His main interest, however, has always been the railways of Britain and their economic, social and cultural impact. Ernest Marples: the shadow behind Beeching”, by David Brandon and Martin Upham will be published by Pen and Sword in 2022. Early in 1975 he suddenly fled to Monte Carlo just before the end of the tax year, fearing that he would otherwise be liable for a substantial tax bill.

In this role he oversaw the introduction of subscriber trunk dialling, the Atlantic cable and Premium Bonds. He is accompanied by Sir Owen Williams who handed over the motorway to the Ministry on behalf of the construction companies concerned. The project to catalogue the Papers of Ernest Marples began in the summer of 2019 and was largely completed by the end of that year. If the 1945-51 Labour Government had been all about the creation of the welfare state and nationalisation, the succeeding Conservative Government was all about the construction of a land fit for heroes. I have no doubt he personally benefitted from contracts issued by his own ministry, but the new Labour government continued with the same policies, suggesting a broad political consensus over transport policy.Marples was finding, like so many Ministers in the decades to come, that upsetting motorists was not a wise policy. David Brandon had many jobs before becoming involved in teaching and organising in Further and then Higher Education, specialising in Adult Education.

He both oversaw significant road construction (he opened the first section of the M1 motorway) and the closure of a considerable portion of the national railway network with the Beeching cuts. John Holmes was a neighbour and ‘friend’ of my father’s and I well remember him dropping in and talking about this case. In parallel with this, more statistics on user numbers were gathered in September 1962 by officials working on the Beeching Report. His departure came in the wake of the failure of a plan to avoid paying tax on his properties by involving a Liechtenstein-based company with which he had been involved for more than ten years.

Very true, Beaching saved the railways, it could never had continued with the Victorian attitude of shifting everything to everywhere from race horses to coal, in the age of developing Road Transport. In this case, they have endeavoured to present their subject in an objective way, warts and all, without being tempted to the sensational. In early 2020, the rumours were corroborated by broadcaster and investigative journalist Tom Mangold, based on the diaries of Lord Denning's then-secretary, Thomas Critchley. The dataset was opened up on 1 April 2010 following support from many people, including MPs, [31] [32] and Code-Point Open can now be downloaded free with data.