Beeching cuts

The first report identified 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles (8,000 km) of railway line for closure, amounting to 55% of stations, 30% of route miles, and the loss of 67,700 British Rail jobs,[1] with an objective of stemming the large losses being incurred during a period of increasing competition from road transport and reducing the rail subsidies necessary to keep the network running.

In opposition to these cuts, the period also witnessed the beginning of a protest movement led by the Railway Development Association, whose most famous member was the poet John Betjeman.

[9] In contrast, railway traffic remained steady during the 1950s[10] but the economic situation steadily deteriorated, with labour costs rising faster than income[8][page needed][10] and fares and freight charges repeatedly frozen by the government to try to control inflation.

[19] The report starts by quoting the brief provided by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, from 1960: "First, the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects.

Beeching's secondment from ICI ended early in June 1965 after Harold Wilson's attempt to get him to produce a transport plan failed.

[31] Beeching denied this, pointing out that he had returned early to ICI as he would not have had enough time to undertake an in-depth transport study before the formal end of his secondment.

[35][failed verification] One of the last major closures was the 98-mile (158 km) Waverley Route between Carlisle, Hawick and Edinburgh in 1969; the reopening of a 35-mile section of this line was approved in 2006 and passenger services resumed in September 2015.

The report recommended closing almost all services along the coasts of north Devon, Cornwall and East Anglia aside from Norwich to Great Yarmouth.

Critics of Beeching argue that the lack of recommendations on the handling of closed railway property demonstrates that the report was short-sighted.

[35][page needed] The Ministry of Transport subsequently estimated that rail operating costs had been cut by over £100 million in the wake of the Beeching Report but that much of this had been swallowed up by increased wages.

[6][page needed] Transport minister Barbara Castle decided that some rail services, which could not pay their way but had a valuable social role, should be subsidised.

Most replacement bus services lasted less than two years before they were removed due to a lack of patronage,[46] leaving large parts of the country with no public transport.

The assumption at the time[citation needed] was that car owners would drive to the nearest railhead (which was usually the junction where the closed branch line would otherwise have taken them) and continue their journey onwards by train.

The development of the motorway network, the advent of containerisation, improvements in lorries and the economic costs of having two break-bulk points combined to make long-distance road transport a more viable alternative.

Possible changes to light railway-type operations were attacked by Beeching, who rejected all proposals for cost savings that would not make a route profitable: "Similarly, consideration of the cost figures will show that thinning out the trains, or thinning out the stations, would not make a service self-supporting even if it had no adverse effect on revenue".

[8][page needed] The Marshlink line between Ashford International and Hastings, threatened with closure in the Beeching Report, is now seen as important due to the opening of the Channel Tunnel and High Speed 1.

[citation needed] The Conservatives increased their Commons majority in the general election of 8 October 1959, their first with Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister.

[citation needed] In July 1964, Marples Ridgway and Partners Limited[52] were awarded a £4.1 million contract for the "Hendon Urban Motorway" extension of the M1,[53] in the same year that the company was taken over by the Bath and Portland Group.

[54] There was no evidence of any wrongdoing on anyone's part in this or any of the other contracts awarded to the company during his term of office, but it did lead to a sense of unease, not least within the railway sector.

In December 1960 questions were asked in the Lords about this "secret" and "under-the-counter" study group, criticising the continued withholding of the report and its recommendations.

[59] It was later suggested that Stedeford had recommended that the government should set up another body "to consider the size and pattern of the railway system required to meet current and foreseeable needs, in the light of developments and trends in other forms of transport ... and other relevant considerations".

The Act put in place measures that simplified the process of closing railways by removing the need for the pros and cons of each case to be heard in detail.

Castle published a map in 1967,[63] Network for Development, showing the railway system "stabilised" at around 11,000 route miles (17,700 km).

[65][full citation needed] After 1970, when the Conservatives were returned to power, serious thought was given to a further programme of closures, but this proved politically impossible.

[46] The report's infamous "Option A" proposed greatly increasing fares and reducing the rail network to a mere 1,630 miles (2,620 km), leaving only 22 miles (35 km) of railway in Wales (a section of the South Wales Main Line from the Severn Tunnel to Cardiff Central) and none in Somerset, Devon or Cornwall.

[66][67] Ian Hislop comments that history has been somewhat unkind to "Britain's most hated civil servant", by forgetting that Beeching proposed a much better bus service that ministers never delivered, and that in some ways he was used to do their "dirty work for them".

Hislop describes him as "a technocrat [who] wasn't open to argument to romantic notions of rural England or the warp and weft of the train in our national identity.

As well, since privatisation in the mid-1990s, there have been record levels of passengers on the railways owing to a preference to living in smaller towns and rural areas, and in turn commuting longer distances[72] (although the cause of this is disputed).

Flanders and Swann, writers and performers of satirical songs, wrote a lament for lines closed by the Beeching cuts entitled "Slow Train" (1963).

In the satirical magazine Private Eye, the "Signal Failures" column on railway issues is written under the pseudonym "Dr. B. Ching".