"It is unquestionably on the basis of total social benefit that our future transport policy should be determined."
J.G. Bothwell OBE
General Secretary TSSA, 1963 Annual Conference.
The post-war years witnessed an acceleration of transport growth with rail traffic declining in relative importance. Private road transport increased, and between 1952 and 1962 the carriage of goods by road grew by nearly 80 per cent. Approximately 8 per cent of this was attributable to a transfer from the railways, although rail still dominated the longer freight hauls.1 The public became increasingly concerned at Britain's congested roads - the worst in Europe - and in 1961 the Ministry of Transport set up two Working Groups, one led by Professor C. D. Buchanan - to study the development of roads and traffic in urban areas and their influence on the environment - and the other chaired by Sir Robert Hall - to examine the long term future of transport. When they reported both groups forecast that by 1970 the number of road vehicles would have doubled. Hall also demonstrated that both road and rail concentrated their business on a relatively small part of their respective routes and that they ran in parallel. These reports provided an opportunity for the Government to revise its views on transport and to establish a balanced programme of development. It failed to do so and continued to advocate competition, heavily weighted towards the interests of one of the most powerful and best organised pressure group in Parliament - the road lobby.
At a meeting of the Cabinet on 4th March 1960, Ernest Marples, the Minister of Transport, reported that agreement had been reached with Sir Brian Robertson that the BTC should be disbanded and that its components should become self-accounting and autonomous. He also proposed to establish a Planning Board responsible for developing the railways and examining uneconomic services, fares and charges. On 10th March the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, still buoyant from his election victory, announced these plans to Parliament, and during his speech he also said that the Government accepted the recommendations of the Guillebaud Committee. It was not long before railway workers realised that they would have to pay a high price for Guillebaud's recommendations.
After some debate in the Cabinet on the choice of Chairman of the Planning Board, Ernest Marples decided that the best person was Sir Ivan Stedeman KBE, the Chairman and Managing Director of Tube Investments Ltd; the Board quickly became known as the Stedeman Group. It contained two other industrialists: C. F. Kearton OBE (Joint Managing Director of Courtalds), Dr. R. Beeching ARCS BSc. PhD (Technical Director of ICI) and H. A. Benson CBE FCA, a Chartered Accountant from Cooper Bros. Officials from the Treasury and the Ministry of Transport were allocated to the Stedeman Group but when requests were made in Parliament by Anthony Wedgwood Benn and others for trade unionists to have representation, these were declined by Marples.
The task of the Advisory Group was to examine the structure, finance and working of the organisations at present controlled by the Commission, and to advise the Minister of Transport and the BTC, as a matter of urgency, how they could give effect to the Government's intentions as indicated in the Prime Minister's statement to Parliament. William Webber and representatives from the NUR, TGWU and the AEU met the Stedeman Group on 20th April and 3rd/5th August 1960 and emphasised the importance of railways as a social service, expressing their opposition to the sale of the railway system to private enterprise. They asked Sir Ivan Stedeman for his views on the future of the industry, but they failed to get a response. The one definite fact established was that his report would not be passed to the trade unions for consultation.2 This policy had been formulated by Marples, and when the Cabinet met to discuss the report on 1st December the Government was determined to resist any suggestion that Stedeman's findings be made known.
When the minutes of the Stedeman meetings were eventually released to the public in 19913 they revealed that its members had deep differences of approach to the way that the industry should be managed, with Stedeford and Kearton frequently opposed to the views of Benson and Beeching. In addition to the trade unions, they saw a variety of influential pressure groups including the Railway Carriage and Wagon Building Association who contended that the prime function of the railway was to operate and maintain the system, but not to manufacture capital equipment. This was strongly supported by Stedeman and Kearton and as a result "hiving off" the railway workshops became a serious option. Despite their differences, they managed to produce a unanimous report composed of eight recommendations. The eighth proved to be the most controversial with two schemes being proposed; one from Beeching and Benson, the other provided by Stedeman and Kearton, although all four agreed that the BTC should be reorganised.
The Minister of Transport met the railway unions at the House of Commons on 14th December 1960 when they were given a brief outline of his objectives for the railway industIy. Six days later, a White Paper, Reorganisation of the Nationalised Transport Undertakings was published. The White Paper embodied much that had emanated from the Stedeman Group and advocated dissolving the BTC and placing the railways under a British Railways Board (BRB) whose members would be appointed by the Minister of Transport. The BRB was responsible for national staff and wage negotiations, overall control of finance and investment, safety policy, training and research and the future size and shape of the railway system. Six Regional Boards were to become autonomous in matters concerning their regions, with separate Management Boards controlling LT and Inland Waterways. The docks, most of which had been owned by the railways and nationalised under the 1947 Transport Act, were to be placed under a British Transport Docks Board to become Britain's largest port authority. A Transport Holding Company was established for BRS, the Tilling (Buses) Group, Scottish Buses, Road Freight Shipping Services, Thomas Cook and Sons Ltd, all of which had their own boards appointed by the Minister. There were also a number of other companies contained within the Holding Company that had joint bus services with local authorities. The railway-owned hotels were also to be placed in the Holding Company but, in October, the Minister of Transport advised the unions that they would be formed into a new company and become a subsidiary of the BRB. The BTC's accumulated losses, which now amounted to £475 million were written off, and the Treasury assumed responsibility for the British Transport Stock which had drained the BTC's profitability since 1948.
