What would have happened to railways if Thatcher had survived?

[Sad Sprinter]

We all know Thatcher once said railway privatisation was "a privatisation too far", so what if Maggie survived the 1990 leadership election? How would that decide how BR would live through the 90s? In my view, I see two possible scenarios:

-She stays on until 1992 and wins that election, surviving until 1997. At this point, perhaps she would buckle under pressure from other members of her party to accept railway privatisation in return of their support in government.

-She loses the 1992 election and Labour win, culling railway privatisation. Whether New Labour happens or not is irrelevant, as I doubt they would care for privatisation either.

Perhaps I'm completely wrong, what do others think? Railways aside, would be interesting to see how "Old Labour" would respond to the trials of the 21st century.

 

[yorksrob]

As I understand it, Mrs T had been persuaded to include some form of railway privatisation (possibly against her better judgement) in the next manifesto before her deposition anyway. Whether we would have had the fiasco we were eventually landed with is anyone's guess.

Personally I believe that the belief in laissez-faire market economics was so ingrained in the Conservative party at the time that privatisation would have arrived at some time or other, had they continued in power.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

West and mid-Wales and the Far North of Scotland would have no railways. Most of the Settle and Carlisle would be sheep grazing land. Cornwall would just have the line from Plymouth to Penzance. Marylebone would be a coach station.

 

[yorksrob]

West and mid-Wales and the Far North of Scotland would have no railways. Most of the Settle and Carlisle would be sheep grazing land. Cornwall would just have the line from Plymouth to Penzance. Marylebone would be a coach station.

I'm not so sure. Once Serpell had been dispensed with, there didn't seem to be much appetite for a large scale closure programme.

 

[route:oxford]

We all know Thatcher once said railway privatisation was "a privatisation too far", so what if Maggie survived the 1990 leadership election? How would that decide how BR would live through the 90s?

It's a tough one, as there are so many variables. I suspect that these would have been the outcomes:-

"British Rail" would be pretty much what Network Rail is now.

Inter-City Railways would have been privatised as a single unit with the Government retaining a golden share.

Regional Railways, (including Scotrail and Network South East) would have remained in public ownership.

In order to keep borrowing off the books, all new rolling stock orders for RR would be undertaken on a full-service lease from the manufacturers.

(Not sure about freight).

 

[thenorthern]

Difficult to say with Thatcher as she always saw railway privatisation as a step too far so it would have been interesting to see what would have happened.

Personally I don't think she would have sold off the railways as it was very much as John Major idea rather than a Margaret Thatcher idea.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

That is exactly what I thought too, that privatisation wouldn't be a huge free-market sell off, but a gradual sale by sale of the business sectors. I can see Intercity becoming owned by National Express and perhaps someone like British Airways, but not completely dismantled and rebranded.

Network South East, I fear, may eventually have crumbled into a collection of companies running a group of sub-sectors. Perhaps by the time London got Ken Livingstone as Mayor, assuming in a 90s Thatcher's Britain Ken still had the opportunity to be Mayor, there would be a desire to incorporate the entirety of NSE's suburban services into TFL.

 

[yorksrob]

It's worth remembering that Mrs Thatcher took a very dim view of BA removing the Union Flag from the BA tailfin design, so one might reasonably conclude that she would have been against them being flogged off to the Spanish. Similarly, I doubt she would have had much truck with foreign state owned railway companies running British rail franchises.

 

[PeterC]

Intercity fully privatised as a unit.
Regional Railways and NSE run as concessions by private companies as is done with London Overground.
Freightliner privatised as one unit and the rest of freight as another.

 

[thenorthern]

Cecil Parkinson suggested selling off the railways but Thatcher didn't want to as she thought it was a sell off too far and in the end it never happened.

I honestly don't think Thatcher would have sold off the railways, I doubt as well she would have won the 1992 elections as well.

 

[Cambus731]

I do distinctly remember her speech in the Conference of 1990, she spoke of things they would do, and she finished by saying "Then we will tackle British Rail"
I think it is sheer speculation to guess what would have happened, although I suspect thet had she remained PM, the Tories would have lost in 1992 and if they hadn't privatised BR by then, either fully or partially, the idea may well have been dropped during their spell in oppsosition. If Labour had won in 1992, they probably would have only lasted one tern due to the crashing out of the ERM later that year. We can only speculate who would have been leading the Tories by then and whether they would have moved to re-capture the center-ground or maybe have lurched to the right. I suspect that after having been led by Thatcher for 17 years in this alternative scenario (1975-1992), they would have moved to recapture the Center-right ground and privatisation of British Rail may well have been dropped. But it is quite possible that extreme loss making lines such as Inverness to Wick/Thurso may finally have closed. And maybe the odd line like Felixstowe may well have become frieght only.

