Defending Dr. Beeching
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- čas přidán 22. 03. 2022
- In the early 1960's a big chunk of the UK's railway system was closed as part of what is known as "The Beeching cuts". Named after Dr. Richard Beeching who wrote a report for the government as to how losses could be reduced, and the railways returned to profitability.
Although he's widely blamed for shutting down railways, was it really his doing?
In this film I look at the events that led up to the Beeching report, how the government implemented it and how the lives of the key characters lives panned out in later years.
History appears to have treated him poorly, no doubt ably assisted by our wonderful press and not so transparent politicians! Another excellent and informative film. Well done.
I'm glad I watched this. It's definitely opened my eyes. Very informative 👍
I'm eternally grateful for the existance of such a video with such a title. So many don't understand that Beeching simply did what *he was told to do.*
Beeching pushed for Intercity and Major Point to point rail. So he understood what was needed Marples was just a crook..
This practice occurred in the US as well , large car companies lobbied for roads, GMC bought up various light rail systems and ran them down, then closed them. There also was a transport company in the uk that bought up Tram lines and promptly closed them, sadly the Mumbles tramway in Swansea was a casualty, if it was there now it would be a huge tourist attraction.
Beeching was asked by the Government to produce a report within certain parameters and he did it. The inadequacy of the parameters wasn’t his responsibility. And yes, it was the Transport Secretary that closed the lines, not Beeching. More than anything else, we need to bear in mind that we are judging the actions of 1963 by the standards of 2023 and with the benefit of sixty years’ hindsight. That said, it’s widely considered now that the closures went too far. Some lines shouldn’t have closed, some should have been mothballed, the infrastructure of most should have been preserved. Many of the closed lines weren’t running at huge losses, making little difference to the overall deficit, and the deficit wasn’t ALL due to branch lines. And- most significantly IMHO- Beeching said “If we do this, and quickly, the railways will be in profit by 1970.” They weren’t. So, by its own criteria, it FAILED.
Most interesting: and one of the first balanced view I've seen of the so-called 'Beeching cuts'.
Hello David - greetings from Poland
Fascinating! A brilliant history lesson which gave a very equal account of all the railway closures.
If someone used the same criteria [measuring traffic at 11 am on a weekday] on how busy the roads were they would have closed most of the road network as well. So it was a bit of a fiddle. Although it was the age of the car. Maybe it's coming to the age of bicycle now :)
I’m glad more people are discussing the truth behind people like Doctor Beeching and Edward Thompson and why they aren’t as bad as people make them out to be.
Thank you David for another very interesting video, and maybe I'll look at Beeching in a slightly better light from now on .
At last, a well balanced and truthful account of Britains railway closures. The salient point for me was that there was very little effort to preserve the closed routes for possible future use and yes, the word vandalism comes to mind. As to Ernie Marples he was a wrong 'un but they have always been around in most sections of society. The difference today is that they are often caught out. A well researched and produced video, well done.
@@MavisFilms Thank you for your reply. As you may gather I was around at the time and I was aware that all was not right the way we viewed our transport system then but it was the 1960's with the knock it down and build again mentality, change is best, it was the norm. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and looking back now as an old man what a mess we made of so many things. Dads new Austin Cambridge in 1962 (he wasn't a bank manager just a good working class saver) matched a spaceship in my mind but it still went rusty in a few years. I do hope that with information technology today youngsters will learn by the mistakes of my generatiom but the young people now don't seem concerned about history.
Excellent point. Also some of my own thoughts. When people say they want to 'reverse the Beeching cuts' I think that its more that there is now a new case for a line to be where it once was (regardless of whether it was justifiably closed in the first place) and if there is still track bed and the old route is clear to re-lay track then more the better. I think it was very short sighted to destroy so much of the rail infrastructure at the time but you can also understand why it was done given that they thought no one would want to reopen any of these routes in the future. The car was the future.
