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... the Beeching plan is no more WRITES
Page 83
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than an interim report'
CRITICS who alleged that Dr. Beeching might have a flair for business but lacked a flair for publicity have been confounded by the skill with which he has put forward his master plan for the railways. He has drawn a picture so compelling that even the railway unions could scarce forbear to cheer. Before our fascinated gaze, he has conjured up new trains like the glittering caravanserai of the Arabian Nights. He has formed up the nation's goods traffic in military order and made it march to his bidding by the million tons.
There need be no excuse for an attempt at a disenchanted view of the Beeching plan. What must soon become obvious is that it is a plain acknowledgement of the railways' limitations. Traffic is divided into categories according to whether the railways very much wish to have it, they would not mind carrying it, or would rather it went by some other means of transport. For virtually the first time there is an unequivocal admission that the railways are just like any other operator; if they wish to make money, they would be advised to specialize. Any haulier could have told them as much these last 40 years.
The plan is designed to work within the limitations that it has itself devised. This is the strength of the document considered as an offering to the public. There are interminable lists of services which it is proposed to close. The individual reader who may be affected by one or other of the items finds himself nursing a private grievance. He is not clear where the blame lies, and he cannot devise a remedy that would not cut across the plan and reduce it to nonsense.
ITEM IN A STRUCTURE
Although it is presented with the inevitability of doom, the Beeching plan is no more than an interim report. It is just one item in a structure that somebody else, presumably the Minister of Transport, will have to build. The presentation is so convincing, however, that many people are left with the impression that they have been shown the main feature in a master plan for all transport, and that only a few minor details are left to be completed.
The statistics help to make the position clearer. There appears, for example, in its true context, the figure of about 90 m. tons of traffic now passing by road that Dr. Beeching suggested some time ago was marked down for a railway snatch. Even on that occasion he added, modestly enough, that the railways would think themselves lucky if they capture half that amount. But the average haulier, for whom the concept of even a million tons is no more easy to grasp than it is for the rest of us, imagined that his business was on the point of vanishing.
If as much as 45 m. tons is added to the 82 m. tons that the railways already carried out of the total of 305 m. tons which was the subject of analysis, there would still be considerably more than half of the traffic going by road. Co-ordination over the whole field of transport, as
suggested in the plan, should really be arranged on the basis that the railways are, if anything, the junior partner.
This is a point that must be borne in mind by private hauliers in the discussions that are to take place with the railways and with British Road Services. The warning may be unnecessary. Road operators in any event do not seem disposed to play a subordinate part. The immediate comment by the Road Haulage Association on the Beeching plan stressed the need for equality in competition, and the R.H.A. chairman, Mr. D. 0. Good, suggested at Bristol a week ago that it was for the railways to line up with the hauliers rather than the other way round.
ONE SURPRISING ILLUSTRATION
One somewhat surprising illustration of the scrupulous manner in which Dr. Beeching stuck to his brief is that the plan makes no reference to its effect upon the other branches of what used to be the British Transport Commission. If it were implemented successfully, the most hard hit road operator might well be British Road Services. Of the 90 m. tons or so of road traffic that seem to be the limit of Dr. 13eeching's ambition, 7-1 m. tons were carried by B.R.S. The inquiry from which these figures are taken covered the year 1960, in the course of which the total B.R.S. tonnage was barely 16 m.
What this means in a word is that Dr. Beeching is after something like half the traffic of B.R.S. It Is not, of course, unexpected that, apart from specialized traffics, the greater part of the goods carried by B.R.S. would fall into the categories most attractive to the railways. B.R.S. is primarily a long-distance carrier of general goods, and, as the report points out, the flow of long-distance road traffic is naturally concentrated between areas of high industrial and population density, and runs parallel to the better used railway services. Granted all this, it would still be a stroke of irony if, as the railways reached towards solvency, they shed part of their losses on to another State organization.
The treatment of B.R.S. in the Beeching plan can be regarded as a touchstone. If the doctor has no tender feelings towards his own kith and kin, he is likely to be at least equally ruthless towards interests with which he has no special tie. He could hardly make it more plain that the object of his exercise has been to show how the railways can be made to pay if this is the only criterion that need be observed. There are occasional references in the plan to the wishes and welfare of other people, but on the whole they are ignored.
No reproach need be levelled at Dr. Beeching. He was working strictly within his terms of reference, and in so doing he has carried out a task that was urgently necessary. Other interests are free to put their own points of view, and in fact have already done so. Now that the glamour has begun to fade, it is clear that the future structure of the transport industry may bear little resemblance to Dr. Beeching's blueprint for a 20th-century Ivory Tower.