British Rail
A history of nationalization, privatization, and regulation of British rail.
Contents
History
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830, was the first inter-city railway in the world.
Construction of a railroad required Parliamentary approval, and canal companies were often successful in lobbying against charters. However, once a charter was granted to a company, there was no regulation or oversight until the Act for Regulating Railways in 1840. This created a Railway Inspectorate under the purview of the Board of Trade. As a result, there were hundreds of disparate rail companies that, in some regions, directly competed with each other for the same inter-city connection.
During World War 1, the British government effectively seized control over the railroads. This established an interest in centralization of the companies, although nationalization would remain off the table until World War 2.
The Railways Act, sometimes referred to as the Grouping Act, was passed in 1921 and came into effect in 1923. This was a precursor to nationalization; to coordinate the industry, rail companies were centralized into the Big Four:
- Great Western Railway (GWR)
- London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS)
- London and North Eastern Railway (LNER)
- Southern Railway (SR)
- The only group that was predominantly passenger rail, owing to the population density of southern England
Light rail and London's metropolitan rail were notably excluded.
Attlee nationalized British rail through the 1947 Transport Act. This established the British Transport Commission (BTC) subordinate to the Ministry of Transport. London's rail system was included in this scheme, with coordinated leadership under a London Transport Executive (LTE).
Under Macmillan, Richard Beeching produced a pair of reports that planned a substantial restructuring of British rail. Macmillan implemented the so-called Beeching cuts through the Transport Act of 1962. The BTC was split into...
British Railways Board (BRB), the substantive successor organization;
London Transport Board (LTB);
- British Transport Docks Board;
- British Waterways Board; and
- Transport Holding Company, a state owned holding company for the government's shares in the above four
Thatcher privatized many of the BRB's auxiliary services, such as British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL), the monopolized locomotive manufacturer.
The LTB proved incapable of addressing the growing traffic problem in London, so authority over that metropolitan rail was transferred to the GLC in 1970. Thatcher abolished local government however, leaving the metropolitan transit system to be broken into many companies and privatized separately.
Major later initiated total privatization of British rail. The Railways Act in 1993 broke up the BRB into lines that could be separably sold. Operation of the rails themselves was handed to Railtrack, a corporation that initially was wholly state owned. Regulatory responsibilities were handed to the Rail Regulator. Franchising was overseen by the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF).
When the GLA was established in 2000, it was granted authority over the metropolitan transit system in the form of Transport for London (TfL). Through a public-private partnership, TfL received control of the London Underground. The PPP ultimately failed, requiring the city to buy out the private shareholders in 2010.
Railtrack was liquidated in 2002, leading to the establishment of Network Rail, a governmental agency.
OPRAF was reorganized as the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA), then responsibilities were gradually moved to either the Department for Transport (DfT) or the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). The SRA was itself abolished by 2006.
Sunak announced plans to re-privatize rail under a Great British Railways. Starmer is expected to dispose of these plans.