Best and worst Prime Ministers for the railways since 1945

[thenorthern]

Carrying on from the Margaret Thatcher Thread I was wondering who would you say has been the best post war prime minister for the railways and who has been the worst? From looking at history here are some major events that happened.

• Clement Atlee - Nationalisation of British Rail and separation of railway operation in Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Winston Churchill - Modernisation plan, completion of Woodhead electrification.
• Anthony Eden - Nothing new really happened but AWS was introduced.
• Harold Macmillan - Beeching Axe, separation of British Rail from British Transport Commission, last tramway other than Blackpool closes.
• Alec Douglas-Home - Again not much happened but Beeching Axe continued.
• Harold Wilson (1st) - End of steam and some more line closures.
• Edward Heath - First APT train built, West Coast Maine Line electrification complete, introduction of TOPS.
• Harold Wilson (2nd) - Highly successful Intercity 125 is introduced.
• James Callaghan - Further introduction of Intercity 125 trains however rail passengers continue to fall.
• Margaret Thatcher - Sell off of non core railway assets such as hotels and BREL, sectorisation is introduced, Intercity APT-P introduced although it fails, passenger numbers fall to their lowest in over 100 years, Tyne and Wear Metro opens.
• John Major - Railways are privertised, East Coast Main Line is electrified, Channel Tunnel is opened, passenger numbers continue to increase, Manchester Metrolink opens as the first new tramway system.
• Tony Blair - West Coast Main Line upgrade completed, collapse of Railtrack and beginning of Network Rail.
• Gordon Brown - Collapse of East Coast, opening of HS1, announcement of Great Western Electrification.
• David Cameron - Announcement of HS2 and West Coast Main Line franchise fiasco.
• Theresa May - Not much has happened.

From this personally I think the worst one for rail transport was Margaret Thatcher but I am not sure who the best one was personally. What does everyone else think?

 

[duncanp]

It was Margaret Thatcher who authorised the electrification of the East Coast Main Line between Hitchin and Leeds/Edinburgh in 1984.

She also rejected the most extreme options in the Serpell Report, and refused consent for British Rails' application to close the Settle - Carlisle line.

So whatever else you might think of her, she was not as bad for railways as some people make out.

 

[Harpers Tate]

I seem to recall seeing somewhere, that more railway miles were sanctioned for closure by Harold Wilson's ministers (including Barbara Castle) than by any other transport minister before or since, despite a manifesto pledge to halt the closure programme.

Wikipedia says: "The General election in October 1964 returned the Labour Government 1964–1970 under Prime Minister Harold Wilson after 13 years of Conservative government. During the election campaign Labour had promised to halt rail closures if elected, but they quickly backtracked, and later oversaw some of the most controversial closures."

I'd say that puts him in the running for winning the "worst" title.

 

[coppercapped]

Clement Attlee by a country mile

Not for nationalising the railways per se but for deciding on a structure for the nationalised transport businesses which made it impossible for them to achieve the aim of a integrated internal transport system. None of the components of the British Transport Commission made any attempt to work with the others and the BTC was structurally incapable of enforcing its wishes. In the railway's case the Railway Executive also ignored all the developments in modern power and transmission systems which had been made during the war and essentially threw away 10 years of development which could have been possible between the Ivatt diesels 10000 and 10001 and 1957 when the first of the Pilot Scheme diesels was delivered.

Attlee also squandered the Marshall Aid money in hanging on to dreams of Empire rather than investing it in the country's infrastructure on the same lines as the German Kreditanstalt für Wideraufbau.

As a result the decline of the railway system in the UK was a foregone conclusion - it suffered not only from a lack of clarity as to its purpose, but no funds were made available for it to recover from the effects of the war.

All the subsequent Governments have had to deal with the consequences of these two big errors.

 

[bramling]

Carrying on from the Margaret Thatcher Thread I was wondering who would you say has been the best post war prime minister for the railways and who has been the worst? From looking at history here are some major events that happened.

