Howard Johnston
Fifty years ago, did no-nonsense Transport Minister Barbara Castle save Britain’s railways from collapse? In the first of a two-part examination of the 1968 Transport Act, HOWARD JOHNSTON unravels her lasting legacy
“There was no room for reflection on how the railways had been run into the floor during the Second World War, or concern that they were being suffocated by overpowering historic debts that could never be repaid.”
Has anyone ever had a proper grip on how to manage Britain’s railways properly? As we career towards the end of the second decade of the 21st century, we still remain totally at the mercy of governments and their legislation.
What can never be challenged, however, is the ongoing effect of the 1968 Transport Act, which wrote off British Rail’s massive debts, set out to create an 11,000-mile network, and (most importantly) set up the framework to subsidise loss-making lines.
It is now 50 years since previously doomed passenger routes were thrown a cash lifeline, the importance of commuter services was taken seriously, and Freightliner was hailed as the new great hope. Thanks to this second chance, all are alive and thriving.
The down side was the madcap drive to strip the network of all but its basic facilities. And when lines closed, the push to recover and sell redundant assets to improve BR’s bottom line meant that rails were irretrievably ripped up, stations demolished and their sites sold, and viaducts and bridges dynamited so quickly that there was no time for second thoughts.
In 2018, these represent serious obstacles to route reinstatements, in the shape of roads, shopping centres and industrial estates constructed on what for them was cheap land, often in the centre of towns.
Forcing through the new Transport Act legislation made the new, fiery and outspoken Transport Minister Barbara Castle an immediately recognisable national figure, and because of her we stood a chance of securing an integrated national transport policy. Subsequent events, however, means that this is as far away as ever.
Nearly half a century on from the Act (it became law on October 23 1968), it is conjecture whether we would still have any regional services at all without Barbara Castle, or an East Coast Main Line north of Newcastle, or any railway west of Plymouth or Swansea, but for the radical acceptance that the nation’s network cannot all be run at a profit.
There was so little respect for the railways that it was widely believed that once the motorway network was complete, all but the principal main lines and some essential commuter services could now be thanked for their loyal devotion to duty, and then finally laid to rest.
It may have been rough and ready, bluetinted and seriously flawed, but at least the 1968 Act was the genesis of the ‘social railway’.
Sadly, it arrived too late to rescue the London-Nottingham-Sheffield Great Central main line, the Carlisle-Edinburgh (the direct Waverley Route), Cambridge-Bedford-Oxford (East-West link), and Bristol’s suburban railway to Bath. All are sorely missed, and all are now candidates for full reopening in the unlikely event that billions of pounds of public money is found.
Despite a well-intentioned £1.7 billion (£ 27bn at today’s prices) modernisation programme initiated in the mid-1950s, by 1968 British Rail was still haemorrhaging money in ever-larger sums. Private cars were now responsible for 90% of all passenger traffic, while lorries were handling 60% of all freight.
Like its Conservative predecessor, the cashstrapped Labour government was aware that there had been a zero return on this big cash investment. Politicians from all sides were in point-scoring mood, alleging that senior railway management had grossly misused public funds.
There was so little respect for the railways that it was widely believed that once the motorway network was complete, all but the principal main lines and some essential commuter services could now be thanked for their loyal devotion to duty, and then finally laid to rest.
There was no room for reflection on how the railways had been run into the floor during the Second World War, or concern that they were being suffocated by overpowering historic debts that could never be repaid. BR Chairman Dr Richard Beeching’s The
Reshaping of British Railways report in 1963 had already advocated slashing the route mileage by 5,000 miles and closing 2,363 stations, but after five years the policy had still not been fully implemented and had only been a moderate success.
In 1965, there had been some political support for a ‘Beeching 2’ programme to reduce the network by more than half again, to just 3,000 miles.
Had this been implemented, there would have been nine principal main lines, with all Anglo-Scottish traffic routed via the West Coast, and an East Coast corridor from London only as far as Newcastle. There would have been only one service left in the whole of Wales (from Bristol to Swansea), a single Glasgow/Edinburgh service across Scotland to Aberdeen, and no trains whatsoever to Inverness, Scarborough, Barrow, Shrewsbury, Holyhead, Ely, Salisbury, Penzance and possibly even Cambridge.