The TSSA welcomed the measures to relieve the industry of its debt, and had no objection to the formation of the BRB as this brought it closer to the former Railway Executive which the Government had abolished under the Transport Act of 1953. Indeed, Thomas Steele told the House of Commons, It was a mistake to abolish the Railway Executive. Now the Government are reintroducing it and calling it the Railways Board.
4 When the three main railway unions met on 5th January 1961, they expressed pleasure that the debt had been removed, but when William Evans and Sidney Greene said that it was doubtful if a Labour Government would have done any better to ease the railway finances,5 this was challenged by William Webber. However, they did agree that the White Paper had failed to deal with transport as a whole and that it would make co-ordination and integration much more difficult. They also found common ground on protecting superannuation funds. At a meeting between the TUC Nationalised Industries Committee and Ernest Marples on 18th January, the Minister repeated his opposition to a co-ordinated transport policy, contending that transport should be left to the user. This, and his decision to disband the BTC, aroused the wrath of all the transport unions, the TUC and Labour Party, as it precluded any hope of bringing sanity into Britain's transport
The TSSA voiced its opposition to the White Paper at its 1961 Annual Conference and following the publication of the Transport Bill on 2nd November, the railway unions organised several meetings to arouse public attention. On 28th March 1962, the London Political Advisory Council held a meeting in the House of Commons under its chairman, Johnny Johnson,6 and over 350 members heard George Strauss, Thomas Steele and Charles Mapp, all members of the Commons Committee dealing with the Bill, condemn it for having dashed any hope of a national transport plan being developed in the foreseeable future.
When the Bill had its Second Reading on 20th/21st November, Ray Gunter wound up the debate and accused the Government of having a dogmatic belief in the virtue of competition, except when capitalist amalgamation and capitalist restrictive practices are concerned.
7 With its substantial majority, the Conservatives had no difficulty in getting the Bill approved and the Transport Act (1962) received Royal Assent on 1st August. The Act came into force on 1st January 1963, at which time the BTC was dissolved and the BRB became operational. The aspirations of 1948 had now gone - unfortunately worse was to follow.
In May 1961, when Sir Brian Robertson retired, he was replaced by Dr. Richard Beeching who was appointed at his ICI salary of £24,000 per annum, a sum which shocked the public. In comparison, Sir Brian Robertson had received £10,000 for his efforts, the TSSA General Secretary £2,700 and railway clerks a basic annual rate of approximately £630! It was not primarily Beeching's salary that concerned Arthur Beastall8 (North London) who, at the 1961 Annual Conference, deplored Beeching's appointment and suggested that someone more conversant with railway affairs would have been preferable. With some foresight, Beastall saw the appointment of Beeching as the first step towards the disintegration of the railway system, but this dire warning had no effect upon the delegates. Only four or five hands were raised in his support after the General Secretary said that the most important qualification of an administrator was not his technical railway knowledge, but how he handled his employees, and Beeching should be judged by his results. No-one knew then that when the Cabinet had discussed the Stedeman Report, Ministers had stressed the need to streamline the organisation and operation of the railways and to secure substantial economies in labour, hopefully persuading the unions to co-operate.
Beeching's remit was to transform the financial affairs of the railways from one of debt to a position of profit and he set about his task by initiating a number of studies which laid the basis for their commercial future. He also turned his attention to the railway workshops. When the railways had been nationalised in 1948 there were 29 workshops employing 78,000 people, and in January 1962 the BRB announced that 12 of its remaining 28 workshops would be closed. At a meeting between management, the three railway unions and the CSEU on 22nd August, the details of a five-year programme were revealed. These included the Board's intention to rationalise activities and to modernise the remaining sixteen workshops at a cost of£16.8 million. The effect of the proposals was a continual reduction in staff and workshops.
When the first traffic studies requested by Beeching were published in July 1962, they showed that 96 per cent of all railway traffic was carried on 50 per cent of the railway system. Within the Scottish Region, of its 2,750 trains only 750 were profitable and £12-13 million was being lost each year. Commenting on the studies, a BTC spokesman said, From a purely economic point of view the removal of the under-used lines would help to reduce the railway deficit.