• Clement Atlee - Nationalisation of British Rail and separation of railway operation in Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Winston Churchill - Modernisation plan, completion of Woodhead electrification.
• Anthony Eden - Nothing new really happened but AWS was introduced.
• Harold Macmillan - Beeching Axe, separation of British Rail from British Transport Commission, last tramway other than Blackpool closes.
• Alec Douglas-Home - Again not much happened but Beeching Axe continued.
• Harold Wilson (1st) - End of steam and some more line closures.
• Edward Heath - First APT train built, West Coast Maine Line electrification complete, introduction of TOPS.
• Harold Wilson (2nd) - Highly successful Intercity 125 is introduced.
• James Callaghan - Further introduction of Intercity 125 trains however rail passengers continue to fall.
• Margaret Thatcher - Sell off of non core railway assets such as hotels and BREL, sectorisation is introduced, Intercity APT-P introduced although it fails, passenger numbers fall to their lowest in over 100 years, Tyne and Wear Metro opens.
• John Major - Railways are privertised, East Coast Main Line is electrified, Channel Tunnel is opened, passenger numbers continue to increase, Manchester Metrolink opens as the first new tramway system.
• Tony Blair - West Coast Main Line upgrade completed, collapse of Railtrack and beginning of Network Rail.
• Gordon Brown - Collapse of East Coast, opening of HS1, announcement of Great Western Electrification.
• David Cameron - Announcement of HS2 and West Coast Main Line franchise fiasco.
• Theresa May - Not much has happened.

From this personally I think the worst one for rail transport was Margaret Thatcher but I am not sure who the best one was personally. What does everyone else think?

Worst has got to be John Major - for his shambolic privatisation.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Worst has got to be John Major - for his shambolic privatisation.

Railways hardly feature as item 1 in any PM red box - but the disaster of John Major (see previous comments) , as far as rail policy is concerned , though to be fair , it was the work of his subordinates and in particular some individuals in the Treasury. What little money they got for "sales" has been lost many , many times over.

Wilson hardly covered himself in glory though..

If we had Peter Parker in charge in Major's day - there may well have been a more spirited defence of BR (and the many achievements in troubled economic times)

 

[bramling]

Railways hardly feature as item 1 in any PM red box - but the disaster of John Major (see previous comments) , as far as rail policy is concerned , though to be fair , it was the work of his subordinates and in particular some individuals in the Treasury. What little money they got for "sales" has been lost many , many times over.

Wilson hardly covered himself in glory though..

If we had Peter Parker in charge in Major's day - there may well have been a more spirited defence of BR (and the many achievements in troubled economic times)

For me the worst aspect of the privatisation was the way everything was carved up, and the fragmented industry completely losing hold of the bigger picture. It's never come back since lost. The manifestation of all this was of course the sorry list of Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield, Potters Bar. Thankfully things have come on a little since then.

Actually, I should have added Tony Blair (plus Gordon Brown) for doing the same wrecking act to London Underground. The only saving grace here is that the shambolic PPP all but collapsed of its own accord, and for the best part of the last decade things have been gradually being put back together again, albeit within the limits of affordability and against the difficulty of so much corporate knowledge and experience having been trashed. SSR resignalling project been going on for approaching a decade and a half - not a single millimetre of resignalled railway yet.

 

[thenorthern]

With Harold Wilson and James Callaghan its important to remember they introduced the InterCity 125 which I think has been the most successful train introduced over the past 50 years although at the time it was only a stop gap with the APT delays so yes it was a great thing but an accidental great thing.

For Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher I think the APT project was a major failure as millions were spent on it but it never really worked.

 

[Darandio]

I still think you are a bit harsh on Thatcher, given you attribute the channel tunnel opening to John Major's name in the first post, yet he had nothing to do with it.

Regardless of how it was funded, the project was signed for on her watch.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I still think you are a bit harsh on Thatcher, given you attribute the channel tunnel opening to John Major's name in the first post, yet he had nothing to do with it.

Regardless of how it was funded, the project was signed for on her watch.

Very true -and a good point. She was not totally against BR in reality - despite having no doubt travelled on the Dartford services in the early 1950's, and her beloved father Alfred , being removed as a Grantham councillor / Mayor (?) by a railwayman.

 

[RichmondCommu]

With Harold Wilson and James Callaghan its important to remember they introduced the InterCity 125 which I think has been the most successful train introduced over the past 50 years although at the time it was only a stop gap with the APT delays so yes it was a great thing but an accidental great thing.

For Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher I think the APT project was a major failure as millions were spent on it but it never really worked.

The long term failure of the APT project cannot be blamed on the Prime Minister of the day, in fact the people to blame were the engineers.

 

[thenorthern]

The long term failure of the APT project cannot be blamed on the Prime Minister of the day, in fact the people to blame were the engineers.