 

[gordonthemoron]

if the tories had remained in power, BR would have continued to be wound down in favour of road transportation.

Was the closure of Marylebone and moving it's services to Baker Street part of Serpell or something else?

 

[Gareth Marston]

The form of privatization that took place the splitting of a single entity into many smaller ones was the idea of some free market zealots who believed that creating lots of profit making companies was a good thing as all profit making was inherently good and lots of companies dong it would be better than one big entity. Thatcher is on record as consistently rejecting it when it was put forward for earlier privatizations. I see no reason that she would have changed her mind. Major was easily swayed as the Treasury Privatization unit got to try out its pet theory.

The ridiculous fragmentation of BR would almost certainly not happened meaning that most of BR would have remained as an entity and infrastructure costs would have remained under control with skills and Knowledge kept. I can see some moves towards InterCity first of all being sold off. I can't see line closures being on the agenda mainly as Politicians don't want the hassle of them attaching to them.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

if the tories had remained in power, BR would have continued to be wound down in favour of road transportation.

?

They did remain in power....

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Major getting in 1992 was not expected , we have paid the price for his time ever since.

The man who brayed on about the "Cones Hotline" , cancelled effectively Crossrail 1 and brought in the 1994 Railway Act. Great economical record too.

Without this prat - BR would have seen more attempts at inwards private investment - which would have been welcome really. No that I am at all biased.

 

[Busaholic]

Major getting in 1992 was not expected , we have paid the price for his time ever since.

The man who brayed on about the "Cones Hotline" , cancelled effectively Crossrail 1 and brought in the 1994 Railway Act. Great economical record too.

Without this prat - BR would have seen more attempts at inwards private investment - which would have been welcome really. No that I am at all biased.

Mr 'night in with a Currie' did turn his nose up to craving DUP support for his government, though, so I'll give him one out of ten. (grudgingly.)

 

[GusB]

Mr 'night in with a Currie' did turn his nose up to craving DUP support for his government, though, so I'll give him one out of ten. (grudgingly.)

The peas are good tonight, dear

 

[ChiefPlanner]

The peas are good tonight, dear

Spitting Images - quality - pants worn outside in cartoons.

If only the garden gnome business had flourished.

Still ,in his retirement , he can enjoy the copious amounts of frozen grated cheese his beloved wife stashed away as an economic gesture.

"Majorism" - PAH ..!

 

[muddythefish]

Word was that Major wanted to privatise the railway on the old pre-nat lines of GW, LMS etc but was over-ruled by the Treasury and one civil servant in particular whose name escapes me but subsequently ended up on the board of RBS or Barclays when the banks went tits up in 2008.

He should be in jail now instead of sitting at home on a fat pension.

Public or private, the railway should have stayed as one entity and be properly funded.

 

[thenorthern]

I think it depends on how you sit on the political spectrum a lot of this, for example personally I wasn't a fan of Thatcher but I think John Major was the best Prime Minister since 1980.

Realistically though I wouldn't describe Tony Blair as being pro or anti railways as other than some new rolling stock being ordered and a couple of reopenings not much really happened under him. Of course there was the West Coast Main Line upgrade but that was more of a John Major plan that was retained by Tony Blair.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

Word was that Major wanted to privatise the railway on the old pre-nat lines of GW, LMS etc but was over-ruled by the Treasury

He should have done his research rather better. Admittedly he had to contend with directives from the EU, but they required separate accounting for infrastructure and operation rather than separate ownership. "Joint" railways where the ownership was distinct from the operation had been a feature of the rail network prior to 1923 and a handful survived after that.

 

[Gareth Marston]

He should have done his research rather better. Admittedly he had to contend with directives from the EU, but they required separate accounting for infrastructure and operation rather than separate ownership. "Joint" railways where the ownership was distinct from the operation had been a feature of the rail network prior to 1923 and a handful survived after that.

The deliberate (mis)Spinning of the EU directive was a smokescreen to excuse the extreme fragmentation model experiment.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

So it seems the consensus is that some kind of 80s sectorised railway will exist at least until the millennium, albeit not wholly state owned.

The next question is, if privatisation was not going to be such the psychological burden it was, what would have been the knock on effects for other areas in the railway system? For example, the Networker Programme and Intercity 250 were scrapped in 1993/2 respectively, partly because of the 90s economic downturn but also privatisation looming. Would these projects have gone ahead or lapsed into the current Pendolino/Electrostar programmes we see today?

Even if Thatcher stayed, and as a consequence the Networker Project went ahead, the death of GEC probably would have meant future Networkers would have had ONIX traction equipment anyway? My understanding is ONIX are French designed.