9 The political message was very clear, and with branch lines in Wales also destined for closure, deputations were quickly despatched to the Minister of Transport to emphasise the importance of the railway to their communities. The Central Transport Consultative Committee did not see any value in the closures and its 1962 Annual Report concluded:
"The negative policy of closing down uneconomic facilities, whilst contributing a small financial saving is not the panacea it has sometimes been made out to be. Each closure diverts some business to the roads. These losses of traffic must have contributed materially to the poor results of the past five years. There is an urgent need for the study of overall transport costs, including social costs (such as congestion, accidents and health services), for all forms of transport, and this should be published. The effect of subsidies, open and hidden, may be giving a completely false picture of the cost of various methods of transport."
The curtailment of rail services was the subject of attention throughout the year and the TSSA wrote to the NUR and ASLEF to seek a common policy. This was agreed, but difficulties arose in finding a mutually convenient date for a meeting. To the annoyance of the TSSA who had not been advised, the NUR launched a massive campaign against workshop and line closures on 18th June 1962, with hundreds of thousands of leaflets issued and 189 meetings being held by the end of the year.10 Then, as a final protest, the NUR called a national one day strike on 3rd October, its first national stoppage since 1926. This resulted in a total closure of the railway system, the railway-owned ferries and LT. A further strike was planned but when important concessions were made to the redundancy agreements, the strike was called off.
When the TSSA, ASLEF and the NUR finally met on 11th October 1962, it was against the background of the strike. William Webber expressed his regret that the NUR had unilaterally decided to launch its own publicity campaign without consulting or informing the TSSA or ASLEF, who only knew of it via the press on 19th June.11 The NUR explained that this had been owing to matters connected with their conference, and then invited both ASLEF and the TSSA to participate in the campaign. There were then differing views on tactics. The NUR wanted to continue its campaign but Webber suggested that the best time to influence public opinion was when Dr. Beeching's proposals regarding the size and pattern of the railway system were made known, and that the co-operation of the TUC and Labour Party should be requested. The TUC and Labour Party concurred and it was decided to wait.
The first indication of Dr. Beeching's plans came on 25th March 1963 when, in a meeting that lasted less than two hours, he told the railway unions and the CSEU of his grand design for the future of the railway network. It was published on 27th March under the title The Reshaping of British Railways; the Daily Worker called it the "Great Train Murder"12 but it became more commonly known as "The Beeching Plan". Beeching had been asked to make the railways pay, but the social cost of his proposals was incalculable. Not that such considerations had any place in the Government's strategy. Harold Wilson13 put it correctly when he said that the report was based on narrow book-keeping and bore no relation to wider economic considerations affecting the national interest as a whole, still less to the social dimension.14 The leaders of the TSSA, NUR. ASLEF and the TUC appealed to Marples to stop the closures but they were ignored by the Minister who was more concerned with concentrating his resources on developing motorways. Beeching envisaged railway traffic being concentrated on its main lines, and as he had indicated to the Institute of Transport in 1961, fulfilling those tasks which were considered best suited to the industry. His plan also proposed a new freight service, using special "Liner Trains" and new terminals, with containers transported between major conurbations. As a result of this development, it was expected that approximately 8,600 clerical and supervisory posts and 4,900 maintenance staff would be lost. The public's attention was concentrated on Beeching's recommendation to close 2,363 railway stations and halts, and 250 train services, denying railway facilities to millions of people in towns and villages throughout Britain. Of the 669 stations in Scotland, 435 were destined for closure, and over 353,000 wagons, coaches and locomotives were to be placed on the scrap heap. In addition to the workshop closures, job losses were expected to be over 16,200 for those connected with passenger services, with some 70,000 posts expected to disappear within five years. Beeching's objective was to eliminate the railway deficit by 1970.
The magazine Modern Railways described Beeching's Report as the most convincing treatise ever produced on railway problems.
15 The TUC said that it was unsatisfactory and hoped that before any dramatic reorganisation took place, transport as a whole would be examined and that community needs and the social consequences of any rail closures would be taken into account. Even at the 1963 Conservative Party Conference there were murmurs of unease that the true cost of road transport compared with that of the railways had not been taken into account
Sidney Greene took a cautious approach to Beeching's report and said that the NUR Executive was still examining it, but they were concerned that no clear statement as to how employees would be affected had been given. Local members of the NUR were more outspoken and said that it was a tragedy and should be opposed. Astonishingly, William Evans, who was about to retire as General Secretary of ASLEF, said It was a very able document and an entirely honest attempt to rationalise the railway system. If it had been less ruthless it would have been less than honest.
16 As ASLEF's policy was to oppose line closures, Evans' statement was quickly repudiated by his EC. Ray Gunter was the first member of the TSSA to comment on Beeching's Plan and during a television interview he said the nation should be grateful to Dr. Beeching whose plan was one of the bravest efforts I have known in industry to face the economic facts of life.