To a certain extent yes but the APT was a flagship project of British Rail and as a Statutory corporation the government should have pushed harder given how important the APT was.

 

[RichmondCommu]

To a certain extent yes but the APT was a flagship project of British Rail and as a Statutory corporation the government should have pushed harder given how important the APT was.

Perhaps BR picked the wrong flagship project? In your opinion how much more money should the Government spent on the APT project?

 

[DarloRich]

Much as i detest the evil Thatcher her impact on the railways was negligible. She was by no means the worst PM in that sphere. I might hand that title to Major and his botched privitisation scheme.

it is as if there was a meeting and all the rational privatisation proposals were thrown out and the least practical, most fragmented & most complicated one selected. THEN it was presented to some perverted genius to make it even more of a mess!

Clement Attlee by a country mile

Not for nationalising the railways per se but for deciding on a structure for the nationalised transport businesses which made it impossible for them to achieve the aim of a integrated internal transport system. None of the components of the British Transport Commission made any attempt to work with the others and the BTC was structurally incapable of enforcing its wishes. In the railway's case the Railway Executive also ignored all the developments in modern power and transmission systems which had been made during the war and essentially threw away 10 years of development which could have been possible between the Ivatt diesels 10000 and 10001 and 1957 when the first of the Pilot Scheme diesels was delivered.

Attlee also squandered the Marshall Aid money in hanging on to dreams of Empire rather than investing it in the country's infrastructure on the same lines as the German Kreditanstalt für Wideraufbau.

As a result the decline of the railway system in the UK was a foregone conclusion - it suffered not only from a lack of clarity as to its purpose, but no funds were made available for it to recover from the effects of the war.

All the subsequent Governments have had to deal with the consequences of these two big errors.

But surely the "big 4" were, financially, in pieces by that time with a vast backlog of
infrastructure maintenance and repair work needed after the war, in a position of trying to face changing industrial and economic realities and badly needing new locomotives and rolling stock. Something had to change surely.

While nationalisation ( or perhaps more pertinently the operation of the nationalised body) may not have been handled well was there any other realistic option at the time?

 

[Senex]

But surely the "big 4" were, financially, in pieces by that time with a vast backlog of infrastructure maintenance and repair work needed after the war, in a position of trying to face changing industrial and economic realities and badly needing new locomotives and rolling stock. Something had to change surely.

While nationalisation (or perhaps more pertinently the operation of the nationalised body) may not have been handled well was there any other realistic option at the time?

Yes, they were. They had, inevitably, been appallingly run down during the war to meet the needs of the war-time state, and they were really due massive compensation for that. All four companies had their recovery plans. But nationalisation was the chosen course of the 1945 government. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think you'd find a good many people who would question the way it was done, the organisation that was imposed and the sort of people put in charge at the very top, the failure even under state ownership to provide the necessary investment for recovery (using some of the American aid money, as was done in countries like France and Germany), and the failure to deal with legal problems like the common carrier obligation. I leave aside the arguments about motive power investment and so on, which we have all seen discussed many times before, though one does have to wonder about time and money spent on new designs of steam locos etc. My personal view is that it was the way in which 1945 Labour nationalised and not the fact of nationalisation that helped to give nationalisation such a dirty name on the centre and right of British politics for many years after.

 

[thenorthern]

Perhaps BR picked the wrong flagship project? In your opinion how much more money should the Government spent on the APT project?

I wouldn't say that it was money with the APT it was more a lack of political will and poor industrial relations.

For example with the APT-E I think I remember ASLEF blacklisted the train as it only had 1 seat in the cab. Also at the time the APT-E was built in conjunction with another state owned company at the time British Leyland who were known for regularly having strikes. Not the best thing when working on a flagship project.

I think as well given how much money British Rail was losing at the time it wasn't necessarily spending too much money it was not spending it wisely.

 

[coppercapped]

Yes, they were. They had, inevitably, been appallingly run down during the war to meet the needs of the war-time state, and they were really due massive compensation for that. All four companies had their recovery plans. But nationalisation was the chosen course of the 1945 government. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think you'd find a good many people who would question the way it was done, the organisation that was imposed and the sort of people put in charge at the very top, the failure even under state ownership to provide the necessary investment for recovery (using some of the American aid money, as was done in countries like France and Germany), and the failure to deal with legal problems like the common carrier obligation. I leave aside the arguments about motive power investment and so on, which we have all seen discussed many times before, though one does have to wonder about time and money spent on new designs of steam locos etc. My personal view is that it was the way in which 1945 Labour nationalised and not the fact of nationalisation that helped to give nationalisation such a dirty name on the centre and right of British politics for many years after.

