Ernest Marples: The Shadow Behind Beeching

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Marples, Ridgway and Partners was a Westminster-based civil engineering contractor founded, and majority-owned, by Marples, who was transport minister from 1959 to 1964. Following their submission of their report, Marples would then be expected to review the recommendations and in due course confirm the closure, with or without adopting the additional measures. 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. From 1951 to 1954, Marples served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, where he was in no small measure responsible for reaching his party’s target of building 300,000 houses a year. Shortly after taking office at Transport, Marples opened the first long stretch of motorway in the UK – the M1 from near Watford to near Rugby in November 1959.

At the same time tenants of his London properties were threatening legal action demanding repairs to structural faults. It fills an important vacancy on the shelves of those interested in post-war politics, ministerial biographies and life writing, and transformational processes in transport and industrial history.

MOTORISTS' FRONT OF JUDEA: Apart from the pneumatic tyre, ball bearings, differential gears, roads, motoring, car ads, and aviation, what have the cyclists ever done for us? The Act was described as the "most momentous piece of legislation in the field of railway law to have been enacted since the Railway and Canal Traffic Act 1854". At Transport (1959-1964) he appointed Dr Beeching chairman of British Railways and commissioned him to produce his infamous report, inaugurated motorways and introduced significant regulations for motorists. There had been 2 million cars on Britain’s roads in 1939, a 100 per cent increase over the previous decade. The author speculates a bit too often – “We may speculate that Ernest’s marriage to Edna had not been a happy one…” May we?

Like it or not, car ownership boomed when Marples was Transport Secretary and buses were also posing a threat to the railways, as they were cheaper to run and able to serve more areas than a railway line. Marples Ridgway’s subsequent contracts included building power stations in England, a dam in Scotland, roads in Ethiopia and England and a port in Jamaica. The closure of the Severn Valley Branch began before the creation of the BRB and the appointment of Beeching. If the image is not in the public domain in the United States, in addition to the license tag for its status in the United Kingdom an appropriate fair use license and rationale should be provided, or the image should be proposed for deletion. It was he who introduced the 70mph speed limit in November 1965 in response to rising road fatalities.

Marples was a wine connoisseur and even produced his own wine from his 45-acre vineyard estate in Fleurie, France. Later Transport Minister Fred Mulley officially did not have a car, though his wife drove an Austin Maxi.

Labour had pledged to halt rail closures, but after election went on to oversee some of the most controversial closures in Beeching’s report. His father had been a renowned engineering charge-hand and Manchester Labour campaigner, and his mother had worked in a local hat factory. Everyone interested in railways has heard of Dr Richard Beeching, whose 1963 report, ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’, recommended the closure of a significant proportion of the UK’s rail network. Ian Nicholls tells the story of the man who opened our motorways and had a soft spot for Minis with a twist.Did the rail closure programme force more people onto the roads, or was the process of migration happening anyway?

British Railways needed to cut back and for all Beeching and Marples are seen as a pair of mad axe men hell bent on destroying the railways, some lines and services were unviable and had to go. 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 rail closure programme continued, with some of the most infamous closure decisions being authorised by Labour ministers.