BY NIALL McRAE
The 1960s moderniser tried to improve Britain’s transport (unlike current policies)
Six decades have passed since the last train left West Bexhill. The ornate Edwardian building has survived, now used for auctions, with a café in the former ladies’ waiting room. The spur of the London to Hastings line closed in the Sixties by the ‘Beeching cuts’, the town being served by another route to London, via Eastbourne.
Doctor Beeching is a pariah, his name darkening over the passage of time, but the settled narrative is simplistic. People are led to believe that Beeching vandalised the railways, just as Margaret Thatcher destroyed the coalmining industry, but the truth is not so straightforward. Arguably, while Beeching drew vociferous opposition to his proposed closures of branch lines, that was the heart overruling the head. The rationale for reducing the network was objectively clear at the time: costly, underused routes where the journey could be made more easily by road.
Beeching (photographed above) was only doing what the political administration asked him to do, but he became a convenient scapegoat. It was his responsibility to produce a report with recommendations, not to wield an axe with his own hands – it was the government that took the decisions and actions. Furthermore, Beeching is unfairly blamed for closing lines that have since reopened in some form, such as part of a metropolitan tramway network. His report should be judged by the context of the 1960s, not by the needs of today.
I understand the lament for lost railway links, but it is harder to criticise Beeching when you understand British transport conditions and prospects 65 years ago. The nationalised corporation of British Railways had already embarked on a radical change to operation by replacing steam locomotion with diesel and electric trains. This caused mass redundancies of labour and resources. The government and railway board had been reluctant to bite the bullet, knowing that jobs would be lost in the coalmines at a time of austerity. Going into the 1960s, lines still being run on steam traction compounded the perception of rail travel as a relic.
The dawn of private transport promised a bright future of freedom, convenience and accessibility. Millions of new cars left showrooms in the Sixties, as Rootes, BMC, Ford and Vauxhall made cars more affordable while also adapting to improved conditions. In the Fifties there was no expectation for anyone to drive at over sixty miles per hour: the roads and the cars were not built for speed.
The motorways changed motoring dramatically. The network was built steadily in the Sixties and Seventies. Another important development was the bypass between and around towns, often a rerouted trunk road widened to dual carriageway. Long-distance drivers were relieved of the tedious passage through high streets that they had no need to visit.
A car in the driveway became as ubiquitous as a television aerial on the roof, outward signs of social and material progress (albeit a decade behind the Americans). Speed was prominent in advertising, followed by luxury. A man’s choice of car was a symbol of his status, actual or aspirant. Only London, where the underground railway brought commuters into the city centre every morning, bucked the trend of driving to work. In most areas, no self-respecting chap would catch the bus or train. Parking spaces were provided at factories and offices. In town centres, parking was mostly free, on a first-come, first-served basis. Councils had not yet learned to treat motorists as a cash cow.
Beeching urged retention of the railways for longer journeys from city to city, and diesel locomotion was setting new standards. Electrification was advancing too. Contrast this model of high-speed train travel with the branch lines that Beeching cut. Many of these took a winding route, passing various towns and villages, and avoiding steep gradients. Few passengers boarded or alighted along the way, because passengers were now going by car instead, taking a shorter and quicker journey. Critics look back today and say that Beeching harmed communities, but the lines may have survived if more people were using them. Every service was losing money for British Railways, detracting from modernisation elsewhere.
Although Beeching was enthused by the new landscape of travel, the idea of the private car as the future was already facing a reality check by the late Sixties. In Britain the baby-boomer generation would be coming of age and creating traffic. Could the country build its way out of antiquated and congested infrastructure? Indeed, that was the positive thinking in councils, as architects were given free rein to design new town centres, prioritising the motorist.
Globally, population was hurtling upwards, with cities such as Calcutta, Delhi, Manila, Tokyo and Mexico City overtaking London, New York and Paris. Global organisations, alarmed by Paul Ehrlich’s alarmist The Population Bomb (1968), warned that humanity was facing disaster.
But in Britain, as in most developed countries of the West, the birth rate was heading downwards and population was stabilising. Thus the transport ideals of the Sixties were realistic: a nation of private motorists going wherever they wanted, with improved roads and vehicles. The future was of everything getting better. Beeching’s contribution to this was to focus railway investment on where train travel was most beneficial, and to eradicate parts of the network that stood in the way of progress.
It is nonsense for Beeching to be blamed for the transport problems of today (as some critics continue to do). He could not have foreseen the mass immigration that has added twenty million to the country’s population. I recall some years ago Nigel Farage being ridiculed by the BBC and Guardian for complaining of being late for a meeting because of traffic caused by immigrants, but of course he was right. Beeching was not responsible for the deliberately destructive Net Zero policies pursued by central and local government, which now seem bent on forcing people off the road.
The golden age of British motoring was the two or three decades after the Beeching Report was commissioned. The restructuring of the rail network was a painful necessity, enabling British Railways to survive rather than drowning in debt from wholly unprofitable routes. Beeching’s detractors should be asked: would you prefer the transport plan of the Sixties, or the reverse gear on individual mobility driven by our rulers today?
Niall McCrae is the author of ‘Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission of Climate Alarm’ (2024).