Thank you - this is exactly the point I was trying to make in Post #4 earlier. Every one of the Governments subsequent to Attlee's have had to cope with consequences of the botched way inland transport was nationalised in 1947 which explains many of the actions taken by the later Governments.

You mention American aid money - by this I presume you mean the Marshall Plan of 1948 which was indeed a grant. Between 1948 and 1951 Britain received over $3 billion in aid in then dollars being the single biggest recipient, receiving twice as much as West Germany. Nuff said!

However, to complete the picture, a couple of years earlier in 1946 the Attlee government had to go cap-in-hand to the Americans for an emergency loan of $3.75 billion (in then dollars); the Canadians chipped in a further billion. The reasons for this could fill a book but all of them were to do with the war and its financing and also that the UK had effectively lost all its export markets in the rubble of war and had no access to foreign exchange. Nominally this loan was to cover post-war overseas expenditures, but as the Government could only have afforded all its nationalisations and welfare reforms if it withdrew from all of its overseas commitments immediately, essentially nationalisation and welfare. i.e., the NHS and Social Security, were funded by the Americans. The final repayment of this loan was made in 2006 when Ed Balls was Chancellor.

I stand by my point that Attlee was the Prime Minister who had the most malign effect on the railways in Britain than any of the others.

 

[DarloRich]

The other view, of course, was that some of that aid was used to create institutions of state that we all rely on like the NHS.

The Germans had little choice but to invest the money in the infrastructure of their country. It had been destroyed by the RAF & USAAF and did not exist in a meaningful sense. Their railway, road and canal network has been pummeled, their industrial cities (particularly in the Rhur) devastated, many towns and cities were smoldering ruins, public utilities were wrecked, millions were without homes, millions more displaced, food distribution was in serious trouble and a the economy was utterly destroyed

We on the other hand tried to play the great power. Perhaps that is understandable considering we, as part of the big 3, had just defeated the Nazis. We were a world power, weren't we? That delusion ( borne by both Labour AND Tory alike) cost us. OUR economy was bankrupted by keeping the nazis at bay while the Americans decided which side they were on and the country was on its knees come the finish of the war.

We also tried to stand as the banker for the sterling area ( and thus support the trading empire and British industry) so lots of that money went on trying to build up gold and foreign (aka dollar) currency reserves. That money was needed as we had to keep up food imports (even then rationing continued until 1954!) and imports of the building materials, especially timber, needed to rebuild the war damage in the country. It worked to begin with as nations, especially empire nations, had little choice but to buy British but it didn't last long once the USA and Europe moved back to a non military industrial base.

However this "plan" ultimately failed and a devastated and financially exhausted Britain could not defend the international value of the pound to maintain confidence in the system leading to the dollar becoming the prime international currency and meaning all of those attempts to support the value of the pound and by extension the empire were wasted.

Despite the mistakes I simply don't agree that the use of this funding, in Britain, was as simple as you suggest. It could have been used differently but our position was different to that of Germany. They had little choice in their investment plans. We did. Yes the money could ( perhaps should) have gone on industrial modernization and infrastructure improvement but a shiny new factory is of little use if your work force is starving, is without a home and doesn't have the money to buy the products produced.

 

[Senex]

Yes the money could ( perhaps should) have gone on industrial modernization and infrastructure improvement but a shiny new factory is of little use if your work force is starving, is without a home and doesn't have the money to buy the products produced.

If any country's workforce was starving, was without homes, and didn't have the money to buy the goods produced, it was Germany's. Yet that country chose to use the money from the US to re-establish its industry and infrastructure alongside alleviating the worst of the suffering for the people, and so we saw Ludwig Erhard's economic miracle. France too, very badly damaged that nothing like as totally devastated as Germany, using the US money to rebuild infrastructure and modernise. Britain had both the loan and the Marshall Aid and could and should have chosen to use much of that to rebuild and modernise instead of pursuing its imperial dreams, but it preferred to pay for the nationalisations and the welfare state and leave the consequences of failing to modernise to shew themselves only a very few years later. The damage done has never been properly put right -- just look at the dreadful British productivity figures compared even with France.