These proposals were clearly not acceptable to the incumbent Labour government, and Beeching moved back to ICI in June 1965 amid reports that he had been fired.
The lead politician for the wind of change was Minister of Transport Barbara Castle (1910-2000), the doughty, highly principled, flame-haired MP for Blackburn who courted some derisory comment from the national press because she did not hold a driving licence. She was later responsible for taming road users by imposing a national 70mph speed limit, and introducing seat belts, tachographs for lorries and the breathalyser.
In her autobiography, Castle recalled: “The secret really of public life is to be a person - Winston Churchill, for instance. Women often emerge as admirable administrators but not as people. You’ve almost got to defy the public: that’s me. Take me or leave me.”
Elected to Parliament in 1945, she had been Minister for Overseas Development for a year before being moved into transport to replace Tom Fraser in December 1965. It’s a post that has been regarded with suspicion by 29 ministers since - a career can be either created or seriously damaged because all the decisions taken have such an impact on everyone’s daily life. Castle, however, relished the opportunity, and her proposed reshaping of BR set out to achieve many things:
Instead of awarding one large blanket sum of money to BR, there would now be transparent subsidies for individual routes that were considered to bring wider social and economic benefits.
The major defect in this policy was that routes would be scrutinised more closely than ever, and stripped of excess capacity that could be used for growth, such as passing loops and station facilities. In addition, the subsidy figures arrived at may have been set too high, leading to the even faster closure of lines that were out of favour.
It did, however, find some money for the reconstruction of rundown lines and stations, and rescued several important present-day inter-city routes from further decline and even possible eventual closure.
It organised co-ordinated transport
systems for major cities outside London, such as Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield. This came through the creation of Passenger Transport Executives for major cities and urban areas, allowing them a degree of freedom to take local decisions and manage their own commuter systems. Some had sadly already been savaged by ill-devised 1960s closures.
It recognised the benefits of integrating rail services with the national bus network (a policy abandoned much later by a Conservative administration).
It attempted to find a realistic way through for freight, and put Freightliner on a secure financial and investment footing. It sought to work better with the private road haulage business to avoid a duplication of services.
It envisaged a way ahead for parcels, mail, newspapers and the carriage of small consignments (this traffic was eventually almost completely lost to rail).
It had an outline vision for a Channel Tunnel to create a fixed link between the UK and mainland Europe.
It reversed the 1967 government decision to shut down most of the 1,400-mile publicly owned canals. The new act reorganised them into commercial and leisure operations.
It must be remembered that until 1968, Labour was still obsessively committed to expanding the road network, and was in no mood for easing off with its planned programme of railway closures.
The new Transport Act was passed too late to reverse the death warrants signed for over 2,000 route miles, and the additional wholesale elimination of local stations on principal routes - all in the interests of economy and freeing capacity for faster services.
In the year 1966, the most significant losses were the Bristol suburban route from Mangotsfield to Bath and the Somerset & Dorset Bath-Bournemouth line (both in the month of March), Keswick-Workington (April), Peterborough-Rugby (May), the London-Sheffield Great Central Main Line (September), and Taunton-Barnstaple (November).
1967 brought another wave of closures, notably the Derby-Manchester line through the Peak District, Colchester-Cambridge north of Sudbury and Harrogate-Northallerton (March), and Perth-Aberdeen (September).
In 1968, we witnessed the loss of the Bedford-Cambridge line ( January), Stratford-on-Avon-Gloucester (March), Keith-Dufftown-Elgin (May), and King’s Lynn-March/Dereham (September).
It had also been irrecoverably decided that the unremunerative Carlisle-Edinburgh ( Waverley) route should be scratched from the national map in January 1969.
Less visible, but nevertheless significant, was the wholesale elimination of residual freight branches - the result of the near-total loss of wagonload market to road competition over a very short time, and the general decline of the smaller ports and coal mines.
For major factories, steel plants and mechanised collieries, there was no appetite for investment in new handling facilities. And there was no money for the replacement of vacuum-braked wagons that traditionally stood around for most of the time, and which with a 40mph maximum speed got in the way of improving passenger services. So, in terms of economics, it could be argued that Castle had little more to do.