17 Marples, of course, welcomed the BRB's plan and immediately announced that some roads might have to be strengthened, widened or modified to take the extra traffic that would arise from the railway closures. He was supported by the British Road Federation who had already suggested that the expenditure on roads should be doubled over the next five years.18 Their lobbying was successful and in October the Ministry of Transport announced that its road building programme would be doubled over the coming five years and that a total of £1,700 million would be spent on the construction and maintenance of roads.19
The BRB was inexplicably hopeful that their report would restore confidence in the industry's future and remove the anxiety that had existed amongst its employees for some years, but after having been centralised, reorganised, modernised, decentralised and now confronted by the Beeching Plan, their fears were increased. With members in both road and rail, the TSSA had consistently sought to achieve a rational, planned transport system. A statement issued by the EC said that social needs, industrial development, congestion and uneconomic working on roads had not been taken into account. Therefore, Beeching's methods should be similarly applied to road operations, or chaos would be the inevitable result.20 The Times said:
"We cannot claim to have got transport into perspective until the social and economic consequences of what is now proposed have been fully assessed and until a Beeching type of approach for the whole of the transport system has been completed. If road users were to be inflicted with the same severity as Dr. Beeching has applied to rail travellers there is no knowing what the results would be."21
The unions were not against contraction as a matter of principle. The railway industry had seen its personnel reduced from 648,000 in 1948 to 474,538 by 1962, all without industrial conflict until October of that year. No fewer than 304 branch lines were eliminated between 1950 and the end of 1962, equating to 3,618 miles - approximately 19 per cent of the total route miles.22 Most members felt that Beeching's proposals went too far and all the transport unions declared their opposition. Many others joined them, with protests from the National Council on Inland Transport, led by its chairman Lord Stonham, the Ramblers' Association, the Pedestrians' Association and several local authorities including sea-side resorts that were soon to be denied railway access.
The Beeching era coincided with the election of a new TSSA General Secretary and in January 1963, John Bothwell23 replaced William Webber who had retired to concentrate on his job at the National Coal Board. John Bothwell, a quietly spoken Scot with an eye for detail, took over during one of the most difficult moments in the history of the Association.
The first joint trade union meeting to discuss Beeching's Plan was held on 8th April 1963 between the CSEU, the NUR. ASLEF and the TSSA. A decision to strike was opposed by the Association and there was some indignation when Ray Gunter, who was now a member of the Labour Party NEC, suggested that if a strike were held it would adversely affect Labour's electoral prospects.24 Of the TSSA's 421 branches, 41 told John Bothwell that they agreed with the decision not to strike, and three supported action.25 The strike was set for 14th-16th May and several meetings were held between the BRB, Marples, the TUC and railway unions. These eventually resulted in substantial improvements to the resettlement and redundancy terms and the strike was called off on 9th May.
When the 581 delegates to the 1963 Annual Conference assembled in the Empress Ballroom at Blackpool, the Beeching Plan dominated the proceedings. John Bothwell opened the debate and declared that transport should be determined on the basis of total social benefit. He emphasised the need for a national transport policy, the co-ordination of future road and rail developments and transport planning integrated with other social and economic policies. The anger expressed by delegates about Beeching's Plan continued relentlessly.
The public campaign against the cuts was launched on 25th June 1963 in the Central Hall, Westminster, with over 2,000 present. The speakers were Harold Wilson, Sidney Greene and Ray Gunter. This was followed by demonstrations and protest meetings organised by Trades Councils, the Co-operative Party, Joint Committees of local railway unions and Labour parties all over the country. Supporters of the Manchester Joint Railways' Committee, and its secretary Harold Colley, paraded through the city on 13th October, led by the Culcheth Military Band and the banners of ASLEF, the NUR and TSSA. A rally in the Houldsworth Hall followed, with Lord Stonham, William Ballantine, Assistant General Secretary of the NUR. and Ellis Smith MP as the main speakers. On 3rd November over 700 people attended a rally in Glasgow with Anthony Wedgwood Benn MP, George Brassington, Assistant General Secretary of the NUR. and Ray Gunter as the speakers.
The 1963 Labour Party Conference opposed Beeching and called for a national transport plan but the Government remained intransigent. By the end of the year the Transport Users' Consultative committees were considering the merits of closing 167 lines. When they completed their work, of the 7,025 stations that had existed in 1961, only 3,002 remained in use eight years later.26 The public were, to a large extent, committed to the motor car, and the construction of motorways continued unabated. As a result the Government's financial support for the railway industry was, and continued to be, far less than that of the majority of other European countries.27 Environmental issues did not receive the same priority as in later years and for this the British people paid a heavy price.28 Indeed, so great was the power of the road lobby within Parliament that it was not until October 1994, with the publication of the Royal Commission on Environmental pollution that it would be seriously challenged.
