I caught a fair chunk of the Transport Debate from Conference on Wednesday morning, and generally I found it impressive. But, there are two points I’d like to explore.
First, at least two speakers appeared to claim that government support for the railways has increased a thousand-fold since the days of British Rail. Now, I’m quite happy to accept that there has been a significant increase under privatisation. I also realise that calculating the overall level of support is not easy given the byzantine complexity of the relationship between the various public and private sector entities involved.
But the estimates I have seen tend to suggest that support to BR in the 1980s and ’90s varied between £800m and £2,000m (the lower figure when the economy was buoyant, the higher during recession). If we take the lower figure, and apply this thousand-fold increase we come to a figure of, erm, £800,000,000,000 – which seems a little improbable! Can somebody please provide the evidence to support this “thousand-fold” claim?
Secondly, and irritatingly, if we are going to ‘have a go’ at dear old Richard Beeching, can we at least get our facts right? The Beeching Report – I have a copy; how many of the speakers who referred to the Good Doctor have even read it I wonder? – was published in 1963, and the immediate closure programme followed in 1964-65 (a few took effect in very early 1966).
So was it really appropriate for Lib Dem transport spokesman Norman Baker to blame Dr B for the closure of Uckfield-Lewes, which actually closed in 1969? (Beeching had recommended the closure of a whole network of routes in East Sussex – most were subsequently retained. The decision not to include Lewes in that reprieve was taken long after Dr B’s departure from BR).
Lib Dem MP Martin Horwood described the Beeching Report as a “significant move in the wrong direction”. In what ways Martin? The withdrawal from unremunerative business? The development of key inter-city routes? Containerisation? Of course there were mistakes in the Beeching Report. We lost some facilities which should have been retained, but there’s also a good case to be made that he should have been more determined in recognising that there was no future in certain areas of traffic.
Even stranger was Derek Mann’s (from Pendle) claim that Dr B had closed the Colne-Skipton route, a line which closed in 1970 and wasn’t even included in the Beeching list of closures! In his report, Beeching had recommended retaining this route; subsequent railway managers decided to close it, and nearly 40 years later up pops a Lib Dem heaping the blame on Dr B!
Our policy paper on transport was an important feature of this year’s conference, and rail quite rightly forms a major component. But if we are to be taken seriously can we ensure that speakers’ financial statements are robust, and avoid the temptation to display our ignorance by indulging in naive and ill-informed Beeching-bashing?
* Gwyn Griffiths has been a Liberal Democrat councillor in Crewe for 25 years, and worked for 20 years in the train planning function of British Rail (and assorted successors!).
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6 Comments
A very fair point Gwyn. Yes we need to take care in our labelling of events, if only to audit our own analysis and keep it grounded in reality.
The thing about Beeching that I remember (I was coming to polutical awareness at the time) is that he destroyed the confidence in rail transport as such. Nobody (at least in the glare of publicity) did a comparable re-evaluation to see what was the result of the cuts and what would be the lessons to learn about future rail deployments. The assumption from the late 1960’s onwards seems to have been ‘Beeching recommended cuts so if in doubt, cut some more and blame Beeching’.
This looks from the outside to be a typical piece of consultant blowback – the customer knows what it wants and uses the consultants report as an excuse to justify its subsequent actions even if they don’t actually match up with the recommendations. (I have been in the consultants game myself and one of the tricks is to spot what the customer is trying to ‘frame’ as an answer and decise what to do about it).
One of lines Beeching never (I believe)recommended for closure was the Oxford-to Cambridge line via Bletchley and Bedford. In fact there was considerable investment in this route in the late 1960’s, including building the flyover at Bletchely over the LNER main line. Having completed this investment in about 1969 (I think), BR then axed the passenger route just as Milton Keynes New City was designated.
And Yes Beeching was blamed.
Shocker – a LD talks sense on Dr Beeching. A pleasure to see!
You are right to correct the facts.
However the challenge presented today by global warming means that we need a public transport system that is a lot more competitive with private transport.
Beeching knew nothing about that of course, but he unwittingly left a legacy of making this more difficult 40 years later.
Thatcher also deserves to be blamed as well, and she had no excuse as we knew about global warming by then.
Tim
Thank you
Geoffrey
I’m not sure that Beeching has left the legacy you imply (of a system compromised in its ability to respond to the challenges of global warming).
The bulk of the Beeching closures were actually glaringly obvious. To have retained trains pottering about in rural Speyside or North Cornwall carrying a handful of passengers would have contributed to global warming !!!
I was in the hall for the start of this debate and am pretty sure I heard one of the early speakers say that the level of subsidy had gone up from 1000 million under BR to 1 billion now, a 1000 fold increase (sic)! It seems that there are some who still cling to the old definition of a billion as a million million.
Crewegwyn – the real tragedy of Beeching is that the routes were not retained and are now lost for ever.