New Rail Service York to Blackpool

One of the many acts of vandalism attributable to Margaret Thatcher was the abandonment of the railway line from Burnley through to Leeds, Bradford and York.  It has to be admitted that when the old bat was feeling proud of her activities in The Falklands, the odd few trains every day rambling their way through the Holme Tunnel near Todmorden was of little consequence in her grand vision.  The line had been used for tanker trains but when they stopped in 1982, only one train per day wended its way through the tunnel.  But then, the Burnley Building Society and the Bradford and Bingley Building Society decided to merge their activities and the joint company sponsored extra trains between the east and west of the Pennines.

The tunnel was built in 1849 at the height of the Victorian railway boom when hundreds of navvies blasted and shovelled their way through 265 yards of faulted sandstone, mudstone and five coal seams to cut a tunnel for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway under the unstable spur of a hill known as Thievely Scout. Network Rail have been patching up the tunnel for years as the surrounding hill and rocks have moved constantly causing severe distortion in the tunnel. There has been a 20 mph speed restriction in the tunnel to minimize vibrations and shocks but ultimately there had to be a long-term solution or line closure. The rocks under the mountain shifted along the Cliviger Valley Fault, probably aggravated by a hundred years of mining in the area for lead and coal. Network Rail closed the line for 20 weeks. During that time, the tunnel has had supporting steel arches installed which much increase the ability of the tunnel to withstand land movements. At the same time they have improved other parts of the line near Todmorden to allow the through route to be suitable for speeds up to 75 mph.With new track installed, today’s privatized operators, Northern Rail, will be able to offer a 40-minute transit from Burnley to Manchester Victoria, using the tunnel and the re-opened curve at Todmorden, as soon as civil servants in London have located some rolling stock for the new service!! Such are the vagaries of privatized railways.

The new line was opened this week and will allow services from York direct to Blackpool. It is encouraging to see construction and improvement of railway lines which can contribute so much to our economy. Railways in Britain took Britain to the top of the industrial league in the 19th century and with government action they can do so again. Re-building railway lines shut down in the era of Beeching and then Thatcher, who just did not like railways, can be achieved quite easily in some areas. Just one year ago, the Bluebell Railway re-established a rail link with the main line third rail electric system at East Grinstead, with the enthusiastic support of the town. If such can be achieved by a volunteer railway, surely commercial railways can achieve as much or more. It is encouraging as well to hear that Hitachi will open a railway manufacturing facility employing up to 4,000 people in the north-east as railways return to their birthplace.Perhaps with HS2 coming through South Lancashire in 50 years or so, we will re-build some more of the Lancashire and Yorkshire as well as the London and North Western?

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Come To Hebden Bridge

This evening I watched, on BBC 2, Evan Davis's second programme about the divide between London and everywhere else in Britain.  It was a useful guide to some of the problems faced by this country.  So much is now concentrated in the south east — and, in particular, in London — that it is having a seriously detrimental effect on the rest of us.  I have argued previously that the problems have been generated not so much by forces of immigration, globalisation and wealth concentration as by the in-competences of various governments.  Back in the days of Margaret Thatcher we had an economic guru in the shape of Sir Keith Joseph who believed totally that everything needed to be privatised because such businesses are so much more efficient — even though there was never the slightest bit of evidence to support such a proposition. On top of this there was a belief that we did not need to have any manufacturing — we could leave that to countries with cheap labour.  The consequence has been an abandonment of almost all manufacturing industry and an increasing migration of people and business to the south east.  Now it is being realised that to have a balanced economy we have to have both services and manufacturing.

Evan Davis was arguing that for any system to work there has to be substantial centres of business activity.  London succeeds because it has these centres and they draw in more people with expertise in specific areas and that encourages more companies to move in. This makes sense.  It was true in Victorian times when Lancashire was the workshop of the world.  The county had coal mines — an essential raw material — a major port that connected us to the Atlantic and America — Liverpool — and railways and canals that connected us to all other parts of the country.  We sometimes forget the magnitude of the achievement of the Stephensons in building a railway between Liverpool and Manchester that could carry goods and people between the two major cities in one hour.  It was an engineering achievement that not only led to the transformation of Britain, but of the world.  Evan Davis visited Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan — among other places and showed us the left-overs from the achievements of bygone ages — empty buildings in a Liverpool that has lost half its population and most of its factories . And a local council in Liverpool that tries to get to grips with old housing — probably no longer needed — and grand buildings — like St George's Hall, grade I listed yet devoid of a purpose and the empty palaces along the waterfront.  These are impressive structures by any standards and it is tragic that we do not make full use of them.  What we need is a big second city much bigger than these places like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, etc to provide a hub away from London that could pull in people and businesses.  Of those cities I have listed, Manchester offers the best hope and was already pulling media companies and their satellites into the Salford Quays area as a result of the BBC moving there.