Not long after Beeching was appointed he had declared that the BRB sought a smaller but better paid work force and that railway workers should be at the top of the league table. When he departed in May 1965, railway employees had seen their number reduced to 362,000 and salaried staff had decreased from 102,668 in 1949 to 90,999. Railway passenger fares increased by more than 25 per cent between 1960 and the end of 1965 and the deficit grants had exceeded £500 million.29 Regardless of Guillebaud, rates of pay failed to keep pace with those of outside industry; in 1962, an increase of 3 per cent awarded to Salaried Grades still left their pay approximately 5 per cent below the median used by Guillebaud. The increases gained between 1963-1965 were 3¾ per cent, 4 per cent and 3½ per cent, and differences with outside industry continued.
In 1956, William Norton, the former leader of the Irish Labour Party and now Minister for Industry and Commerce, appointed a committee to examine public transport. Dominick Murphy submitted a paper which favoured a railway-based public system, and indicated that the TSSA would welcome and co-operate in any scheme to improve transport. When the committee reported in May 1957 it noted that £11,300,000 had been lost between 1946 and 1956, and proposed that 1,918 miles of railway lines be closed, leaving just 850 miles. Of CIE's 149 stations, only 49 were recommended for retention and it was expected that railway employees would be reduced by up to 40 per cent. The Provisional United Trade Union Organisation established a group, which included Dominick Murphy, to study the report. They condemned it and suggested that a subsidy should be provided on the grounds that roads were heavily subsidised by the taxpayer and railways should not be treated any differently.30
Following the victory of Fianna Fáil at the General Election in March 1957, a new Minister took over responsibility for transport, and Sean Lemass told the Dáil on 27th November that CIE had made a loss that year of £2 million and that a Transport Bill was forthcoming. The Minister confirmed that it was still the Government's intention to retain publicly-owned transport but it sought to close the gap between revenue and operating costs. He had been advised by CIE that despite a reduction of approximately 30 per cent of the 14,000 staff employed on CIE and the Great Northern Railway there would be no loss in efficiency.
Legislation to implement the Government's policy, which broadly followed the recommendations of the transport enquiry set up by Norton, was introduced in Dáil Éireann during April 1958. The railway debts were written off and CIE was given a subsidy of £1 million per annum for five years, greater commercial freedom to manage its affairs and authorisation to eliminate any services it considered uneconomic. It was, however, expected to eliminate its losses by 31st March 1964. The TSSA co-operated with the Provisional United Trade Union Organisation to prepare amendments to the Bill, with considerable assistance being provided by the Labour Party and especially Deputy Sean Casey. The redundancy terms proposed by the Government were inferior to those provided in previous transport legislation, and it was thanks to people such as Dominick Murphy and Sean Casey that substantial improvements were made. Later, when the statutory provisions for redundancy compensation were approaching the expiry date of 15th July 1963, a resolution, proposed by the TSSA at the Irish CTU, called for the redundancy terms and the five-year subsidy period to be extended. An amendment to this effect was approved by the Dáil and when the financial provisions of the Transport Act (1958) finally lapsed on 31st March 1964, new legislation was enacted - the Transport Act (1964). A subsidy of £2 million per annum was provided for a period of five years with provision for a review to be made at five-yearly intervals thereafter.
When CIE was formed in 1950 much of its railway system had been run down and it was poorly equipped. This led to a modernisation programme with new wagons and rolling stock being purchased, and CIE was amongst the earliest of the railway companies in Europe to eliminate coal as its power source. Meanwhile, the 1958 Transport Act led to successive branch line closures with 586 miles of lines and 208 stations being taken out of the system by April 1963. In most cases, substitute bus services were provided by CIE but a thousand railway jobs were lost.
In Northern Ireland a measure of public control had existed before the Second World War; this had been introduced to rectify a chaotic state of affairs that existed in transport. The Government's decision to resolve the matter had been stimulated by an initiative of the RCA which had led a delegation from the three railway trade unions to the Prime Minister and his colleagues in November 1933. They pointed out their concern, and in 1934 the Government asked Sir Felix Pole, the former General Manager of the GWR, to inquire into Northern Ireland's transport problem and to submit recommendations. The RCA gave evidence to Pole and in his report to the Government he recommended the co-ordination of road and rail services. Pole's advice was accepted, and the Road and Railway Transport Act (N.I.) 1935 was passed. From this came the formation of the Northern Ireland Road Transport Board incorporating the Belfast Omnibus Company, H.M.S. Catherwood Ltd and, with the exception of the Lough Swilly Railway, the road transport organisation of the railway companies operating in Northern Ireland. A pooling of receipts with the railway companies was introduced. During the Bill's passage through Parliament the trade unions, led by J.T. O'Farrell, had succeeded in getting through a number of amendments which provided greater protection and compensation for employees, including the requirement to set up a superannuation fund. The RCA took full advantage of this and, combined with an intensive recruiting campaign by the Belfast branch, within one month of the new Board being formed over 90 per cent of the area's potential membership had been recruited to the Association.