The 1966 and 1967 balance sheets are good examples of how BR was a continuing cash worry for the government, even though many of the problems were not of its making.
The UK of the mid-1960s was a story of general industrial decline, still recovering from the Second World War, with deep distrust between bosses and unions that led to unnecessary long strikes, not helped by a blanket ban on pay increases despite rising costs.
BR’s performance for 1966 (the year that the new Transport Act was being sketched out) read like a poor school report, and was described in the annual statement as “extremely disappointing”. The government responded by issuing a warning that this malaise could not continue for more than a couple more years.
It held all the cards, and repeatedly stalled on giving BR the prize it really coveted - approval to electrify the West Coast Main Line between Weaver Junction (Runcorn) and Glasgow. Although the total cost was reckoned to be just £ 50 million (£ 840m today), the Treasury wasn’t budging.
BR’s overall deficit in 1966 came out at £134.7m, far exceeding the budget of £115m. This was blamed on Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s national prices and incomes freeze, but despite this wages were somehow up and accounted for 60% of BR’s total working expenses. The total number of staff had been cut by almost 27,000 (7%) to 339,000.
Freight was continuing to fall away, but (as previously indicated) some of this was privately welcomed.
On the positive side, a total of £107m had been invested in new equipment, £ 25m had been earned from the sale of redundant land and buildings, and another £ 9m from scrapping rolling stock and other recoverable assets.
BR’s figures for 1967 were far worse. The deficit rose to £153m, which managers blamed squarely on the state of the country and on the government’s continued refusal to allow fare increases to keep abreast of increasing costs. There was a 10% fall in steel traffic and 7% in coal, and a two-month programme of organised strikes.
BR complained that the government’s reluctance to implement closures of lossmaking lines that had already been agreed was costing it an unnecessary £10m, and outstripping its efforts to save money by further reducing its staff (whose total now stood at 334,000, 180,000 down from 1961).
While there was optimism that investment in track, resignalling, Freightliner and workshop modernisation to enable faster rolling stock overhaul turnarounds would have a positive impact on the bottom line, there was also the stark warning that the elusive ‘BR moves in profit’ newspaper headline was still several years off.
So, what could Barbara Castle do? While she was working on an all-embracing new integrated transport policy, she knew she was competing with her ministerial colleagues for money.
The government also seemed unsure of its ground with the 12,447-mile network that existed on January 1 1968 (9,471 of them carrying passengers). It closed 748 miles during the year, and was still insisting that services had to be made to pay or be eliminated.
It was still following Beeching principles, and still pursing a vigorous policy of identifying duplicate routes and wreaking big economies on others. There seemed to be no difference between Labour and Conservative MPs on this one.
BR, said the government, was not fit for purpose. But although 22 service withdrawals and 25 reductions were added to the list, some were not taking place because it was proving difficult to organise replacement bus licences.
An economy gaining popularity was track-singling, and giving the treatment to long
The 1966 and 1967 balance sheets are good examples of how BR was a continuing cash worry for the government, even though many of the problems were not of its making.
sections of the Salisbury-Exeter route was almost seen as a test case. All of us are aware of the damage it has done here and elsewhere, with track replaced in favour of more frequent passing loops.
While obviously reducing the chance of fully recovering the timetable reliably in the event of a train failure (quite a common occurrence because of the decision to employ Class 42 ‘Warship’ diesel-hydraulics), the Western Region realised it had a lack of flexibility. This was despite investment in the replacement of semaphore signals with tokenless block, and upgrading manned crossings with automatic barriers.
Unconstrained by criticism, the WR went on to single long sections of the Oxford-Worcester, Princes Risborough-Aynho Junction and Swindon-Gloucester routes. This is now also regretted.
During March 1967, the government published its views on a ‘basic railway’, which superficially seemed a step in the right direction.
While the rules of the 1962 Transport Act would still be observed with relation to closures, Castle spoke of the need for wider consultation with the ‘working man’ as well as quasi-governmental organisations - Women’s Institutes, working mens clubs and associations looking after the disabled were specifically mentioned. If a major housing or industrial development was on the cards, it was suggested that the views of planning authorities should also be consulted, although as history has shown this was often not the case.
