industry from the same era.

In the early 80's, BT (which had only recently been freed from the control of the post office) was losing massive amounts of money and its infrastructure was hopelessly out of date. The reason the government privatised it was because they wanted to modernise the telephone network without spending huge amounts of public money doing so. The theory was that if an unprofitable nationalised industry was privatised, the public and private investors would buy shares to finance the modernisation of the network which in time would make it profitable again. The investors (who in many cases were ordinary members of the public) get a return on their investment and the public get better quality public services at no extra cost to the taz payer. Plus people get the feeling that they, and not the govdernment own the services they use and that they are in a small way contrabuting towards their improvement. And their is still public acountability with plc's, becuase if people don't like how they company is being run, they can simply vote the management out at the next AGM.

That explination is in very simplictic terms, but it's the basic philosophy behind Thatcherism and popular capitalism. It worked for other industires, so I can't so why it couldn't have worked for BR as well.

 

[Zoe]

That explination is in very simplictic terms, but it's the basic philosophy behind Thatcherism and popular capitalism. It worked for other industires, so I can't so why it couldn't have worked for BR as well.

Considering the cost of utility bills these days I'm not sure it worked well in the long term. As I say, the issue with BR would have been finding people to invest in something that was not certain to be profitable. The franchise based system avoided this as unprofitable franchises were paid subsidies and the profitable franchises were paid premia. There would also still have to have been track access charges.
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You certainly have made your point well on this matter, especially with regard to the final point.

The point is that the Labour party now is very different to the party they used to be and as Tom Harris said, it's quite possible that Labour would have privatized even if the Tories had not done. At the end of the day all of the major parties support the free market so I don't think the old BR would have survived even with Labour in power.

 

[Batman]

Considering the cost of utility bills these days I'm not sure it worked well in the long term. As I say, the issue with BR would have been finding people to invest in something that was not certain to be profitable. The franchise based system avoided this as unprofitable franchises were paid subsidies and the profitable franchises were paid premia. There would also still have to have been track access charges.
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The point is that the Labour party now is very different to the party they used to be and as Tom Harris said, it's quite possible that Labour would have privatized even if the Tories had not done. At the end of the day all of the major parties support the free market so I don't think the old BR would have survived even with Labour in power.

I understand how you've arrived at that point, but I very much doubt New Labour would have privatised BR. There is a big difference between air traffic control and the railways. I've read Tony Blair's book and in it he said that back in the mid-90's he saw the railways as a privatisation too far, but when New Labour were elected he saw rail privatisation as a fact of life and somthing they were going to have to make the most of.

It also worth remembering thet in New Labour, new life for Britain (Labour's 1997 election manifesto), they made a plege to stop any further process being made in the rail privatisation process. Unfortunatly for them the process had already been complaited. Railtrack was floated on the London stock exchange in 1996 and the contracts for the last franchise (Scotrail) were signed just two weeks before polling day in 1997. So the tories only just got away with it.

 

[Zoe]

I understand how you've arrived at that point, but I very much doubt New Labour would have privatised BR. There is a big difference between air traffic control and the railways. I've read Tony Blair's book and in it he said that back in the mid-90's he saw the railways as a privatisation too far, but when New Labour were elected he saw rail privatisation as a fact of life and somthing they were going to have to make the most of.

Did you see the quote from Tom Harris though? This is a quote from a former Labour DfT minister. At 2004 at the Labour party conference there was a motion passed to renatonalize the railways but Gordon Brown overruled it. Labour could have elected to not renew franchises when they reached the end of term and many franchises did during their 13 years of power but they just retendered the franchises.

 

[Batman]

Did you see the quote from Tom Harris though? This is a quote from a former Labour DfT minister. At 2004 at the Labour party conference there was a motion passed to renatonalize the railways but Gordon Brown overruled it. Labour could have elected to not renew franchises when they reached the end of term and many franchises did during their 13 years of power but they just retendered the franchises.

Yeah, and they had good political reasons for doing that. Re-nationalisation would have made the Labour party look like they'd gone back to the state they were in under Kinnock in the 80's. The tories (regardless of the fact that they were in the political wilderness at the time), would have made dogs dinner of Tony Blair if he'd done that.