Come 2017 I see:

Intercity brought by a consortium of companies, and eventually broken up into a line by line basis.
Regional Railways probably surviving as is, but with regional branding.
Network South East probably would have been entangled in the 2000s London Underground PPP saga and become a Tfl-like body.

 

[thenorthern]

According to the Labour Manifesto from 1992 they would open the railways up to British Rail being able to lease trains and private investment.

Although Neil Kinnock wasn't go to fully sell off the railways I think it would have changed so much that they would have ended up sold off by now it by now.

 

[Abpj17]

I guess pretty similar. Potentially useless British TOCs instead of overseas private/overseas state owned.

The key is who was chancellor. If Major stayed as Chancellor, privatisation may have run a similar course.

With a different Chancellor, the course of rail history may have changed. (And if he fell out of the limelight as Cx, he probably wouldn't have gone on to be PM)

 

[Helvellyn]

I think this game of "what if" also hinges on who wins the 1992 election. If Thatcher had survived the 1990 leadership I don't believe it could be guaranteed she would have won in 1992. Major winning in 1992 was a surprise!

Also, factor in what was happening within British Rail, i.e. Organising for Quality. A quick Google search shows that this first emerged in 1989. It can be summarised from a summary on a National Archives page: -

In 1989 a study by Coopers & Lybrand recommended that British Rail should simplify its organisation and decentralise on business lines. An Organisation for Quality (OfQ) team was established to lead the initiative. In 1990 profit centre teams were given six months to devise new organisational structures. A series of reports were produced by the teams working on OfQ for the Chief Executive's forum in June 1990. After this the OfQ Steering Group was established to deal with questions raised. The concept of"trading" was important to OfQ and denoted the ability of profit centres to do business with each other.
​

So this saw the BR sectors become responsible for track (rather than the Civil Engineers Department), and the sub-sectors (e.g. InterCity East Coast) were the profit centres.

So, to my theory: -

• Thatcher survives the November 1990 leadership challenge, but not by a huge margin.
• Heseltine brought back into Cabinet to try unify the party.
• Thatcher loses the 1992 election to Labour.
• Sterling still crashes out of the ERM on "Black Wednesday" but it is Neil Kinnock as Prime Minister who suffers the political fallout and John Smith who resigns as Chancellor.
• A resurgent Conservative Party goes on to win the 1997 election, able to state same old Labour, trashing the economy.
• Privatisation of BR is in the Conservative Manifesto, based on selling off InterCity and Network SouthEast passenger businesses; selling off Freightliner and Trainload Freight; selling Rail Express Systems to the Post Office for a nominal £1.

Privatisation under Thatcher seemed much more about privatise a big state owned company and move to introduce competition once it has reformed and improved or sell off non-core aspects of a state company, e.g. British Rail Hotels, Sealink (or smaller state owned businesses).

Privatisation under Major seemed to be more about trying to introduce competition by splitting up a state owned company, e.g. CEGB became National Power and PowerGen; British Coal was sold off literally mine by mine.

It is very crude, but with Thatcher it felt like it was about getting the state out of running industries it didn't need to and driving an improvement in quality (e.g. British Airways, Rolls Royce), and making those that remained state owned more lean (e.g. sector led BR with non-core business disposed of). With Major it felt much more driven by ideology and then the way it was implemented just felt flawed too.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

I think this game of "what if" also hinges on who wins the 1992 election. If Thatcher had survived the 1990 leadership I don't believe it could be guaranteed she would have won in 1992. Major winning in 1992 was a surprise!

Also, factor in what was happening within British Rail, i.e. Organising for Quality. A quick Google search shows that this first emerged in 1989. It can be summarised from a summary on a National Archives page: -

In 1989 a study by Coopers & Lybrand recommended that British Rail should simplify its organisation and decentralise on business lines. An Organisation for Quality (OfQ) team was established to lead the initiative. In 1990 profit centre teams were given six months to devise new organisational structures. A series of reports were produced by the teams working on OfQ for the Chief Executive's forum in June 1990. After this the OfQ Steering Group was established to deal with questions raised. The concept of"trading" was important to OfQ and denoted the ability of profit centres to do business with each other.
​

So this saw the BR sectors become responsible for track (rather than the Civil Engineers Department), and the sub-sectors (e.g. InterCity East Coast) were the profit centres.

