Reappraisal and Reshaping: Government and the Railway Problem 1951-64

Abstract

This article discusses the thinking behind the programme of railway closures set out in the 1963 report, The Reshaping of British Railways. The report's author, Dr Richard Beeching, has been criticised for looking at the railways in isolation from transport as a whole, for examining them in purely financial terms and for ignoring the social consequences of closures. This article argues that such criticisms ignore the background to the report, which should be seen as part of a reasoned attempt to bring logic to the relationship between government and the nationalised industries, and as an attempt to provide for what were reasonably believed to be the nation's future transport requirements. The Beeching period represented an improvement on the railway policies that ministers had pursued during the 1950s. The article begins with an account of the railways' slide into bankruptcy during the 1950s before discussing the two key developments underlying the policy associated with Beeching: Treasury thinking on transport policy and the relationship between government and the nationalised industries.