Back to the Future? Railway Commercialisation and Privatisation, 1979–2001

Abstract

If, as L.P. Hartley (1958) remarked, the past is a foreign country, then the last two or three decades have seen the development of mass tourism amongst the British political class. While 1979 has been viewed as a major watershed in British political, social and economic life, it has not prevented the near constant plundering of the past as either a warning or a guide for future conduct, for in that past there is much that is useful. The collectivism of the era of political consensus, and in particular the policy of nationalisation, have been carefully nurtured as icons of failure by neoliberals in both the Conservative Party and most recently New Labour. The period from 1945 is portrayed as an aberration, an era in which the country lost its way, when managers were cowed by overpowerful trade union dinosaurs, when individuality was crushed by collective provision, and imagination and creativity were held back by the inertia of bureaucracy and red tape. However, the past has also been drawn on as offering a model for future behaviour. In this reading of history, change is necessary in order to return to a utopian past, a ‘golden age’ marked by entrepreneurial endeavour, when workers were loyal, dependable and committed, and finally when the market was the organising principle behind all aspects of life.

As if shamefaced about the boldness of its new design, Liverpool Street Station has just added ornamental gates with the words ‘Great Eastern Railway’ inscribed in a cast-iron, multi-coloured medallion. It is as though the station were turning its back on not only half a century of BR (the ‘British Railways’ of nationalization) but also on the amalgamation of 1922 which produced the LNER.

(Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, 1994: 115)