Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching - Legacy

Legacy

Beeching's findings have been reviewed in two books by his contemporaries. 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 as of 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 moving from private to public industry. Similarly Fiennes notes that, because a passenger service was producing a loss did not mean that it need always have done in the future. It could reasonably be argued that too many routes were run in a traditional fashion, unchanged from Edwardian Britain, 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 or local managerial accountability/entrepreunialism been introduced. No account was taken of social consequences, one of which was that travellers, who'd been deprived of their local service, would often opt to travel the whole journey by car, resulting in the total loss of a rail passenger. Rail replacement bus services were rarely a success, either.

The political aspects of the Beeching Report remain controversial. The report was commissioned by a Conservative government with 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 is the only person who can authorise abandonment of railway passenger services in the UK.

Several ex-railway sites have been named after Beeching. 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 road Beechings Way at Alford, Lincolnshire, is so named to commemorate the loss of the formerly adjacent station and line (formerly from Grimsby to London, via Louth and Peterborough) under the Beeching Axe. The road 'Beeching Drive' in Lowestoft, Suffolk, located on the site of the former Lowestoft North station is also so named. Coincidentally, a smaller pedestrian area in the vicinity is known as 'Stevenson's Walk'. There is a cul-de-sac in the Leicestershire village of Countesthorpe aptly named Beeching's Close. The village was served by a line between Leicester and Rugby, closed under the Beeching Axe. The gardens of the houses on the west side of the close meet with the boundary of the old line. East Grinstead, where Beeching lived, was formerly served by a railway line from Tunbridge Wells (West) to Three Bridges, a line most of which was closed under the Beeching Axe. To the east of the current East Grinstead station, the line passed through a deep cutting. This cutting currently forms part of the A22 relief road through East Grinstead. Due to the depth of the cutting, locals wanted to call the road "Beeching Cut", but as this was deemed politically incorrect, it was instead called 'Beeching Way'.