 

[Morgsie]

They, Labour, introduced and passed the Railways Act 2005 which abolished the SRA and transferred functions to the DfT (Franchises) and the ORR as well as the Devolved regions.

 

[kennethw]

here's an interesting page with some views on Beeching, Marples etc http:///www.bilderberg.org/railways.htm. Note the post re Yatton & I would challenge the claim that no preserved railway has ever provided any commercial service. What about the Ffestiniog & Swanage?

and another quote from see url at end of post

Pre-war policies were forcing the railways into bankruptcy. The government's wartime policies ensured the insolvency of railways. Worse still, this had been forecast by senior Ministers and civil servants in 1940.

B.R. began life with 1941 prices and 1948 costs, unlike all other industry. Whilst B.R. was unable to obtain the limited raw materials authorised in Government's Economic Plans, road transport - year after year, was allowed to exceed the limits that they had been given. Hence, they soon had a modern post-war fleet, whilst B.R. had to lumber on with war worn vintage rolling stock.

B.R. was actually directed not to overtake wartime arrears of track renewal, so that they were not finally cleared until nine years after the war ended! On top of this, Whitehall theorists & politicians implemented post-war laws & policies which bankrupted B.R., and would have bankrupted any industry. A court of law decided rail charges, delaying increases for over 12 years! The so called "subsidy" began as an interest bearing loan to "compensate" for prices being held, by Government and their appointees, up to 41 points below the inflation rate, whilst BR's suppliers were uninhibited in their price increases.

No other industry - not even other nationalised industries - had their prices controlled by a court of law. In recent years, Ministers criticised B.R. for not making profits when it was their own legislation that made this impossible!

Government policies ensured B.R. would be loss suffering; by keeping fares below the inflation rate so as to please the electorate, and by losing freight to road through an archaic government designed rates system.
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above urlhttp://www.timmonet.co.uk/html/beeching.htm

 

[yorksrob]

I had a look at that rail documentary from the early 1990's on youtube yesterday 'Trouble on the Line' and much as I loved BR, my god the railways were a mess.

That's not the impression I got from the documentary at all really. To me it seemed to show that the railway knew what needed to be done and was more than capable of delivering it.

What it did show was a very poor quality of Government. Note that only one of the commentators argued for full privatisation and Corelli Barnet, whilst being a thought provoking historian was also the one person on the documentary who had no experience in the railway industry.

 

[exile]

here's an interesting page with some views on Beeching, Marples etc http:///www.bilderberg.org/railways.htm. Note the post re Yatton & I would challenge the claim that no preserved railway has ever provided any commercial service. What about the Ffestiniog & Swanage?

and another quote from see url at end of post

Pre-war policies were forcing the railways into bankruptcy. The government's wartime policies ensured the insolvency of railways. Worse still, this had been forecast by senior Ministers and civil servants in 1940.

B.R. began life with 1941 prices and 1948 costs, unlike all other industry. Whilst B.R. was unable to obtain the limited raw materials authorised in Government's Economic Plans, road transport - year after year, was allowed to exceed the limits that they had been given. Hence, they soon had a modern post-war fleet, whilst B.R. had to lumber on with war worn vintage rolling stock.

B.R. was actually directed not to overtake wartime arrears of track renewal, so that they were not finally cleared until nine years after the war ended! On top of this, Whitehall theorists & politicians implemented post-war laws & policies which bankrupted B.R., and would have bankrupted any industry. A court of law decided rail charges, delaying increases for over 12 years! The so called "subsidy" began as an interest bearing loan to "compensate" for prices being held, by Government and their appointees, up to 41 points below the inflation rate, whilst BR's suppliers were uninhibited in their price increases.

No other industry - not even other nationalised industries - had their prices controlled by a court of law. In recent years, Ministers criticised B.R. for not making profits when it was their own legislation that made this impossible!

Government policies ensured B.R. would be loss suffering; by keeping fares below the inflation rate so as to please the electorate, and by losing freight to road through an archaic government designed rates system.
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above urlhttp://www.timmonet.co.uk/html/beeching.htm

I'm afraid that doesn't hold water really. Had passenger fares been allowed to increase the traffic, particularly commuter, would have been driven onto buses and cars even faster. There's more mileage in the points about freight, but by the time of the Beeching report the old price controls had been abolished but every single type of freight flow was making big losses, even coal, a fact that came as a shock to most people who assumed that it was passenger traffic that was the source of the losses.