France too chose to continue playing the great power role, wanting to play the part of one of four victorious powers against Germany, wanting to be an atomic power, and of course having their own bitter end of empire. But despite all the needs for reform we hear of now, they seem to have had a rather better time of it over much of the post-war period that Britain has.

And Germany shews us just how important that US money was after the war. The three sectors of the western allies formed the BRD which got the money and soared away economically, obviously without any more great power pretensions. The Soviet sector not only got no money but was actually made to pay reparations and was physically stripped of large portions of its industrial plant by the victorious Russians, so that any form of recovery began much later than in the west and with far fewer advantages. The consequences were very obvious in 1990.

As for the end results, many of us would argue that the sorts of welfare and health provision you find in France and Germany today are probably rather better than ours, and to some people (myself included) the health services seem to have been better at least since the 1960s.

How different might things have been if the money needed to modernise the railways had been made available in the later 1940s, either in line with the company plans or (even) for a state railway set up with a decent organisational and viable structure. And if money had gone into some modern roads at that stage, as well as into some industrial modernisation.

 

[DarloRich]

If any country's workforce was starving, was without homes, and didn't have the money to buy the goods produced, it was Germany's. Yet that country chose to use the money from the US to re-establish its industry and infrastructure alongside alleviating the worst of the suffering for the people, and so we saw Ludwig Erhard's economic miracle. France too, very badly damaged that nothing like as totally devastated as Germany, using the US money to rebuild infrastructure and modernise. Britain had both the loan and the Marshall Aid and could and should have chosen to use much of that to rebuild and modernise instead of pursuing its imperial dreams, but it preferred to pay for the nationalisations and the welfare state and leave the consequences of failing to modernise to shew themselves only a very few years later. The damage done has never been properly put right -- just look at the dreadful British productivity figures compared even with France.

We had infrastructure that could be cobbled together to bodge things up. Germany didnt. They had little choice in deciding how to spend the Marshall aid.

We didn't just spend the money on the welfare state and nationaisation. We spent a great deal of it on trying to prop up the empire and suggest we were a front rank power. Look at our commitments east of Suez at that time. Both Labour and Tory ( and especially Tory) parliamentarians played that game for too long.

Focus on propping up the Sterling zone and the performance, economically, of that zone v the dollar zone was disastrous. We had no foreign reserves and as the demand of the European countries for American goods and resources increased, the prices of US raw materials rose and British import program turned out to be more expensive than originally expected. A Lack of coal for a hard winter caused problems and a cut in timber imports led to a housing problem. The only option was to pay more to import more. This put pressure on the pound

Britain then went through a Sterling crisis. We had declared that the pound was convertible into any currency but this went badly wrong when Sterling-holders wanted to exchange into $US via the Bank of England as the value of the pound crashed. This rapidly drained the British Dollar reserves making imports more expensive etc etc.

France too chose to continue playing the great power role, wanting to play the part of one of four victorious powers against Germany, wanting to be an atomic power, and of course having their own bitter end of empire. But despite all the needs for reform we hear of now, they seem to have had a rather better time of it over much of the post-war period that Britain has.

They had less of an empire to protect and less of a reliance on that empire for trade. They also didn't try to prop up a franc zone like we did. Also I hardly think the french reversal from empire is something we should look up to.

And Germany shews us just how important that US money was after the war. The three sectors of the western allies formed the BRD which got the money and soared away economically, obviously without any more great power pretensions. The Soviet sector not only got no money but was actually made to pay reparations and was physically stripped of large portions of its industrial plant by the victorious Russians, so that any form of recovery began much later than in the west and with far fewer advantages. The consequences were very obvious in 1990.

Agreed - I simply state Western Germany had no choice but to invest in infrastructure. The country was destroyed. They had no empire, they had no overseas defense commitments ( in fact they were de armed - much like Japan) and they had no Mark zone to support.

As for the end results, many of us would argue that the sorts of welfare and health provision you find in France and Germany today are probably rather better than ours, and to some people (myself included) the health services seem to have been better at least since the 1960s.

Arguable. I know if i am ill the NHS will fix me free of charge at the point of use. We should rejoice and protect that service.

How different might things have been if the money needed to modernise the railways had been made available in the later 1940s, either in line with the company plans or (even) for a state railway set up with a decent organisational and viable structure. And if money had gone into some modern roads at that stage, as well as into some industrial modernisation.

