‘Oh, Mr Thomas, what am I to do?
Your Restruct’ring Committee
Has sent my train to Crewe
I need to get to Highbury, to see them win the cup,
Oh, Mr Thomas, I do wish you’d hurry up!’
Oh! Mr Thomas, music hall song regarding Jimmy Thomas’
Restructuring Committee’s perceived slowness and inefficiencies, dated 1928
Your Restruct’ring Committee
Has sent my train to Crewe
I need to get to Highbury, to see them win the cup,
Oh, Mr Thomas, I do wish you’d hurry up!’
Oh! Mr Thomas, music hall song regarding Jimmy Thomas’
Restructuring Committee’s perceived slowness and inefficiencies, dated 1928
Staying On Track
Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson during filming of 2009's series of 'Top Link', the BBC's flagship railway programme
In an attempt to make this book more ‘accessible’ to those less scholarly members of society, this and a number of other chapters in this book are kindly provided by members of the broadcast and journalistic media. We thank Mr Clarkson for his frank and amusing writing style.
I’ll make no bones about it – I’m no historian. You won’t find any pieces of chalk in the pockets of my jacket, or my neck to be crooked from years of staring down into dusty volumes about the Roman Empire. The contents of my pockets are more likely to be my car keys, a notebook containing the latest numbers I’ve jotted down from the side of trains, and a plane ticket to Iberia. On a good day, that is. As you can probably tell, my interests lie more in British engineering than in British exceptionalism (when Richard Hammond first told me that phrase in the studio I asked if it was some sort of real ale). So naturally, when Professor Durham wrote to me to ask if I would contribute to this book of his, I was more than a little sceptical. So sceptical, in fact, that you could probably have cut glass on the stiffness of my raised right eyebrow. But when he told me what he wanted me to write about – ‘something about engineering. The railways, design industry, that sort of thing’ – I was sold. As a railway enthusiast (cars have always been a secondary passion for me) since my dad first took me on the Brighton Belle when I was 4, I consider it a great honour to be able to put down in writing an account of the great railways of this great country.
So, despite me not being much of a historian in general, I’m not ashamed to say that like any self-respecting gricer I know the history of the railways of this fair isle of ours pretty much off by heart. The bit I’ve been asked to recount first is the first stage of the plans that the Union put in place when it took over from the UK in the 1920s. Basically, the ‘grouping’ plan that had been instituted in 1922 after the Great War ended the chaos (or so it seemed) of all the different railway companies in the country by combining them all into four part-state owned but operationally independent companies: the Southern Railway, the London and North Eastern Railway, the London, Midland and Scotland Railway and the Great Western Railway. These groupings, while a marked improvement on the cripplingly inefficient (and horribly exploitative of their workers) companies that were running things all over the country before the Great War, were themselves severely lacking in the efficiency and workers’ rights department. It’s not surprising that Jimmy Thomas and his railway union were leading lights in the General Strike that led to the Revolution, given how unpopular the bosses of the railway companies were. Working conditions were appalling, and there was widespread concern among the railwaymen that the railway network itself was not helping the most needy sections of the country that it needed to. In short – it wasn’t that great, it was too expensive for the poor, and poorer areas were woefully under-serviced.
So that was the lie of the land on the eve of the Revolution. Flash forward a couple of years and Jimmy Thomas (the same bloke) has been put in charge of reorganising the railway network along socialist lines. Complete nationalisation was talked about, but rejected as too expensive and potentially taking too much control away from local Syndicates. Thomas’ commission decided instead on two key plans. First it would work closely with the railwaymen of the Union to improve working conditions and hours, while increasing services in under-represented and poorer areas. Second it was to work with both the Federal Committee and the local Syndicates (regional groupings of local Unions, each with their own Chairpersons) to establish a new, freight-focused (there was little call for moving around the country at time) rail network. The track would be the responsibility of both the regional rail operator (there were four, like under Grouping, but they had been given a thoroughly socialist structure now) and the Federal Committee. Timetables, rolling stock and so on would be the sole responsibility of the individual railway operators. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t blame you if it doesn’t sound that simple, because it wasn’t.