It's hard to imagine how British railways could have single-handedly avoided the general decline of rail transport in advanced economies.

 

[kennethw]

The law stepped in to declare that Ken Livingstone's cutting of fares for London Transport was unlawful, despite the increase in passenger numbers resulting, and leading to RT buses due for withdrawal to be reperived.

Certainly he railways were all but nationalised in name when the Second World War broke out, part of their profits went to aid the war effort and there were arrears of maintenance and they were nationalised

 

[RichW1]

Labour were full of crap on the railways. They may have started the WCML upgrade (what a fiasco that turned out to be), they may also have pumped money in, yet, after all that, in 13 years......not 1 high speed line when they were sloshing around in cash, not one plan even at the point of construction when they left office. What a waste.

I should point out here I am politically agnostic and make my mind up on pragmatism not the colour of the party flag. Labour on the railways...hot air, no action that made a real difference whilst Europe kept pumping out the high speed lines. That's just a fact. Harsh one, and utterly gutting, but a fact none-the-less. The plan now has yes been taken over from Labour but all this work should already have been done. Now in the most bizarre twist of fashion...the conservatives with railways (who I hated and watch 'Trouble On The Line' to see why, as if we don't know already) look like they're doing more now than any party for over 100 years! They're pro rail and their transport policy screams it even if it's not all perfect. Crazy world we live in but I welcome the change!

 

[Zoe]

They're pro rail and their transport policy screams it even if it's not all perfect. Crazy world we live in but I welcome the change!

HS2 and GWML electrification had already been announced before the Tories took over. What exactly are the Tories doing to benefit rail now that Labour wouldn't have done?

 

[RichW1]

They're putting in the money and more importantly the policy behind it and backing lots of new projects. They're backing rail. Labour talked about it. I agree HS2 and electrification had been announced but too late in the day for my vote. They had 13 years and money to spend and they didn't even get to the implementation stage or even a couple years before the implementation stage. When they left office it was still all on paper. Yet in Europe, they're pro rail too, but they had dozens of high-speed sections under construction over the same period. Not a good record for Labour. Maybe they'll come back again in the future with a little bit more action and less talk! When you have 13 years and billions to spend, not to have 1 railway through the planning process and ready to go is poor by any measure.

 

[Morgsie]

Thameslink DELAYED
Wheres the 1'200 coaches?

 

[RichW1]

Thameslink is delayed but it is happening and some of it is for technical reasons. The 1200 coaches Thameslink is part of but I grant you, that is delayed. However, look at Great Western electrification (didn't have to fund it but are), Crossrail - under construction, HS2 - prep work under way and will be funded I have no doubt as the tranche of funding post 2018 to replace Crossrail annual spend. East-West rail, I hear there's support for this in CP4, further guage enhancements for freight CP4, electrification to the northwest - funded. Further funding for London Overground extensions and northern line extension looking good. ECML improvement works, funded.

All in all look at CP4 as well as what's under way now and you have the makings of a government that has never been so pro rail for over 100 years! Labour may have started some of those projects but 13 years too late I'm afraid! It shouldn't have taken this long to get this stuff under way. Also, given the downturn, the present party could have cancelled funding for many of the projects both now and in CP4 but they haven't. They've decided to spend and any over-run if not technical will be largely spending constraints in the spending round. I'd rather it was managed over a longer period and delivered than not deliverred at all as was the case with Labour until the last minute.

 

[Zoe]

However, look at Great Western electrification (didn't have to fund it but are)

But cut back to Cardiff.

 

[RichW1]

Agreed, but I'll bet that decision may be turned around but for now I agree. That's the bad part. At least it's happening though as far as Cardiff. The biggest screw up this government has already made is IEP...just give it up, it's technically crap. I do worry about the trains we'll see delivered. But on balance it's all towards positive and I haven't been able to clearly see that for my whole life! I don't agree with doing at the expense of airport expansion and road building though. Still, rail deserves it's go of spending what there is on transport.

 

[Zoe]

I don't agree with doing at the expense of airport expansion and road building though. Still, rail deserves it's go of spending what there is on transport.