Maybe - but we got the NHS and that is something I am very proud of and something I feel is worth more than any road or railway.

 

[RichmondCommu]

I wouldn't say that it was money with the APT it was more a lack of political will and poor industrial relations.

For example with the APT-E I think I remember ASLEF blacklisted the train as it only had 1 seat in the cab. Also at the time the APT-E was built in conjunction with another state owned company at the time British Leyland who were known for regularly having strikes. Not the best thing when working on a flagship project.

I think as well given how much money British Rail was losing at the time it wasn't necessarily spending too much money it was not spending it wisely.

How is any of the above the fault of the Government? All those decisions were made by BR.

 

[coppercapped]

The other view, of course, was that some of that aid was used to create institutions of state that we all rely on like the NHS.

<Big Snip>

Despite the mistakes I simply don't agree that the use of this funding, in Britain, was as simple as you suggest. It could have been used differently but our position was different to that of Germany. They had little choice in their investment plans. We did. Yes the money could ( perhaps should) have gone on industrial modernization and infrastructure improvement but a shiny new factory is of little use if your work force is starving, is without a home and doesn't have the money to buy the products produced.

Your argument sounds very persuasive, but sometimes a sanity check is called for. If any country was really down on its knees it was Germany - its cities were largely rubble, transport was in many areas back to donkey and cart, it had just taken in some 11 million refugees ('Displaced persons') from the East who also needed to be housed and fed, much of its industry was in ruins, electricity was sometimes available. (I make no judgement as to whether the German people as a whole deserved such a fate - but simply to emphasise the different starting points of recovery.

And yet the German recovery was faster and more complete than ours - as indeed it was in the other countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy. The German secret weapon was Ludwig Erhard, the Economics Minister. On 20 June 1948, the Deutsche Mark was introduced and Erhard abolished the price-fixing and production controls that had been put in place by the military administration. Rationing disappeared overnight, I repeat overnight, and the German economy started its 10 year Wirtschaftswunder that saw GDP double.

Arguably the continental health and social welfare systems give better results than ours. In the three countries in which I have lived and worked - Germany, Belgium and France - the health care and social security systems seemed light years ahead of ours in speed of treatment and thoroughness of the investigations. Health care in these countries is supplied through 'Mutuels', roughly equivalent to a co-operative, and the only involvement of the state is by legislation that the citizens have to be insured. The choice of the Mutuel is up to you and the premiums are similar to our NI contributions and that part of the general tax take that goes to the NHS. Depending on your economic circumstances they are free at point of use - in Belgium and France if your income is above a set level you may have to pay the doctor but you can take the receipt round to the Mutuel immediately afterwards and be re-imbursed. Or you save up the receipts and send them in at the end of the month. The cost is about the same as here but the customer experience is much less, well, NHS-like.

Attlee and his cohorts were economic illiterates and had no vision except of a collectivist future. They completely failed to understand the importance of incentives in economic development.

 

[DarloRich]

I don't disagree that Germany was in a much worse state than we were come the end of the war AND that their recovery bordered on the miraculous. They had little choice about how the Marshall Aid was used.

However, we had choices or at least the appearance of choice. We chose the Empire.We also had differing economic challenges to face and a desire ( expressed by all senior politicians) to preserve and revive the empire. They felt the empire would save us economically ( and it did to start with) not understanding the empire was gone and that we should have reversed out of that mechanism asap after 1945 and followed the American advice about getting closer to Europe.

I also disagree that the money went, solely, on nationlaisation or welfare. It didn't. It went on all manner of things associated with pretending to be major power in the world , as a force in the world economy and in trying to regain our post WWI role as the banker to the world with the key world currency. German had none of that. They had one choice: rebuild.

PS - I suspect the Conservtiaves of the time under Churchill would have taken a similar approach to the empire and sterling. Were they not as economically illiterate for believing the same things? ( I accept they would not have spent vast tranches of that money on welfare or nationalisation but would, surely, have tried to prop up sterling )

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Tremendous comments here , I suspect that the knackered but worthy railway system was expected by the populace to bounce back to good health in a few months , this did not happen for very many reasons, but those on the Southern got Pullman service back fairly quickly. A token gesture.

Attlee et al were so keen to build the "New Jerusalem" that massive priority went to social house building which sucked in imports of Canadian timber etc - and in the dire meltdown of 1946 -47 and beyond to some extent we were feeding large swathes of Europe and freezing to death at home. (almost)

I agree , the Empire had ceased to be an economic benefit (though their commitment to WW2 in some respects was outstanding , and a drag elesewhere in defending it)

Fascinating era is Austerity Britain - real contact with , is disapearing by the month.