Thomas and his committee had their work cut out for them. The UK’s system of grouping had begun the job of restructuring the network, but focused it more on passenger work. Local Syndicates really had no interest in their own workers deserting them for a more industrially rich area, and the focus that the Union required was very much freight-based. New parts, building materials and so on needed to be able to get across the country with high priority to allow the plans made by the country’s Syndicates to take shape – for instance, the lads in Sheffield wanted to triple the city’s steel output by 1930. That meant coal from Newcastle, blast furnace materials from Kent and increased supplies of iron from Cornwall. The Sheffield Syndicate (affectionately nicknamed ‘the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire’ thanks to the ballsiness of the men in charge) had successfully struck deals with all the other appropriate Syndicates and were on track (pun intended) to make this happen. The trouble was, the railways weren’t up to it. The Sheffield Syndicate was demanding at least five full trainloads every hour until noon, and the network wasn’t kitted out for that sort of load. Junctions got clogged up, passing loops had queues stretching back miles and large sections of the line in rural areas were still in single track thanks to the bonkers era of ‘railway mania’ in the 19th century.
This wasn’t the only problem they faced, but it represents all the chaotic redevelopment that the railways had to supply throughout the 1920s. Couple with this (another pun, sorry) the problem of passenger traffic having to exist on the same lines – unemployment might not have existed anymore [Debatable – J. Durham] but some people still had a gran in Scotland they had to visit, and football fans still had away games to go to – and Thomas and his committee had an absolute nightmare on their hands. By 1929, industry had started improving but not at the rate people wanted, and John Maclean himself was breathing down Thomas’ neck like a lorry driver in a queue behind a 19 year old blonde.
Luckily for poor Jimmy, his saviour was about to arrive. Balding but tanned, healthy yet pipe-smoking (take that, anti-smoking culture) and arguably the greatest administrator this country has ever produced, Clement Attlee arrived home from Bengal on 11 June 1929. He’d been exceptionally highly praised by the locals in Bengal for the work he’d done for their railways, and learned a fair few tricks of the trade while he was at it. His plan for the Union’s railways was simple but ambitious, and combined with Thomas’ command of the Unions it had a chance of working. Clem is said to have entered Thomas’ office without any sense of grandeur, sat down opposite him when invited to do so, and looked him dead in the eyes. ‘So, what’s your big idea, Comrade?’ Thomas asked. Attlee’s reply was characteristically subdued and simple, while making a massive statement at the same time.
‘Four tracks good. Two tracks bad.’[1]
This simple formula would be applied and extended to every trunk line (and some branches) in the country. The problem had always been the railways choking on the amount of freight they now had to take on. Clem had proposed to, wherever possible, double the amount of track currently in use. It was an incredibly ambitious idea, not least because of the amount of land the railway syndicates were going to have to buy up to accomplish it. Thankfully, regionalisation[2] meant that instead of convincing local landowners acre by acre, once the local Syndicates were convinced (and when their committees had taken one look at the number of jobs that would be created for local men, they were convinced pretty quickly, I tell you) there were no more administrative hurdles. As a result, the glorious stretches of eight-track line that run on the major northern industrial routes that survive to this day (there is a bridge a short walk from Wakefield Westgate that provides, in my humble opinion, the best spot to photograph large numbers of trains from on the whole network) were underway by 1930 and completed by 1934. The load on all lines was lightened and jobs were created in areas particularly hard hit by the departure of capitalist bosses who left with their workers’ rightful wages stuffed in a grandfather clock and set off for Canada. The restructuring, after looking in its early stages like it would fail, had achieved great success. In helping him, Clement Attlee had saved Jimmy Thomas’ skin – but not for long. Thomas knew his star was falling as Attlee’s was rising, and Attlee found himself elected Commissary for Home Infrastructure after Thomas’ resignation at the Congress of 1932.