The issue here is that rail is sustainable transport, road and air are not. So modal shift to rail is clearly going to be the better than more air/road capacity.

 

[RichW1]

No argument with that here. Trouble is the expansion of air travel isn't coming from domestic use, it's coming from international flights because of business. You halt that type of expansion at your economic peril. There is no competition with air from Asia and the US. We all want a greener planet but you do that in collaboration with others not by standing alone and cutting your economy off through unpleasant air travel experiences. If we want to grow our economy we need to expand airports to welcome in the world on business as we're too small to go alone anyway.

As for raods, the southeast is poorly served by motorways (unlike the north!) For all the moaning of northern transport they have a far superior road system to the southeast that has M25 and fingers of motorways radiating out of it. The southeast I would have thought would have some and only some, areas of dense networks like the netherlands or Belgium but it doesn't. But let's say I agree with building no more roads, if I though that, it doesn't excuse all the potholes and poor quality road surfaces that are on our motorways and A roads. Even if you don't agree with expansion, maintaining what you have to a high 21st century standard is just polite!! : )

 

[Loggie]

Unfortunately, retail and business parks still seem to be planned and constructed without any consideration of public transport links. I think that the message hasn't fully got through to people in positions of power who make the decisions.[/QUOTE]

West oxfordshire district council is planning a development of 1600 houses close to the old Fairford branch trackbed, but forty minutes by car to the nearest present-day station. The A40 is a five-mile car park from 0645 until after 0900.
Rather than close the freight-only stub that served Witney in 1970, it should have been returned to passenger-carrying status. But how often do governments do anything visionary? Beeching was employed to itemise the cuts that central government required - whilst the Conservatives had traditionally been anti-rail (they denationalised road transport, but not rail in 1952), the labour members just as enthusiastically trooped into the Aye lobby to vote it through - in those days large towns and cities were the future. The countryside and small towns were for aristocrats and rural dinosaurs.

 

[LE Greys]

No argument with that here. Trouble is the expansion of air travel isn't coming from domestic use, it's coming from international flights because of business. You halt that type of expansion at your economic peril. There is no competition with air from Asia and the US. We all want a greener planet but you do that in collaboration with others not by standing alone and cutting your economy off through unpleasant air travel experiences. If we want to grow our economy we need to expand airports to welcome in the world on business as we're too small to go alone anyway.

As for raods, the southeast is poorly served by motorways (unlike the north!) For all the moaning of northern transport they have a far superior road system to the southeast that has M25 and fingers of motorways radiating out of it. The southeast I would have thought would have some and only some, areas of dense networks like the netherlands or Belgium but it doesn't. But let's say I agree with building no more roads, if I though that, it doesn't excuse all the potholes and poor quality road surfaces that are on our motorways and A roads. Even if you don't agree with expansion, maintaining what you have to a high 21st century standard is just polite!!

More the Midlands, really. The North-East has no motorway link to London at all, nor does Felixstowe. The M25 is of course the only bit of London's four-Ringway system that was completed to motorway standards, and the radial roads were supposed to go right into London - with the M1 finishing at Marble Arch! Whether it would have worked or not is debatable, but I'm very glad it didn't happen. Upgrading the A1 to full motorway standard from Apex Corner to the Tyne Tunnel might be a good thing, though.

As for the airlines, short-haul flights have a disproportionately high emissions cost, because they use smaller aircraft with a much shorter cruise. Taking off and landing uses a lot of fuel. Reducing short-haul flights would offset the growth of long-haul flights quite effectively.

 

[stanley T]

There are swings of dogma and economic fashion which override political parties. When the Tories came back to power in the early 50s they retained most of the nationalisations done by the previous Labour government.

Any operational efficiencies from privatisation have been outweighed by the bureaucracy, work for lawyers and accountants, and the short termism of short contracts, and the separation of stock and infrastructure. The only argument for privatisation was that it would have been politically possible to get the Treasury to agree to longer term funding which with a nationalised industry would always be at the mercy of annual budgets. Since the demise of Railtrack we do actually have a semi-nationalised system again, without actually being able to say so, and the DfT is back to micromanaging again. We have got a semi-decent system, the fares are too high (but ridership is strong anyway) but with poor productivity and poor value for high levels of subsidy.