 

[muddythefish]

Carrying on from the Margaret Thatcher Thread I was wondering who would you say has been the best post war prime minister for the railways and who has been the worst? From looking at history here are some major events that happened.

• Clement Atlee - Nationalisation of British Rail and separation of railway operation in Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Winston Churchill - Modernisation plan, completion of Woodhead electrification.
• Anthony Eden - Nothing new really happened but AWS was introduced.
• Harold Macmillan - Beeching Axe, separation of British Rail from British Transport Commission, last tramway other than Blackpool closes.
• Alec Douglas-Home - Again not much happened but Beeching Axe continued.
• Harold Wilson (1st) - End of steam and some more line closures.
• Edward Heath - First APT train built, West Coast Maine Line electrification complete, introduction of TOPS.
• Harold Wilson (2nd) - Highly successful Intercity 125 is introduced.
• James Callaghan - Further introduction of Intercity 125 trains however rail passengers continue to fall.
• Margaret Thatcher - Sell off of non core railway assets such as hotels and BREL, sectorisation is introduced, Intercity APT-P introduced although it fails, passenger numbers fall to their lowest in over 100 years, Tyne and Wear Metro opens.
• John Major - Railways are privertised, East Coast Main Line is electrified, Channel Tunnel is opened, passenger numbers continue to increase, Manchester Metrolink opens as the first new tramway system.
• Tony Blair - West Coast Main Line upgrade completed, collapse of Railtrack and beginning of Network Rail.
• Gordon Brown - Collapse of East Coast, opening of HS1, announcement of Great Western Electrification.
• David Cameron - Announcement of HS2 and West Coast Main Line franchise fiasco.
• Theresa May - Not much has happened.

From this personally I think the worst one for rail transport was Margaret Thatcher but I am not sure who the best one was personally. What does everyone else think?

Alot of those railway events had nothing to do with the prime ministers.

Worst of the lot undoubtedly was Thatcher.

She famously told the British Railways Board, a group of experienced career railwaymen, that "if any of them were any good they would be in private industry", which perfectly summed up up myopic, ideological view of the world.

Plus she went out of her way never to travel by train.

Appalling women who has done lasting damage to this country.

Second worst was Major for his botched privatisation, though to be fair he wanted to re-create the prewar GWR, LMS which would have been better than the franchise mess we got.

Third worst was the Conservative prime minister who appointed the criminal Ernest Marples as transport minister leading to the Beeching debacle that decimated the railway network.

All of them in that list can be accused of under-funding BR and seeing the railways as a national asset to be invested in and improved, and not a drain on the public purse, unlike the roads

 

[RichmondCommu]

Alot of those railway events had nothing to do with the prime ministers.

Worst of the lot undoubtedly was Thatcher.

She famously told the British Railways Board, a group of experienced career railwaymen, that "if any of them were any good they would be in private industry", which perfectly summed up up myopic, ideological view of the world.

Plus she went out of her way never to travel by train.

Appalling women who has done lasting damage to this country.

Was Margaret Thatcher not in power when the ECML electrification project was authorised, along with the GEML, the line to Kings Lynn, the West Midlands Cross City electrification and the West Yorkshire electrification?

 

[XDM]

The evil Attlee has much to answer for his collectivisation of much of our economy. He certainly damaged innovation on the railways. Nationalisation of the railways could have been done far less bureaucratically so that it did not stifle & punish enterprise. Even The NHS was botched with the consultants mouths stuffed with gold to get them to half participate.

 

[thenorthern]

How is any of the above the fault of the Government? All those decisions were made by BR.

British Rail was a division of the Government and although the day to day running was by the British Rail Board given the importance of the APT you would think that the government would have made sure it worked.

 

[RichmondCommu]

British Rail was a division of the Government and although the day to day running was by the British Rail Board given the importance of the APT you would think that the government would have made sure it worked.

How many engineers would have been based in Whitehall?

 

[muddythefish]

Was Margaret Thatcher not in power when the ECML electrification project was authorised, along with the GEML, the line to Kings Lynn, the West Midlands Cross City electrification and the West Yorkshire electrification?

As you said, all those decisions were "made by BR". Thatcher hated the railways.