Richard Beeching
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Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 - 23 March 1985), commonly known as Doctor Beeching, was chairman of British Railways and a physicist and engineer. He became infamous in Britain in the early 1960s for his role in masterminding the Beeching Axe railway closures.
Beeching was born in Maidstone, Kent, the second of four brothers. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and gained a 1st class honours degree in Physics at Imperial College London, followed by a research Ph.D.
In 1938 he married Ella Tiley, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. At the age of 33, he became Deputy Chief Engineer of the Armament Design Department of the Ministry of Supply.
In 1948 he joined the giant chemical firm ICI, and in 1957 he was appointed technical director of the board.
He was invited in 1960 by the Government to become a member of an Advisory Group on the state of British transport, the Stedeford Committee. The Chairman of the Committee was Sir Ivan Stedeford and the two men clashed on a number of issues connected with Beeching's proposal to drastically prune Britain's rail infrastructure. In spite of questions being asked in Parliament, Sir Ivan's report was not published until much later. A set of proposals for the future of the railways that came to be known as the "Beeching Plan" was adopted by the Government, resulting in the closure of a third of the rail network and the scrapping of a third of a million freight wagons, much as Stedeford had foreseen and fought against. See Gourvish (link below)
In 1961 he was appointed chairman of the British Transport Commission and later of its successor, the British Railways Board. At that time the Government was seeking outside talent and fresh blood to sort out the huge problems of the railway system, i.e., an expert in an outside field, with little or no experience in railway management. There was widespread concern at the time that, despite huge amounts of taxpayers' funds allocated to the railways under the 1955 Modernisation Plan, railway deficits were mounting. Whatever may be said now, the evidence is that both passenger and freight traffic was abandoning the railways, particularly in country districts where road transport had provided a steadily more attractive alternative since before World War II.
During his tenure, Beeching became a hugely controversial figure when he recommended a massive programme of railway closures to cut the cost of running the railway system, known informally as the Beeching Axe. These were, in most respects, a continuation of programmes of closures which had been occurring since the 1920s (or earlier in some isolated cases). Ironically, the studies required for the report led to a moratorium on line closures in the early 1960s which made the subsequent closures look more harsh than a linear programme might have done.
He was also instrumental in modernising many aspects of the railway system, particularly a greater emphasis on block trains which did not require expensive and time-consuming shunting en route. It is highly likely that without this aspect of the Beeching Plan, Britain's railways would have lost freight to a much higher extent than occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Today's railways in both Britain and abroad focus predominantly on the methods Beeching recommended.
The intentions of the Beeching Report were to remove unprofitable branch lines while keeping the highly profitable main lines, using the money saved to update the system and speed the progress of the Modernisation Plan. Unfortunately, the Treasury decided that since the money was no longer needed for the support of branch lines it could be spent elsewhere, making the plans futile. Another mistake in the plan was the assumption that if a branch line closed, passengers would use alternative means - buses being suggested in many cases - to access the nearest railhead and then use the railway for the rest of their journey. Instead, the public tended to find it more convenient and chepaer to drive the entire journey. In 1963, as now, buses were regarded as an unacceptable alternative to rail.
Beeching's findings have been reviewed in two books by his contemporaries, both of which are required reading for a reasonable assessment of his achievements. R.H.N (Dick) Hardy: Beeching - Champion of the Railway (1989) ISBN 0-7110-1855-3 and Gerard Fiennes: I Tried to Run a Railway (1967) ISBN 0-7110-0447-1. Neither book is in print at the time of writing (2006). Both are broadly sympathetic to Beeching's basic analysis and the proposed solution. On the other hand, Hardy points out Beeching's political naivete (see below) in transitioning from private to public industry. Similarly Fiennes notes that because a given passenger service was producing a loss did not mean that it must always do so in future. It can reasonably be argued that too many routes were run in a traditional fashion unchanged from Edwardian England, whereas radical changes in operating procedures would have greatly reduced the losses generated. Beeching allegedly made no attempt to quantify what such savings could have yielded, nor which lines could have survived had practices been changed.
The political aspects of the Beeching Report remain controversial. The report was commissioned by a Conservative regime which had strong ties to the road construction lobby. However, the report's findings were enthusiastically endorsed and implemented by the subsequent Labour administrations which were heavily dependent for funds from unions associated with road industry associations. The general reduction of Britain's railway mileage was probably inevitable, but the speed with which the two Labour governments of 1964 and 1966 pursued the report's recommendations was not. Beeching seemingly failed to realise that history would portray him as the 'axeman', even though the Secretary of State for Transport was (and still is) the only person who can actually authorise abandonment of railway passenger services in the UK.
Beeching resigned in 1965 after recommendations in one of his reports were rejected by the government. He re-joined ICI, where he rose to become Deputy Chairman (1966-68). In 1965 he was made a life peer as Baron Beeching, of East Grinstead in the County of Sussex.
The effect of the Beeching Axe on a small station was the subject of Oh, Doctor Beeching!, a television sitcom by David Croft and Richard Spendlove from 1995 to 1997. A popular Flanagan and Allen song became the theme song which ran:
- "Oh! Dr. Beeching, what have you done?
- There once were lots of trains to catch but soon there will be none.
- I'll have to buy a bike as I can't afford a car.
- Oh! Dr. Beeching! What a naughty man you are!"
(Note: This is based on the once-well-known and railway-related ditty
- "Oh! Mr porter, what can I do!
- I wanted to go to Birmingham and they took me on to Crewe.
- Take me back to London as quickly as you can
- Oh Mr porter what a silly (girl) I am!"
Flanders and Swann commemorated the loss of the branch lines and small country stations in 1964 in their song "Slow Train".
[edit] Railbanking
One failure of Beeching's imagination was to not instigate Railbanking, to preserve the right of way of at least some lines that might be reopened should traffic patterns change or new suburbs developed. This has been done in the US to some extent, but perhaps not in the UK.
[edit] Trivia
There is a pub called Lord Beechings at the end of the Cambrian Railway at Aberystwyth, which until its refurbishment by SA Brain & Company Ltd was decorated with various railway memorabilia, in particular regarding the Aberystwyth - London and Aberystwyth - Carmarthen service, which he axed. It was previously called The Railway.
The Beeching Report, a song against the Beeching Axe, was recorded by the post-rock group iLiKETRAiNS.
