As chairman of the BRB Beeching was deeply involved in any negotiations with the unions, and both they and the press associated events on the railway with him, as these screenshots of news reports surrounding the October 1962 strike show:
The Annual Reports for the period are very informative although there were obviously changes in the presentation between 1962 and 1963. The 1962 Report covered all of the activities of the British Transport Commission (BTC) in its final year. The 1963 Report was solely about the British Railways Board.
It is often forgotten that Dr Beeching's first challenge was to dismantle the BTC and prepare the rail industry for a future under the Transport Act 1962, before actually getting on with the job of re-shaping BR.
It is also often forgotten that the railway workshops had been under separate regional control within British Railways and there was very little by way of centralised strategy or management from 'Derby' or an equivalent.
The workshops were brought together just at the time when steam locomotive manufacture had ceased and heavy overhaul was winding down. The rush of diesel locomotive and DMU construction under the Modernisation Plan was also nearing completion and the overall numbers of both wagons and hauled coaching stock were reducing rapidly. But the number and spread of workshops still reflected pre-nationalisation (and even pre-grouping) needs. So a major contraction in workshops was both inevitable and long overdue.
Annual reports in those days helpfully give a lot of details of the work of the various industry negotiating bodies and industrial relations generally. Much of the focus in 1962 in particular was about pay. The Chairman of the BTC, Dr Beeching, had made an offer to the unions of a 3% rise. This was not accepted and the unions took the matter to the Prime Minister. [So, 'dashing off to "Number 10" is nothing new.]
Further discussions about implementing the 'Guillebaud Report' took place during the summer, with a further increase of 6% agreed in November. I am not aware of any serious suggestions that Dr Beeching was not fully engaged in this process, albeit reportedly in consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other ministers.
Entirely separately the NUR and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions called a one-day strike on 3 October "as a protest against the closing of branch lines, withdrawal of services and the closure of railway workshops" (as illustrated in the quote above). The newspaper report suggesting that Dr B was refusing to talk seems somewhat hyperbolic.
The level of staff turnover in 1962 was amazing. From around 500,000 railway staff at the start of 1962, nearly 80,000 left but almost 53,000 were recruited.
In 1963 (publication year of the Reshaping Report) there were no major strikes reported. Although 67,000 BR staff left, over 30,000 were still recruited. The number of staff made
compulsorily redundant was actually quite small.
Meanwhile, the debt mountain continued to grow. The transition from the BTC to a smaller BR makes the figures slightly confusing but in 1962 there was an accumulated debt
just since 1956 of £600,000,000 with interest due at 5-6.75%p.a. with a further £82,500,000 landing in the 'begging bowl' in six tranches during the second half of 1962 to cover the pay increases and continuing haemorrhaging of traffic.
Desperate times!
Given how this discussion has gone, I'd suggest you look at
this from the Railways Archive. It's Beeching explaining his views on transport planning overall, not just the railways, in early 1965 (so after the election the Tories lost). You might be surprised.
Thank you very much for this link.