I agree, mothball, close, whatever but don't burn your bridges! I imagine, if the government had done their job properly, land could even have been sold on a contract that allowed the buying back at a set price if it really had to go. All that work. I think of the deaths of the navies too. Should be for something....
I wish we'd nationalise the railways again, we practically did it through covid and if it was nationalised the government could easily reopen some useful lines and arrange to takeover or run alongside heritage railways as quite a few running heritage railway make useful connections
The issues were partly practical, and partly ideological. In short, road building was portrayed as an "investment", while rail required "subsidies". In hindsight the car boom will be seen as a relatively short lived phenomenon, with huge costs to the environment and public purse, and unsustainable if road traffic increases at historical rates. On the other hand, if personal transport reduces because of hybrid working, and logistic deliveries are made by drone (for example), the road-rail argument will be superseded by technology.
Various factors fed into the decision to move away from blanket railway coverage of Britain. These include, poor industrial relations, infrastructure worn down by low maintenance during wartime, the introduction of hire purchase agreements on motor cars which were becoming cheaper owing to mass production and the re-availability of steel, the end of universal carrier status for the railway, and - nothing changes here - decision making by a financial elite close to lobbyists and little or no connection to those reliant on railways. Interestingly, south-east rail commuter traffic was relatively unaffected by closures, and had already undergone major electrification schemes. The railways were a unique combination of high Victorian ambition and cheap labour, and their hasty dismantling smacked of short-term opportunism.
Wow that's very informed. 😊
A good presentation on a much misunderstood story. I would however comment that the reason lines were obliterated after being closed was due to the liability of the structures remaining with the government, which could be considerable when you think of tunnels, bridges, and viaducts all to be annually inspected and maintained for no real reason. The huge problem with nationalisation is that Governments cannot afford the costs and investment needed. And yes, I agree Marples was a fraud who misused his position in government.
Very very informative many thanks
Thank you :)
No doubt the railway 'tree' needed pruning to save money, but some lines in Scotland, Wales and Devon & Cornwall were taken with poor research in their use for the community and for the populations in those areas. some lines closed in general should have been mothballed not ripped up as fast as possible. As you say the railways have been closing line since the 1930's 50's, then Beeching 60's and then 70's & even the 1980's by the companies and British Rail. However, this short-sightedness in some cases have us now gridlocked with the amount of traffic and there are still people who don't own a car or can legally drive a car. he was believed as the villain as he did write his report, yes, the government made the decisions.
I grew up in Gillingham Dorset, so we were very lucky to retain the main line to Exeter, however it was more of a branch line with single line between Wilton and Pinhoe near Exeter this was done by the western region, Beeching wanted to close Salisbury to Exeter, so it wasn't his fault. the western made poor decisions in making passing loops at closed stations and long sections of single line that didn't match distances between crossing loops.
There was some serious vandalism of our railway infrastructure post closure done at a scary speed that showed there was an agenda, yet some of the destruction came years later that needed to be done because of road schemes that needed to remove bridges that were in the way with no chance of the line returning. Some of the bridges were still owned by British Rail and they had to spend money on the upkeep so due to rust and the danger of falling they were removed many years later in a bid to save money.
Oh, look up Flanders and Swann the slow train, it's here on CZcams very poignant to the Beeching story.
Very interesting how stories are simplified for general consumption. There are plenty of skeletons in the mismanagement /vandalism cupboard I am sure. Didn't he preside over the double arrow rail symbol, which is excelent. (in some countries, it is hard to see where the station is) and the merry-go-round for feight trains to power stations?
Aerospace is better than rail transit track train trolley locomotives so Dr. Beeching was a hero for standing up to bullies.
in DR Richard Be ec hing's defense BR needed to save money and closing down lines, and employing people and scrapping locomotives and rolling stock to save money was the most freezable things to do why keep something open if it's gonna be a drain on finances.