So, to my theory: -

• Thatcher survives the November 1990 leadership challenge, but not by a huge margin.
• Heseltine brought back into Cabinet to try unify the party.
• Thatcher loses the 1992 election to Labour.
• Sterling still crashes out of the ERM on "Black Wednesday" but it is Neil Kinnock as Prime Minister who suffers the political fallout and John Smith who resigns as Chancellor.
• A resurgent Conservative Party goes on to win the 1997 election, able to state same old Labour, trashing the economy.
• Privatisation of BR is in the Conservative Manifesto, based on selling off InterCity and Network SouthEast passenger businesses; selling off Freightliner and Trainload Freight; selling Rail Express Systems to the Post Office for a nominal £1.

Privatisation under Thatcher seemed much more about privatise a big state owned company and move to introduce competition once it has reformed and improved or sell off non-core aspects of a state company, e.g. British Rail Hotels, Sealink (or smaller state owned businesses).

Privatisation under Major seemed to be more about trying to introduce competition by splitting up a state owned company, e.g. CEGB became National Power and PowerGen; British Coal was sold off literally mine by mine.

It is very crude, but with Thatcher it felt like it was about getting the state out of running industries it didn't need to and driving an improvement in quality (e.g. British Airways, Rolls Royce), and making those that remained state owned more lean (e.g. sector led BR with non-core business disposed of). With Major it felt much more driven by ideology and then the way it was implemented just felt flawed too.

Interesting, what would happen to New Labour in your timeline?

This is basically what I was saying to a friend of mine today when discussing politics, Margret Thatcher bad reputation stems largely from the Thatcherites in her party that was more fanatical than she was.

In regards to rolling stock, would we still have had Electostars and Desiros? Or would we have them regardless but be branded as Networker IIs and IIIs etc.

 

[Helvellyn]

Interesting, what would happen to New Labour in your timeline?

This is basically what I was saying to a friend of mine today when discussing politics, Margret Thatcher bad reputation stems largely from the Thatcherites in her party that was more fanatical than she was.

In regards to rolling stock, would we still have had Electostars and Desiros? Or would we have them regardless but be branded as Networker IIs and IIIs etc.

I think you could still have had New Labour, just later. Sadly, you would have still had the death of John Smith. Labour out of power by 1997 would have seen a battle for the soul of the party, likely still won by Blair, etc. After that, well who knows, because that in turn depends on the direction the Conservatives went.

But back to BR in this fantasy timeline. I don't think you would have Electrostars and Desiros. You would have had the Networker family evolve and develop, i.e. Class 371/381 long distance Networkers, Class 341 for Crossrail and Class 168 for Birmingham services out of Marylebone. The latter became the basis for the Turbostar, but I think the BR version would have been more similar to a Network Turbo.

On InterCity we know that the plan for the WCML was the InterCity 250 and I believe that the Mk 3 fleet would have been cascaded to Anglia (as happened) as well as CrossCountry to replace the Mk 2 sets, possibly with a new build Class 48 locomotive in push-pull mode. I think this would have also seen most Class 86 locomotives displaced, withe the InterCity Class 90s heading to Anglia and the 87s possibly going to Railfreight.

Regional Railways wanted more Class 323 units for West Yorkshire electrification, so I think we would have seen a bigger fleet. Possibly even a large enough fleet for WYPTE to allow the three Class 321/9 units to head North for use on Edinburgh to North Berwick.

The difficulty is knowing what would have replaced other older stock. For example, the Class 323 was designed to be Regional Railways standard EMU (Networkers considered two expensive) so would a fleet have been ordered for Strathclyde PTE to replace the Class 303s? Regional Railways also had the refurbished Class 101s and 117s - there was no obvious diesel unit type to order to replace these. My gut feeling is possibly a large order of something for ScotRail/Strathclyde PTE (Class 157 resurrected?), with Class 150s from Edinburgh and Strathclyde PTE 156s cascaded to the North West to replace the 101s.

Still a question of: -

• NSE needing diesel stock for the North London Line.
• NSE needing Class 205/207 replacements (in-fill electrification, then Networkers?)
• Rail Express Systems needing a Class 47 replacement.
• Railfreight Distribution (including Freightliner) needing a Class 47 replacement.
• Trainload Freight needing a Type 3 replacement.
• The various sectors needing a Type 2/Type 3 replacement for engineering trains (refurbished Class 37s in the short-term?).

Again, after that is pure speculation depending on if a form of privatisation happened, what growth took place and what happened regards electrification, HST replacement, etc.

"What if" histories always get more murky the further you get from the point you split from actual history because you have so many other "what if" factors that could cause multiple scenarios to emerge.

 

[deltic]

I think the Thatcher government would have followed the same principal as bus and coaches in that they would have allowed private sector operators to compete against BR, effectively allowing open access operators for both passengers and freight. Then allowed the market to determine who survived. Infrastructure would probably have stayed in public sector hands while the system settled down again.

Competition would then have occurred on intercity routes while rural railways would have seen innovative ideas to reduce costs.