After the war public transport remained in financial difficulty and in 1948 it was reorganised by the Government and the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) was formed. This was composed of the Road Transport Board, the Belfast and County Down Railway and the LMS. The chairman of the UTA was Major F.A. Pope, Chairman of the Northern Ireland Transport Board, whose duty was to provide an efficient, co-ordinated and integrated transport system. One trade unionist was included on the Board of the UTA, S. McCoubrey MBE, the local secretary of the National Union of Sheet Metal Workers. In 1953, the Governments on both sides of the border acquired the Great Northern Railway, and a Joint Board of Management was formed with members appointed by the Ministries of Commerce of both countries. One of these was TSSA member Martin O'Sullivan31 who had retired from the railway in 1951.
Two years after it was nationalised, the Great Northern Railway announced it was closing a number of branch lines to reduce its losses. This was described by Dominick Murphy as a thoughtless approach to the transport problem
32 Similar protests came from a variety of organisations including Unionist Associations, County Councils and the Belfast Trades Council. At a meeting on 18th April 1956 between Lord Glentoran, the Minister of Commerce, and a delegation led by Alfred Sams, trade unionists opposed the closures and recommended that the Great Northern Railway should be integrated with the UTA; that new coaches be purchased, illegal road haulage stopped and diesel locomotives introduced. Nothing was achieved at the meeting; indeed the Government had already turned down a request from the Great Northern Railway to introduce diesel locomotives in 1954.
Under the terms of the legislation approved in both Dublin and Belfast, certain sections of the Great Northern Railway could be closed only with the consent of both Governments and, in the event of a disagreement, it had to be passed to Transport Tribunals in both the North and South for their comments. The TSSA was so strongly opposed to the Government's policy that on 9th May 1956, for the first time in its history, it formally opposed the closure of a railway service. Dominick Murphy presented the union's case at both Tribunal hearings33 and whilst he accepted that public transport should not be burdened with hopelessly uneconomic lines, he was against these closures as the alternatives had not been fully explored and the economic case was badly conceived. Murphy affirmed that modernisation was the way forward. At the end of the hearings the Tribunals adopted opposing positions, in line with the attitude of their respective Governments.
In November, Senator Dominick Murphy gained the backing of Seanad Éireann to keep the branch lines open and William Norton announced that he had travelled to Belfast on 31st October to discuss the matter with Lord Glentoran. Norton had suggested that in view of the oil crisis the closures should be left in abeyance until the end of 1957, when the whole matter could be reviewed. Meanwhile, MPs in the affected areas had become increasingly concerned at the impact of the closures on their communities. Murphy prepared a statement setting out the views of the Association, and this was sent to every MP. At the same time that the railway unions were resisting the closure of the Great Northern Railway branch lines, the first political assault on the UTA occurred. This commenced on 10th May 1956 when Dr. Nixon introduced a Private Members bill to Stormont designed to break up the UTA and privatise its 650 road vehicles.
When the Bill was due for its Second Reading on 19th June 1956, 400 employees of the UTA, many of whom were TSSA members, lobbied their MPs, but Dr. Nixon refused to see a delegation led by S. L. McCormick. In the course of the debate Lord Glentoran indicated his support for competitive transport and said that a White Paper would soon be issued, whereupon Nixon withdrew his Bill. The sixteen page White Paper, Public Road Freight in Northern Ireland, was published on 7th November 1956, setting out the Government's view that although the principle of competition in public road transport had considerable merit, it also brought some risks. Despite this, it was considered that the improvement in the level of service to customers outweighed this potential risk. It was expected that 1,170 employees of the UTA and 60 railway staff would be made redundant; in response, a Joint Committee of all the trade unions recognised by the UTA was formed on 16th November, with McCormick as its chairman. The Trade Union Joint Committee campaigned on two issues - opposition to the Great Northern branch line closures and the denationalisation of the UTA freight service. Action designed to win the support of both the public and local traders began, and thousands of postcards were sent to MPs calling for a change of Government policy.
The debate on the Government's White Paper was held in Stormont on 4/5th December 1956 and there is no doubt that the union's campaign had had an effect. Several MPs called for greater co-ordination of transport, but in his speech Lord Glentoran dismissed all appeals to modernise the Great Northern Railway and said that the introduction of diesel locomotives was a completely unjustifiable waste of public money.
34 There was criticism of the White Paper's negative approach to the carriage of freight from both Unionist and Nationalist politicians, but Lord Glentoran insisted that the Government had no intention of subsidising road freight and reaffirmed that it would be removed from the UTA. Ironically, he was obliged to add that as petrol rationing caused by the Suez Crisis had been introduced, this could not take place immediately.
