Ernest Marples: The Shadow Behind Beeching

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The Minister of Housing, Harold Macmillan, later attributed his ascent to the premiership as being greatly facilitated by Ernest Marples. Their fine work redresses the imbalance in our history that has focused on Beeching alone for too long. John Holmes was a neighbour and ‘friend’ of my father’s and I well remember him dropping in and talking about this case. Also when we hear all those claiming that he destroyed much used and essential Branch Lines, when in reality many had long since become financially unviable with more employees than passengers. Interviewed by Graham Robson in the January 2000 edition of MINI Magazine, he said: ‘A friend told me about this car in 1979.

While Traffic in Towns predicted the end of transport cycling the cycle touring Ernest Marples – who had done so much to encourage motoring and therefore knew what it takes to boost a transport mode – said in 1968: “There is a great future for the bicycle if you make the conditions right. Following the Conservatives’ defeat at the polls, the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror newspaper published details of Marples’ tax avoidance plans. BTC officials surveyed passenger numbers in autumn 1961, after which BR British Rail or British Railways(W) announced in January 1962 that the Branch was under review as potentially uneconomic.What set Ernest Marples apart from his fellow MPs was the fact that he was a self-made man from a humble background – something common in politics today, but rare in 1945. Apart from Prime Ministers, most politicians are destined to oblivion in our collective memory, here today and gone tomorrow. Any discussion of the report can arouse strong emotions: was Beeching a villain who took away the train-set (that nobody used) or a hero who forced British Rail to think about profitability? There are those who object on principle to his brand of politics, and see Marples as an enemy of the people for championing road use over public transport.

Ernest Marples is too consequential a figure for his career to be judged on his favouring of roads over railways and end of career tax avoidance. John Cooper organised a meeting between Marples, George Harriman, the Chairman of BMC and Alec Issigonis, the firm’s Technical Director. It was over his handling of British Railways that Ernest Marples has received the most hostile coverage, that he was in collusion with the various conspiratorial interests mentioned earlier, to force the public onto the roads.When he was made Minister of Transport in October 1959, Marples undertook to sell his shareholding in the company as he was now in clear breach of the House of Commons' rules on conflicts of interest.

Instead of having one aperture for the rear window and one for the boot, we ran them into one and turned it into a boxed channel. They revealed that from humble beginnings, Marples became a man of substance by 1938 through property dealing, albeit with the support of an older business friend. When Lord Denning made his 1963 investigation into the security aspects of the Profumo affair and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys and the Duchess of Argyll, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumour that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true. Wasn’t the whole idea of the Beeching plan to try to make BR break even, something it never got close to doing even with all the loss making branches closed.By his teenage years he had followed his father into the labour movement, and was earning money on the side by selling sweets and cigarettes to Manchester football crowds. I found the book balanced and non-judgemental and it pays due tribute to Marples’ many achievements. As such it is a valuable work and surprising that no-one has attempted a biography of this controversial politician before. The bad news that was British Leyland, Chrysler UK and the loss of car making at Luton, Dagenham, Ryton and Longbridge has tended to overshadow the success stories in the British motor industry. Richard Beeching’s controversial pruning of Britain’s railway network and was the owner of a Mini Cooper S hatchback especially built for him by BMC at Longbridge.