Man he got the ace home selff
It's not unusual for politicians to hire someone and then when the job they're paid to do looks bad politically they get all the blame for doing their job. However if the job they do is politically good then the politicians take all the credit sidelining them in the process. The real slimy ones are the politicians not the people they hire. Even Ernest Marples said that Richard Beeching had no authority to close any railway for that's the minster of state for transport's job or Ernest Marples in this case. But because it was bad politically all the blame was heaped on Beeching and Marples got away with it as slimy politicians always do.
If you're still here and awake.." silly boy :-) Of course. It's a railway video... how could I be anything but awake?...It has weathered the trip to NZ rather well....as well as the very well refurbished Mk2 exBR carriages plying the 100 km line 5x return trips daily between Wellington and Masterton.,, average speed, 66 km/hr. (( qv Metlink WRL )
Beeching perhaps should be on a Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
As a guy who is misunderstood.
Railways shouldn't be run for profit, let me remind you that roads are also expensive to maintain- only they are far less efficient at moving people and freight. We were spending so much on building car-centric infrastructure that is a blight on many places to this day! The benefit in transport isn't in the direct profit you extract from it, but in the wider economic benefits provided by the efficient movement of people and goods! You wouldn't expect every road on the network to be a toll road that generates profit- no roads are free at the point of use- as railways should be! NHS hospitals don't generate profit, government funded schools don't generate profit. The greater social and economic benefits of such things are what matters!
"Beeching wrote a report but he never closed a line." - That sounds like a technicality to me. Did Beeching agree with his own report or not? Was he in the habit of writing reports he didn't agree with? To excuse him just because he only wrote the report is a bit silly. The video just replaces one villain with another. I think Beeching was responsible for his own report and clearly agreed with the parameters set for him - his own public statements supported this. The truth is that a narrow view was taken of the railways by politicians, no doubt under influence from the car lobby (e.g. Marples, but not just him), and Beeching shared this view, which is why he was chosen to write the report. Beeching is responsible for his own work and so are the politicians who made the decisions. They believed that railways should be profitable, which is clearly stupid and shows that something was fundamentally awry with the post-war generation of politicians and civil servants (other misguided policies post-war governments were responsible for - mass immigration, joining the EEC, abolition of grammar schools, provincial Brutalist architecture, railway privatisation, list goes on). They had been affected by the War experience and wanted to build a shiny, idealistic new world while suffering from some sort of folie en masse (or whatever is the expression). They were mentally captured by ultra-modernism and railways seemed old, smelly, provincial and stale, and a bit boring too because a railway-centric society means people are more regimented and family-centric and activities are more structured. That's so boring, whereas cars are individualist and exciting and you can go anywhere in a car. It's freedom! We can now see that they were stupid, but it's too late. We are where we are.
Honestly if it wernt for beeching the hearatige railways probably half of them wouldn't had existed
One of your arguments is laughable involving GWR and SWR to traffic from London to Plymouth/Penzance. We were left with the South Coast down from Exeter to Plymouth/Penzance and absolutely sod all down the A30 route and North Coast. An alternative route avoiding Dawlish and the problem of the Sea has become a huge cost now. MP's and successive Governments have no nous. Never have never will! Instead of shutting down Okehampton/Tavistock /Plymouth, a new line should have been built alongside the A30 to Launceston/Bodmin!
Beeching was a destroyer of our Railways he was A paid muppret
Did you not watch the video ? Beeching wrote a report but he never closed a line. The video mentions that the railway started to contract from WW1 onwards especially after grouping and nationalisation. Perhaps you just have a closed mind.
@@andrewlong6438 clearly your a person of very considerable experience and knowledge of railway matters -so taking into account all this vast knowledge ,just HOW do you reach your conclusions ??
@@tonyfearn2452with facts not speculation
@@andrewlong6438 "Beeching wrote a report but he never closed a line." - That sounds like a technicality to me. Did Beeching agree with his own report?