Beeching report

[Mr Bunt]

Reading these might have helped a few journalists deal with the subject. I appreciate that's an old fashioned way of going about writing "news" reports, but since they can't use modern journalistic techniques (like hacking into Beeching's mobile phone) on fifty year old stories, reading about the subject before going into print would have helped a few of them I'm sure; especially "RAIL" who've been blaming 1950s closures on Beeching

[2392]

Whilst on a Shearings holiday a few years ago up in Strathpeffer the Coach Driver was most insistant the branch was closed by Beeching, inspite of it being closed by the LMS in 1947, 14 years before he joined the by then nationalised railway system. As has been pointed out by many more lines/stations were closed pre Beeching than he ever closed. As another example the Allendale passenger train left the station forecourt of Hexham in the form of a bus pre war I believe, certainly before British Railways let alone beeching. The frieght service survivng until around 1950 when the Allendale line was finally closed.

Equally I find it somewhat homourous that, the Bus Companies operate most of the passenger Train Operating Companies these days. As in the "old days" the big four were allowed to own "shares" in them and thus the LNER had at least a nominal stake in United or was it Northen General [better know these days as Arriva and Go North East] who "operated" the aforementioned Allendale train.......

[PinzaC55]

Reading these might have helped a few journalists deal with the subject. I appreciate that's an old fashioned way of going about writing "news" reports, but since they can't use modern journalistic techniques (like hacking into Beeching's mobile phone) on fifty year old stories, reading about the subject before going into print would have helped a few of them I'm sure; especially "RAIL" who've been blaming 1950s closures on Beeching

Those booklets would be a good basis but of course the Beeching Report was politically inspired and well before emails could be leaked. For instance Ernest Marples had his fingers in a number of pies which stood to do very well from major road construction.
From Wikipedia.

Conflict of interest
Shortly after he became a junior minister in November 1951, Marples resigned as Managing Director of Marples Ridgway but continued to hold some 80% of the firm's shares.When he was made Minister of Transport in October 1959, Marples undertook to sell his shareholding in the company as he was now in clear breach of the House of Commons' rules on conflicts of interest. He had not done so by January 1960 when the Evening Standard reported that Marples Ridgeway had won the tender to build the Hammersmith Flyover and that the Ministry of Transport's engineers had endorsed the London County Council's rejection of a lower tender. Marples first attempt to sell his shares was blocked by the Attorney-General on the basis that he was using his former business partner, Reg Ridgeway, as an agent to ensure that he could buy back the shares upon leaving office. Marples therefore sold his shares to his wife, reserving himself the possibility to reacquire them at the original price after leaving office; by this time, his shares had come to be worth between £350,000 and £400,000.
In 1959 Marples opened the first section of the M1 motorway shortly after becoming minister. It is now understood that although his company was not directly contracted to build the M1, Marples, Ridgway "certainly had a finger in the pie". Marples Ridgway built the Hammersmith Flyover in London at a cost of £1.3 million, immediately followed by building the Chiswick Flyover; Marples Ridgway also were involved in other major road projects in the 1950s and 1960s including the £4.1 million extension of the M1 into London, referred to as the 'Hendon Urban Motorway' at the time.

[mr B]

apologies for that little out burst , but we would have lost the Saltburn branch if Richard had not have had investments in the proposed potash mine at Boulby at the time , not forgetting the rail link into ICI Wilton .

thank you

[sandwhich]

I have also been on coach tours where we were told Beeching closed this railway and that line, but I knew that some of it was before his time. Very good info on the Marples interests. I believe that after he left parliament and became a tax exile there was talk of investigating his business interests but I don't think that anything came of it.

[PinzaC55]

I have also been on coach tours where we were told Beeching closed this railway and that line, but I knew that some of it was before his time. Very good info on the Marples interests. I believe that after he left parliament and became a tax exile there was talk of investigating his business interests but I don't think that anything came of it.

Ernest Marples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples

Flight to Monaco
Early in 1975 Marples suddenly fled to Monaco. Among journalists who investigated his unexpected flight was Daily Mirror editor Richard Stott:
"In the early 70s ... he tried to fight off a revaluation of his assets which would undoubtedly cost him dear ... So Marples decided he had to go and hatched a plot to remove £2 million from Britain through his Liechtenstein company ... there was nothing for it but to cut and run, which Marples did just before the tax year of 1975. He left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia littered with discarded clothes and possessions ... He claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax ... The Treasury froze his assets in Britain for the next ten years. By then most of them were safely in Monaco and Liechtenstein."
As well as being wanted for tax fraud, one source alleges that Marples was being sued in Britain by tenants of his slum properties and by former employees. He never returned to Britain, living the remainder of his life at his Fleurie Beaujolais château and vineyard in France.

Use of prostitutes
When Lord Denning made his 1963 investigation into the security aspects of the Profumo Affair and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, and the Duchess of Argyll, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumour that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true. The story was suppressed and did not appear in Denning's final report.

So I guess he did to a few women what he did to the railway network.

[sandwhich]

Marples! Not a very nice man in all aspects of his life by the sound of it. Yes his attitude towards railways was the same as that of women.

[sandwhich]

Oh! I should have added his patriotism as well.

[Autocar Publicity]

I'm with a certain gentleman from Lichfield on that and would would say that it is the last refuge of a scoundrel. And calling him a scoundrel would be a remarkably restrained way to describe Ernest Marples....

[PinzaC55]

And yet he determined the railway policy of the UK which led to the railway network, a report on him was "suppressed" and the UK government seems to have been happy to let him live unmolested in France.
Thats what I mean when I say that it wasn't a simple matter of whether the Report was correct in its conclusions. And of course to its shame the 1964 Labour govenment carried on with the closures.

[Autocar Publicity]

Yes, I'd say the whole sordid 'affair' stinks like a basket of month old fish in high summer.

[Mickey]

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[strang steel]

Interesting comment Micky, and might explain why the wires were only put up as far as Bedford?

It always seems ironic looking back, that the politicians made so much fuss about BR running at a profit, but were prepared to pump millions into purchasing diesel locomotives without any protoype testing, and which ultimately only lasted for 10-12 years in service before being withdrawn or re-engined.

[Mickey]

Deleted

[sandwhich]

The dieselisation shambles was something else that Beeching inherited, it started off okay with new DMUs in the mid 50s which were sorely needed although with the best will in the world they would not have stopped all of the closures. But even here there were too many types of units. The coming of the diesel locomotives were a mess from the beginning with the smaller classes withdrawn after around 10 years, in fact steam outlived some of them. There was approx. 440 diesel hydraulic locos built for the Western Region, all were gone in 15 years, nothing less than a scandal. No wonder various governments lost faith in BR over the years.