Richard Beeching, Baron Beeching (21 April 1913 – 23 March 1985), commonly known as Dr Beeching, was a physicist and engineer who was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the early 1960s for his report The Reshaping of British Railways, commonly referred to as The Beeching Report, which led to far-reaching changes in the railway network, popularly known as the Beeching Axe.
As a result of the report, just over 4,000 route miles (6,400 kilometres) were removed from the system on cost and efficiency grounds, leaving Britain with 13,721 miles (22,082 km) of railway lines in 1966. A further 2,000 miles (3,200 km) were lost by the end of the 1960s, while other lines were reduced to freight use only.
Beeching was born in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, the second of four brothers. His father was Hubert Josiah Beeching, a reporter with the Kent Messenger newspaper, his mother a schoolteacher and his maternal grandfather a dockyard worker. Shortly after his birth, Beeching's family moved to Maidstone where his brothers Kenneth (who was killed in the Second World War) and John were born. All four Beeching boys attended the local Church of England primary school, Maidstone All Saints, and won scholarships to Maidstone Grammar School, where Richard was a prefect. Beeching and his elder brother Geoffrey attended Imperial College of Science & Technology in London, where both read physics and took first class honours degrees. His younger brothers both attended Downing College, Cambridge.
Beeching remained at Imperial College where he undertook a PhD degree under the supervision of Sir George Thomson. He continued in research until 1943, first at the Fuel Research Station in Greenwich in 1936 and then the following year with the Mond Nickel Laboratories in London, where he was appointed senior physicist carrying out research in the fields of physics, metallurgy and mechanical engineering.
In 1938 he married Ella Margaret Tiley, whom he had known since his schooldays. They initially set up home in Solihull, and remained married for the rest of his life. They had no children. During the Second World War Beeching, at the age of 29, was lent by Mond Nickel on the recommendation of Dr Sykes at Firth Brown Steels to the Ministry of Supply, where he worked in its Armament Design and Research Departments at Fort Halstead. His first post was with the Shell Design Section where he had a rank equivalent to that of army captain. Whilst with Armament Design, Beeching worked under the department's superintendent and chief engineer, Sir Frank Smith, a former chief engineer with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).
After the war, Smith returned to ICI as technical director and was replaced as chief engineer of Armament Design by Sir Steuart Mitchell who promoted Beeching, then 33, to the post of deputy chief engineer with a rank equivalent to that of brigadier. Beeching continued his work with armaments, particularly anti-aircraft weaponry and small arms. In 1948 he joined ICI, as personal technical assistant to Sir Frank Smith; he remained for around 18 months, working on the production lines for various products such as zip fasteners, paints and leathercloth with a view to improving efficiency and reducing production costs. He was then appointed to the Terylene Council, and subsequently to the board of ICI Fibres Division.
In 1953 he went to Canada as vice-president of ICI (Canada) Ltd, and was given overall responsibility for a terylene plant in Ontario. He returned after two years to become chairman of ICI Metals Division on the recommendation of Sir Ewart Smith. In 1957 he was appointed to the ICI board as technical director, and for a short time also served as development director.
Sir Ewart Smith, who retired from ICI in 1959, was asked by the Conservative Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, to become a member of an advisory group on the financial state of the British Transport Commission to be chaired by Sir Ivan Stedeford. Smith declined but recommended Beeching in his place, a suggestion which Marples accepted. Stedeford and Beeching clashed on a number of issues connected with Beeching's proposal to drastically prune Britain's rail infrastructure. In spite of questions being asked in Parliament, Sir Ivan's report was not published until much later.
On 15 March 1961 Ernest Marples announced in the House of Commons that Beeching would be the first chairman of the British Railways Board in due course, and that in the meantime he would be a part-time member of the British Transport Commission with immediate effect, becoming the chairman of the commission from 1 June 1961. The board was to be the successor to the British Transport Commission, which would be abolished by the Transport Act 1962. Beeching would receive the same yearly salary that he was earning at ICI, the controversial sum of £24,000 (over £490,000 in 2016 currency), which was £14,000 more than his predecessor Sir Brian Robertson and two-and-a-half times higher than the salary of any head of a nationalised industry at the time. Beeching was given a leave of absence for five years by ICI in order to carry out this task.
At that time the government was seeking professional advice from outside the railway industry to improve the financial position of British Railways. There was widespread concern at the time that, despite substantial investment in the 1955 Modernisation Plan, the railways continued to record increasing losses – from £15.6 million in 1956 to £42 million in 1960. Passenger and goods traffic was also declining in the face of increased competition from the roads; by 1960, one in nine households owned or had access to a car. It would be Beeching's task to find a way of returning the industry to profitability as soon as possible.
On 27 March 1963, under orders from Marples, Beeching published his report on the future of the railways, entitled The Reshaping of British Railways. He called for the closure of one-third of the country's 7,000 railway stations. Passenger services would be withdrawn from around 5,000 route miles accounting for an annual train mileage of 68 million and yielding, according to Beeching, a net saving of £18m per year. There were no proposals to improve or repurpose the usage and efficiency of the existing network or how to maintain or dispose of redundant infrastructure. The reshaping would also involve the shedding of around 70,000 British Railways jobs over three years. Beeching forecast that his changes would result in an improvement in British Railways' accounts of between £115 million and £147 million. The cut-backs would include the scrapping of a third of a million goods wagons, much as Stedeford had foreseen and fought against.
Unsurprisingly, Beeching's plans were hugely controversial not only with trade unions, but with the Labour opposition and railway-using public. Beeching was undeterred and argued that too many lines were running at a loss, and that his charge to shape a profitable railway made cuts a logical starting point. As one author puts it, Beeching "was expected to produce quick solutions to problems that were deep-seated and not susceptible to purely intellectual analysis." For his part, Beeching was unrepentant about his role in the closures: "I suppose I'll always be looked upon as the axe man, but it was surgery, not mad chopping."
Beeching was nevertheless instrumental in modernising many aspects of the railway network, particularly a greater emphasis on block trains which did not require expensive and time-consuming shunting en route.
Labour came to power at the general election in October 1964. On 23 December 1964, Transport Minister Tom Fraser informed the House of Commons that Beeching was to return to ICI in June 1965.
Second Beeching Report and creation of British Rail
In early 1965 Beeching unveiled the new brand for the railways – British Rail – and its 'double arrow' symbol, which is still in use as the symbol of National Rail now. The legal name of the British Railways Board did not change. On 16 February Beeching introduced the second stage of his reorganisation of the railways. his second report set out his conclusion that of the 7,500 miles (12,100 km) of trunk railway throughout Britain, only 3,000 miles (4,800 km) "should be selected for future development" and invested in. This policy would result in traffic through Britain being routed through nine selected lines. Traffic to Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland would be routed through the West Coast Main Line running to Carlisle and Glasgow; traffic to the north-east would be concentrated through the East Coast Main Line which was classified as ‘not for development’ north of Newcastle; and traffic to Wales and the West Country would go on the Great Western Main Line, then to Swansea and Plymouth. Underpinning Beeching's proposals was his belief that there was still too much duplication in the railway network, although this report did not propose any closures. Of the 7,500 miles (12,100 km) of trunk route, 3,700 miles (6,000 km) involves a choice between two routes, 700 miles (1,100 km) a choice of three, and over a further 700 miles (1,100 km) a choice of four.