He visited also the small town of Hebden Bridge in the Pennines because a new and vibrant town was growing at the centre of a collection of undersize cities that had Hebden Bridge at the approximate centre and offered an attractive environment for people to live, while commuting to and from Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Preston and other towns in the area.  There is much that can be done but it needs a major culture change in government — among London based politicians and bureaucrats.  Local people can do much to build their communities but more and more central government has not trusted them to do the right things while still being ignorant themselves. 

I look forward to England's second city being centred on Hebden Bridge.  If it is such a good idea, perhaps we should just get on with it — without ten years of public enquiries, etc.

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Immigration

Last Sunday, in The Observer, Will Hutton was arguing about the pros and cons of immigration.  As we would expect he is very much in favour of immigration but he was arguing for a scheme to charge the super rich up to £2½ million for each of 100 fast track visas issued every year — the revenue to be used for improving infra-structure and for good causes.  He was very critical of Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, for being a tub-thumping anti-immigration, anti-EU, right-wing politician anxious to exploit a root unease about the levels of immigration.  Last year net immigration into Britain was about 220,000.  This is a staggering figure almost enough for another city the size of Bradford [290,000].  Where do we put them?  If they live in a fairly normal housing environment of four per dwelling, then we need another 55,000 houses or apartments just to get them in.  And then we need the back-up services of water, gas, electricity, etc for them to live normal lives.  At present we are building new homes at the rate of about 120,000 per year; so half are needed for the new immigrants.  House prices nationally are rising again, even though they are already too expensive — especially in the south-east.  The government needs to double the rate of building — at least.  In the 1950s, when Harold Macmillan was Housing Minister, he achieved house building rates up to 500,000 per year.  Sure, conditions today are very different but the present rate of house building is rather pathetic.  House building is a good creator of new jobs — they can't export jobs to China.  House building boosts the economy in many ways because it creates so many demands for products manufactured in the UK — from bricks, concrete, drain pipes and roofing tiles to plasterboard, wallpaper, paint and fitted kitchens.  It will tend to lower property prices until the government starts charging the correct interest rates and makes mortgages easier to obtain.  It should be possible to buy a first house for less than 4x the average wage — that is completely impossible in many parts of the country.

A fundamental problem and a cause of much unease about immigration is population density.  England , particularly, is one of the most densely populated places on Earth.  We have 1054 people/square mile; Poland is 319 people/square mile; Belarus is 120 people/square mile and Kazakhstan — a place almost as big as Western Europe [excluding Scandinavia] — is down at 15.39 people/square mile.  It is not surprising that we have problems.  We cannot carry on with net immigration levels that will add 1 million people to our population every five years. 

This country has many problems caused not only by immigration and globalisation but more than anything by incompetent governments.  Labour government of the 60s and 70s ignored the chaos caused by union militancy and out-dated industries.  Tory governments of the 80s and 90s became obsessed by privatisation and persuaded themselves that we did not need to manufacture anything — we could leave that to countries where labour was cheap.  And, worse still, we allowed the financial services sector to run riot, allowing them to pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses.  The governments of Blair and Brown allowed this to continue until, in the traditions of 1929, the whole edifice collapsed and we, the taxpayers of the western world had to bail them out.  Yet, even now as our government struggles to balance its books and the debt gets bigger and bigger, the financial institutions pay themselves the same obscene salaries and bonuses as before while being fined for various forms of misrepresentation, corruption and incompetence.