The benefits of ‘Paytrains’ calling at demanned stations (ostensibly new ‘clean’ rolling stock, but actually diesel multiple units that were ten years old and Mk 1 coaching stock that dated back to the early 1950s) were widely propagated.
As 1968 approached, steam was responsible for just 4% of passenger haulage and 23% of freight.
Barbara Castle could only work with the resources available to her, but her vision was an 11,000-mile passenger network, which is broadly what exists today. A third of this may not have survived without the flexibility of the new Transport Act.
One of the inflexibilities of Beeching was that there was no consideration whatsoever for population growth in some areas, caused by (for example) the relocation of London overspill or creating new townships. Had there been, would this have saved Cambridge-Oxford and Cambridge-Haverhill on the Eastern Region, for example?
The new Transport Act was passed too late to reverse the death warrants signed for over 2,000 route miles, and the additional wholesale elimination of local stations on principal routes - all in the interests of economy and freeing capacity for faster services.
The list of casualties in Castle’s time as Transport Minister (December 1965-April 1968) is still formidable, and is most easily assessed on a regional basis.
Beginning in the South West, no future was envisaged for the Newquay or Falmouth branches, which survive today.
Closure notices were still to be issued for Barnstaple-Ilfracombe, Taunton-Minehead, Exmouth-Honiton, and Bridport-Maiden Newton lines. Not on the hit list, but shut nevertheless, were Exeter-Tavistock-Plymouth and Paignton-Kingswear.
In the Midlands and South, High Wycombe-Bourne End was for the axe, along with Bath-Mangotsfield-Bristol, Alton-Winchester, Cheltenham-Stratford, Oxford-Witney, Birmingham-Bearley, and Rugby-Nottingham (Great Central). However, Kidderminster-Bewdley-Hartlebury was not up for closure.
In East Anglia, the Home Counties and the South East, there was still a perceived future for Shanklin-Ventnor on the Isle of Wight and Cambridge-St Ives, but not Lewes-Tunbridge Wells/Oxted, Polegate-Heathfield, Melton Mowbray-Nottingham, Bedford-Cambridge, Spalding-Boston, Kings Lynn to March, Hunstanton and Wymondham, and Lowestoft-Yarmouth. Some listed for closure have survived: Ore-Ashford, Witham-Braintree, Newmarket-Cambridge, Norwich-Sheringham, and Reedham-Great Yarmouth.
In the North West, Yorkshire and North Wales, Skipton-Colne and Penrith-Keswick weren’t slated for closure but went all the same, as did the Clayton West branch. Conversely, it was considered that Skipton-Leeds (now electrified!), Shipley-Ilkley, Preston-Ormskirk, Bury-Rawtenstall, Kirkby-Wigan, Manchester-Wigan, Oldham-Rochdale, Bangor-Caernarfon lines did not have a future, but they survived along with Leeds-Harrogate-York, the Settle-Carlisle Line, Scarborough-Hull, Barmouth-Pwllheli, Barrow-Whitehaven, and Oxenholme.
Those that didn’t last much longer included Boston-Lincoln, Firsby-Grimsby and Mablethorpe, Manchester-Buxton, the line from Kirkham & Wesham to Blackpool Central, and Haltwhistle-Alston. The electrified Sheffield-Manchester line via Woodhead would only remain open for freight.
In Scotland, the Far North Line to Wick and Thurso was part of the basic railway, but not so Dingwall-Kyle of Lochalsh or Fort William-Mallaig ( both reprieved), Dyce-Fraserburgh and Peterhead, the Moray coastal route from Keith to Elgin via Buckie, all lines to Forfar, and the Edinburgh-Carlisle Waverley Route.
Perth was to be reached from Edinburgh via the shorter route to Kinross, but this was later sacrificed to build a motorway and the hit-listed Ladybank-Perth line retained instead.
Next issue: Passenger subsidy facts and figures, the PTEs, the remarkable Freightliner growth story, parcels… and the Channel Tunnel.