A loco about to speed along a section of track south of Liverpool, along the famous ‘Octuple Way’
There was one other piece of business that Thomas’ committee had to attend to, although it was usually handed off to the more idealistic and less administratively talented members. A number of locomotives on the rails and about to be completed were of classes and names most unsuitable for a republican railway network. Thomas’ committee’s most lasting legacy aside from the increasing of the numbers of tracks is the set of guidelines they published for all future namings of locomotives, as well as the names they gave the particularly reactionary locos running at the time. Here are a few of my favourites:
Proposed GWR King Class became Visionary Class
‘King George V’ renamed ‘John Maclean’
‘King William IV’ renamed ‘George Loveless’
‘King Charles I’ renamed ‘Oliver Cromwell’
‘King George IV’ renamed ‘William Blake’
Visionary Class locomotive 6022 ‘George Loveless’
Proposed LMS Royal Scot Class became Defender Class
‘Royal Ulster Rifleman’ renamed ‘South Wales Territorial’
‘Royal Engineer’ renamed ‘Chief Builder’
‘Royal Scots Grey’ renamed ‘Ironside Cavalry’
‘Queen’s Westminster Rifleman’ renamed ‘Cheapside Militiaman’
Defender Class locomotive 6133 ‘West Yorkshire Territorial’
Proposed SR Schools Class had focus shifted from the now-defunct Public Schools
‘Eton’ renamed ‘Slough Middle School’
‘Whitgift’ renamed ‘Croydon High School’
‘Repton’ renamed ‘Milton Keynes School for Boys’ (my alma mater!)
‘Charterhouse’ renamed ‘Broadwater School’
Schools Class locomotive 900 ‘Slough Middle School’
Proposed LMS Coronation Class became Heroine Class
‘Queen Elizabeth’ renamed ‘Florence Nightingale’
‘Queen Mary’ renamed ‘Emmeline Pankhurst’
‘Duchess of Devonshire’ renamed ‘Emily Davison’
‘Coronation’ renamed ‘Clara Zetkin’
Heroine Class locomotive 6220 ‘Clara Zetkin’
‘King George V’ renamed ‘John Maclean’
‘King William IV’ renamed ‘George Loveless’
‘King Charles I’ renamed ‘Oliver Cromwell’
‘King George IV’ renamed ‘William Blake’
Visionary Class locomotive 6022 ‘George Loveless’
Proposed LMS Royal Scot Class became Defender Class
‘Royal Ulster Rifleman’ renamed ‘South Wales Territorial’
‘Royal Engineer’ renamed ‘Chief Builder’
‘Royal Scots Grey’ renamed ‘Ironside Cavalry’
‘Queen’s Westminster Rifleman’ renamed ‘Cheapside Militiaman’
Defender Class locomotive 6133 ‘West Yorkshire Territorial’
Proposed SR Schools Class had focus shifted from the now-defunct Public Schools
‘Eton’ renamed ‘Slough Middle School’
‘Whitgift’ renamed ‘Croydon High School’
‘Repton’ renamed ‘Milton Keynes School for Boys’ (my alma mater!)
‘Charterhouse’ renamed ‘Broadwater School’
Schools Class locomotive 900 ‘Slough Middle School’
Proposed LMS Coronation Class became Heroine Class
‘Queen Elizabeth’ renamed ‘Florence Nightingale’
‘Queen Mary’ renamed ‘Emmeline Pankhurst’
‘Duchess of Devonshire’ renamed ‘Emily Davison’
‘Coronation’ renamed ‘Clara Zetkin’
Heroine Class locomotive 6220 ‘Clara Zetkin’
So there we have it. I hope this summary hasn’t been too jarring, stuffed in here between pages and pages of waffle from some men who are no doubt a billion times cleverer than me. What I wanted to convey to you is the beauty of the British camaraderie and ingenuity that was displayed in the restructuring of our railways in the 1920s and 1930s. Organisers like Attlee and Thomas, engineers like Bulleid, Stanier and Gresley (all of whom had turned down places on the Exile ships – they loved their people more than any king, those fine men) and union men and leaders across the country pulled together to produce the right lines, the right freight plans and the right locomotives for the situation. And in true British style, they did a fantastic job, for our railway system was up to scratch and handled everything we threw at it.
Until the war.
[1] Eric Blair, Clem: The Man Who Rebuilt Britain (London: The Book Club, 1955) p.42.
[2] A shorthand term used to describe the regional Syndicates’ ownership of all formerly private land – as opposed to nationalisation.