The bowing of our leaders to finance and speculation while neglecting our ability to make things has moved the concentration of population and jobs towards the south east, has made property impossibly expensive and left vast tracts of the UK semi-abandoned.  With proper support and directing of investment, this country is capable of competing with any country in the world.  We built the railways that transformed civilisation in the 19th century yet now we are almost incapable of making railways, ships and large civil engineering structures.  We can make cars — with proper investment as at Jaguar and Nissan — and we do reasonably well in supplying the aviation business but there is so much more that we could do. 

British attitude the EU is ambivalent at best and increasing numbers would like us to get out.  This may not be the right thing to do but the Eu does little to persuade us that setting ourselves free would be detrimental.  The EU needs to either [a] form a proper economic union — unlikely or [b] abandon the euro — also unlikely.  Will Hutton tells us that net immigration into Britain from the original 15 member states was about 30,000 but the net influx including all the new members for Eastern Europe is very much higher.  Nevertheless, the likelihood is that over the years immigrants form the EU will often return to their home countries.  Consequently, net EU immigration is not likely to be a problem in the long term.  It is net immigration from non-EU countries that will be a continuing problem and I will address that issue in a separate posting.

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Chartwell

At present I am reading one of Michael Dobbs' novels set around the life of Winston Churchill before and during World War II.  These are impressive books that really do, as the late Anthony Howard said in The Times, "bring historical happenings so vitally back to life."  The author describes Churchill's home at Chartwell with some affection.  It is a place I visited many times. when I lived in Sussex.  There was nothing I enjoyed more than to go down to Chartwell on a sunny summer day and spend many hours walking around the house and gardens and visiting the gallery in the garden where the great man's paintings were displayed.  Mrs Churchill never really liked Chartwell but the couple lived there from 1922 until Winston died in 1965.  Winston Churchill was never a very rich man and relied for the most part on his writings to make a living.  After his defeat in the General Election of 1945 it rapidly became clear that they could not afford the upkeep on this far from cheap to run rambling mansion..  Although they still owned the property they did so only because newspaper magnate, Viscount Camrose — owner of the Daily Telegraph — and nine other wealthy well-wishers gave Churchill £5,000 [equivalent to about £160,000 today] each, to help pay for the upkeep of the building, on the understanding that they paid a nominal rent and after they were both dead the house would be handed to the National Trust. In fact after the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965, Clementine Churchill handed the house to the National Trust, immediately.

But problems with debt and the cost of running the house were not new.  Back in 1938, when Churchill had been out of office for nearly a decade and living on his MP's salary and his journalism, he was pressed to put Chartwell up for sale.  It was said in the agent's description that Chartwell had 5 reception rooms, 19 bed rooms — with dressing rooms — 8 bathrooms, had three cottages set in an estate of 80 acres and included a swimming pool.  Sir Henry Strakosch bailed out Churchill by taking over his share portfolio for three years and paid off heavy debts so the house did not need to be sold.

Clemintine's objections to the house were mainly practical ones; it was big and rambling, prone to being drafty and cost a small fortune to keep warm — no double glazing, loft insulation or cavity wall insulation here.  But Winston Churchill's love for the house was that of a romantic.  Its location affords panoramic views across the Weald of Kent and Churchill was prone to waxing lyrical about the countryside that "we are fighting for."  Its location is truly splendid; to stand on the terrace and look out across Kent to the English Channel always sent shivers down my spine and made me proud to be an Englishman.

The house exudes Churchill in every room; all of which have been restored to the condition they would have been in during the years when Churchill lived there.  Being able to see his library, his work-room, the stand-up desk where he worked and the dining room with its seating for about ten people, it is easy to imagine Churchill leaning over your shoulder, pointing out many of the small mementos of his many visitors from Charlie Chaplin to President Eisenhower.

The gardens complete with Winston's brick walls are charming and relaxing and it was always a pleasure to look at his collection of paintings.  He was a competent artist rather than a great one but I suspect the he was a better artist than Claude Monet would have been a statesman. 

Now that I am living in the North of England, I don't suppose I will ever visit Chartwell again but I will always retain fond memories of this wonderful and very historic house.

Today, Churchill is remembered as a giant of British politics and a great man.  He was.  Although not always consistent, his politics came from the heart and he stood up for what he believed in and above all he believed in Great Britain.  In comparison, most of today's British politicians are mere pygmies wandering aimlessly, without ideas or principles, around the corridors of power.

But Chartweel, go there if ever you have the chance.

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