TSSA members in Northern Ireland continued to protest, and a public meeting was held on 13th December with McCormick as the main speaker. In May they took their complaints to the 1957 Annual Conference and delegates expressed opposition to any break up of the UTA. They emphasised the value of an integrated, modernised, public transport system and called for the immediate introduction of diesel locomotives. As a member of the Northern Ireland Development Council, William Webber was regularly in discussion with the Government and on 29th January 1957 he met the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Lord Brookeborough. Webber sought to dissuade him pursuing the denationalisation of freight, and so strongly did he feel about the matter that he said if the legislation were enacted, he would have to consider his position as a member of the Northern Ireland Development Council.35 Webber told the TSSA Executive on his return that the Prime Minister was not unhelpful as far as road freight was concerned but he had insisted that railways had to pay their way36 as, without the authority of the British Parliament, a subsidy could not be contemplated. The Government was committed to closure. At the end of September 1957, 93 miles of railway lines were closed, affecting 18 towns and villages, with UTA buses being provided as the only source of public transport. With a third of its system now removed, the Great Northern Railway continued to experience financial problems and in 1958, the UTA was obliged to take over the Northern Section of the Great Northern Railway Board which had lost nearly £650,000 in the last year of its operation.
In 1961, Webber made further representations to the Northern Ireland Government and suggested that the UTA finances be placed on a more realistic basis. Webber's intervention was either opportune or influential as, on 29th November 1961, the Minister of Finance, Terence O'Neill, announced the Government's intention to recapitalise the railways and write off their debt of £9,638,000 from the end of January 1962. It was not all good news. The Minister also announced that he was ordering an enquiry into the Authority's rail operations and asked Henry Benson, who had been a member of the Stedeford Group, to carry it out.
The Northern Ireland Officer of the Irish CTU submitted a memorandum to Benson which favoured the retention of the existing railway services, and the Northern Ireland Labour Party, at its 39th Annual Conference, urged the Government to modernise the railways and take into account other factors, in addition to economic question.37 The railway unions, led by their spokesman Dominick Murphy, had discussions with Benson, but it has to be said that none of these bodies had any influence on the course that Benson was determined to follow. Indeed, Henry Benson had told the Stedeman Group in July 1960 that if the railways were ever to pay their way, immediate attention had to be given to increasing fares and charges and reducing staff.38
As in the Republic of Ireland and Britain, railway workers had become accustomed to closures, and in the first ten years of its existence the UTA had shut down 49 per cent of its railway lines. At the same time, between 1950 and 1964, the number of private cars in Northern Ireland had more than doubled. The Government had lost its faith in the railways and saw the future of transport as being based on road vehicles and the development of motorways. When Benson made his report in July 1963 he recommended the complete closure of the railway system other than Belfast/Larne Harbour, Belfast/Portadown-the Border and Belfast/Bangor lines and suggested that the freight service be discontinued. He also advocated that the Railway Board be changed from a full-time chairman and 9 part-time directors to a full-time Board. Of the 2,975 railway employees, he recommended that 1,300 should be retained and 358 transferred to road services.
At a meeting held on 21st February 1964, William Webber, Dominick Murphy and Ernest Fowler,39 along with other trade union leaders, met the Prime Minister and the Minister of Home Affairs, William Craig, in a final effort to convince them of the importance of railways to Northern Ireland's economy. All their points were rejected. Six days later TSSA members journeyed once again to Stormont and heard Craig tell his parliamentary colleagues that roads had now become the main arteries of Ulster and if the railway survived it would be used primarily for commuters in and out of Belfast, with an annual review of those lines that remained. Craig announced the lines that were listed for closure and set out his programme for the future of transport. Railway freight services were to be withdrawn and the UTA was to be reorganised into a Road Passenger Operating Company, a Road Freight Operating Company and a Northern Ireland Transport Commission which would have three divisions - Workshops, Hotels/Catering and Railways, all under Government direction. With the exception of the railways, all the groups were required to be commercially viable and if not, then it was intended to allow private operators to take over the service. If that failed and the service was considered essential, only then would a subsidy be provided. The UTA was given the freedom to compete for road freight but Craig said that it would be relieved of its present obligation to provide an efficient, economical, convenient and properly integrated system.40 The 13 hour debate brought criticism of the proposals from all but two speakers but to ensure that the Government achieved maximum support, a three-line whip imposed on Unionist MPs enabled the Government to carry the day by 28 votes to 12. Two Unionists abstained and a Labour amendment was defeated by 29 votes to 15.
