After WW2, and with the develoment of the Cold War it was realised that the ability to mobilise the military ould be hampered by a lack of a motorway system in the UK. This can be verified by the Autobahn system in Germany which allowed the Germans to move quickly.
To state that the motorways were built simply to destroy the Railways is simply not supported by any reasonable or rational research.
It is also a fact that the ability of the "ordinary" person to afford a car, together with an increase in the number of former military lorries and ex-servicemen willing to set up road haulage firms had a vbery marked impact on the economics for many of the branch lines closed.
I see once again that despite having debunked the Beeching/Marples/Conservative myth, it is once again necessary to point out that the vast majority of branch lines were actually closed by Mrs Castle the LABOUR Transpot Minister under a LABOUR Government.
Can someone please explain why it appears to be impossible for those of a left of centre viewpoint to accept historical fact ?
Is it an intellectual thing or simply a belief that the facts are less important than a rewrite of history to fall in line with personal beliefs???
There is no need to turn this into a party political issue. It never was. The preception of the majority of people in power, whether they be politicians, civil servants, business leaders or whoever was that the railway had had its day. As has been pointed out, Labour continued with the closures.
The railways wer elargely seen as going the way of the canals; obsolete and old fashioned in the new exciting world of motrways and the personal freedom of the motor car. I can't criticise the attitude. At that time, there seemed to be limitless supplies of cheap oil, most people wanted to own a car (as has also been pointed out), and railways were seen as dirty and inefficeint.
Perhaps motorway might also have been useful for military mobilisation. I am unsur eof that, as there was defnece whit epaper in the late 1950's that formulated the policy of nuclear deterrence and a massive retaliatory nuclear strike through the new missile submarines that were planend at that stage. Defence strategy at that point was to concentrate on the nuclear forces, with conventional land forces being retained only to look after what remained of the empire. After Suez, there was also a recognition that similar rapid and large scale military actions outside of the European theatre were out of the question politically. I am, therefore, cautious about accepting that large scale military movements necessitated developmetn of the motroways in the late 1960's.
To my mind, this may have been a plan initially formulated in th eimmediate post war period, which, for whatever reason, was never implemented. I can see the sense of such an idea around the time of the Berlin airlift, for example. It's possible that the idea of massive military mobilisation on the motorway network still lingered in some minds in 1961, but official policy for some years had been the nuclear tripwire.
I strongly believe that the drive to make the railways pay their way was unacheivable, that the politicians knew this, and that they expected the rail netowrk to shrink until there was (ultimately) nothing left at all. I think also that that was the feeling of the times, and that those who supported railways were seen as eccentic and nostalgic, rather than rpogressive and forward looking. In the circumstances, one cannot blame Dr Beeching, one can only look back and say in hindsight that the decision makers of the day got it wrong, and that some of the closures that took place should not have done so.
I do not think this is a rewrite of history to support personal beliefs. It is a logical conclusion based on an objective analysis of the post war period prior to the publication of the report.
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