It would have been better to go down the route used for water privatisation - local monopolies tightly regulated. Water rates have gone up, but big investments were needed which were forthcoming and off the state's balance sheet.

You probably do need a certain scale to run infrastructure efficiently, so we would be back to the big four (probably big six or seven: LNWR, GWR, Southern, LNER, Midland, Scotrail or whatever they were called).

Freight privatisation has been a success, however.

 

[Zoe]

More the Midlands, really. The North-East has no motorway link to London at all

In a few years time there will be a route from London to the Gasteshead via the M1 and A1(M) that will all be motorway except the short section from Leeming to Barton. Even this section was going to be upgraded to motorway but was cancelled by the Tories. Baldock to Alconbury most likely won't be upgraded to motorway as this would be expensive and alternatives exist via the M1 and M11. Peterborough to Blyth also most likely won't be upgraded to motorway all the remaining roundabouts on this section have now been replaced by grade separated junctions and this has improved the current dual carriageway and may well be all that is needed as again there is an alternative route via the M1.
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It would have been better to go down the route used for water privatisation - local monopolies tightly regulated.

Isn't that exactly what we have with a few exceptions? On many routes there is no competition, some fares are regulated and the franchises are strictly specified by the DfT.

 

[LE Greys]

In a few years time there will be a route from London to the Gasteshead via the M1 and A1(M) that will all be motorway except the short section from Leeming to Barton. Even this section was going to be upgraded to motorway but was cancelled by the Tories. Baldock to Alconbury most likely won't be upgraded to motorway as this would be expensive and alternatives exist via the M1 and M11. Peterborough to Blyth also most likely won't be upgraded to motorway all the remaining roundabouts on this section have now been replaced by grade separated junctions and this has improved the current dual carriageway and may well be all that is needed as again there is an alternative route via the M1.

So the Great North Road still won't be finished.

Isn't that exactly what we have with a few exceptions? On many routes there is no competition, some fares are regulated and the franchises are strictly specified by the DfT.

Well that's mostly the fault of Beeching as well. By cutting out a lot of parallel routes and because of all the redrawing of regional boundaries, the network of interweaving and competing lines disappeared. Attempts to have competition on the same line only led to path-blocking and inefficiency, meaning it was ultimately bad for passengers. Still, Birmingham is now demonstrating that inter-route competition can work.

 

[Zoe]

So the Great North Road still won't be finished.

What needs to be finished? It's a dual carriageway from Buckden to Morpeth with no roundabouts and there are some motorway sections. South of Alconbury there is an alternative available via the M11. The M1 is also bypasses the Peterborough to Blyth section and also Redhouse to Darrington so as I said other than the short section from Leeming to Barton there will be a motorway route from London to Newcastle.

 

[Batman]

Agreed, but I'll bet that decision may be turned around but for now I agree. That's the bad part. At least it's happening though as far as Cardiff. The biggest screw up this government has already made is IEP...just give it up, it's technically crap. I do worry about the trains we'll see delivered. But on balance it's all towards positive and I haven't been able to clearly see that for my whole life! I don't agree with doing at the expense of airport expansion and road building though. Still, rail deserves it's go of spending what there is on transport.

There appears to be no co-ordinated approach to what the government is doing with regard to IEP.

Thats why I believe electrifying the Midland mainline to Shefiled should take priority over electrifying the Great Western mainline to Cardiff.
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What needs to be finished? It's a dual carriageway from Buckden to Morpeth with no roundabouts and there are some motorway sections. South of Alconbury there is an alternative available via the M11. The M1 is also bypasses the Peterborough to Blyth section and also Redhouse to Darrington so as I said other than the short section from Leeming to Barton there will be a motorway route from London to Newcastle.

The government's next big road transport priority on the M1/1 corridor will be the widening of the M1 from 3 to 4 lanes between junctions 21a and 23a.

I think the plans also involve closing the Leicester Forrest East services, adding a 5th lane between junctions 21 and 21a and redesigning junction 21 so that traffic can flow freely between the M1 and the M69.

If that goes ahead they should also add a 4th lane between junctions 24 and 25 to create a 4 lane motorway running through the heart of the East Midlands.