The TSSA was now in the final stage of its campaign and in May 1964 support came from the Unionist Party Conference, which condemned the Minister's transport policy. Despite this embarrassment, the Government's proposals received approval from the Transport Tribunal in September 1964 and a tripartite committee composed of trade union representatives, the Ministry and the UTA was established to deal with all the problems that arose. To the pleasure of the road lobby the Government began to expand its road building programme, and in 1965, just after the UTA saw its freight business achieve its best financial performance since 1948, Northern Ireland Carriers Ltd took over much of the freight business. The other two successor companies to the UTA were Ulsterbus and Northern Ireland Railways, all of whom recognised the TSSA
Before the breakup of the UTA, railway workers had received rates of pay which were similar to those on BR. but with the formation of the three separate companies, and despite the efforts of the TSSA, salaries on Northern Ireland Railways started to fall behind those of Ulsterbus and Northern Ireland Carriers. The UTA was widely recognised as having performed a positive role throughout its relatively short and difficult existence. A Special Correspondent in the Belfast News Letter said, The efforts of its road and rail staff of all grades and departments provided a public service second to none for efficiency and courtesy, well worthy of emulation by its successors.
41
[1]. Survey of Road Goods 1962, Department of Transport.
[2]. TSSA EC P&GP Minutes 7th May 1960.
[3]. Public Records Office, Kew. MT 132 79-89. For a more detailed account of the Stedeman Group see British Railways 1948-73 T. R Gourvish Cambridge University Press.
[4]. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, 30th January 1961 Vol. 633 Col. 667.
[5]. TSSA EC P&GP Minutes 7th January 1961.
[6]. Walter Hamlet Johnson (LT Executive Grades). Joined RCA 1944 and Labour Party 1945. Chairman LT Divisional Council; EC 1954-1960; TSSA National Treasurer 1965-1977; TSSA President 1976-1981. Treasurer NFPW 1967-1979; Auditor ITF; Governor Ruskin College 1965-1985. MP 1970-1983.
[7]. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, 21st November 1961 Vol. 649 Col 1260.
[8]. A. L. Beastall (North London). Branch and North London Divisional Council Chairman; Chairman SOC; TSSA Trustee 1984-1993.
[9]. The Times 20th July 1962.
[10]. The Railwaymen Vol 2 P. S. Bagwell.
[11]. TSSA Annual Report 1963.
[12]. Daily Worker 28th March 1963.
[13]. Harold Wilson was elected Leader of the Labour Party, February 1963.
[14]. House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, 30th April 1963 Vol 676 Col 911.
[15]. Modern Railways May 1963.
[16]. The Times 28th March 1963.
[17]. The Times 28th March 1963.
[18]. The Times 27th March 1963.
[19]. The Times 23rd October 1963.
[20]. TSSA EC Minutes 31st March 1962.
[21]. The Times 28th March 1963.
[22]. The Times 28th March 1963.
[23]. J. G. Bothwell CBE (Aberdeen then Central and Head Office). Joined RCA staff 1939 in Scottish office. Appointed Scottish Secretary 1950, Assistant General Secretary 1960, General Secretary 1963-1968. Scottish TUC General Council 1948-1960, Chairman 1953-1954. TUC General Council 1963-1968. ITF General Council 1965-1968.
[24]. Daily Worker 9th April 1963.
[25]. TSSA EC P&GP Minutes 4th May 1963.
[26]. British Rail: The First 25 Years Page 120 M. R Bonavia.
[27]. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (Cmnd. 2674) reported in 1994 that public financial support for BR during 1992-1993 as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product was 20p as against an average of 56p for those countries within the Community of European Railways.
[28]. When the Department of the Environment published Indicators of Sustainable Development for the UK in March 1996 it revealed that the average Briton travelled less far for each gallon of fuel consumed than in 1970. Between 1970 and 1995 the real cost of motoring fell, but bus and rail fares rose dramatically. Overall fuel use for road transport had increased by 90 per cent in 25 years and whereas car travel had doubled to an average of 6,500 miles per person, per year, travel on other passenger vehicles, mainly buses and coaches, had fallen by a quarter to less than 600 miles per person, per year.
[29]. Prices and Incomes Board Report on Pay and Conditions of BR Staff No.8 1966.
[30]. Irish Times 5th September 1967.
[31]. M. O'Sullivan was also Director, Aer Rianta, Chairman, Dublin Docks Board and Commissioner, Irish lights.
[32]. Belfast News Letter 15th November 1955.
[33]. TSSJ June 1956.
[34]. Belfast News Letter 6th December 1956.
[35]. TSSJ July 1957.
[36]. TSSA EC P&GP Minutes 9th February 1957.
[37]. TSSA EC P&GP Minutes 13th January 1962.
[38]. Public Records Office, Kew. MT 152 -84.
[39]. E. Fowler (Belfast NO.2). TSSA EC 1961-1965.
[40]. The Times 14th February 1964.
[41]. Belfast News Letter January 21st 1965.
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