Part 1: 1990-1992- The Fall and Rise of Margret Thatcher
I enjoyed reading another thread on this forum, detailing the possible events that would play out for the old publically owned British Rail, should Labour leader Neil Kinnock win the 1992 British General Election, halting the advance of the Conservatives who would privatise BR. As I like trains, writing, politics and alternate history-so I decided to speculate the events that could have played out for British Rail should John Major have never risen to power. In this timeline, we're going to ask the question-what would have happened to British Rail should Margret Thatcher survived her 1990 leadership challenge?
I have tried to pin down generally what might have happened. Of course, it's not entirely accurate, partly because I've only used what I can easily and cheaply find such as; Tanya Jackson's The Nation's Railway, Chris Green's The Intercity Story and the Network South East Story, various online newspaper articles from the area and gauged Margret Thatcher's personality from the book-Mrs Thatcher's Revolution by Peter Jenkins. In order to keep the timeline as accurate as possible, I would have to have trawled through National Archives records at Kew, numerous government records and probably even conducted interviews with people from that era. If I were making a book for publishing, I would have done so. But for a forum post, I'd have to use as much resources as I can with as little time and money as possible.
First, before we jump in- some real history:
The road to privatisation lasted about 10 years. In the mid-1980s, the Thatcher government privatised many non-core assets of BR. Such as its advertising and hotel arms, and Sealink-BR’s ferry services. Thatcher herself, was always against privatising BR in its entirety. However, in 1988, her transport secretary-Cecil Parkinson, declared in a Tory conference speech the Conservative commitment to the future privatisation of BR. Thatcher was not pleased. Nonetheless, a year later in 1989, Parkinson declared privatisation a matter of "not if and when but how". Coupled with the downturn in the economy in 1990 freezing BR’s investment programmes and the rise of John Major, who relentlessly pursued railway privatisation, BR as we knew it finally died on the 1st April 1994. An April fool’s joke too far, perhaps.
So how would this alternate timeline play out? Before we begin, I'll say I haven't written this timeline with any political bias to glorify or scorn any politician or Party, nor have I written it as a platform to fantasise about a glorious, perfect railway under BR. Some things may be better and some things may be worse than our own timeline, but I've tried to write it was as much reason and little personal feelings as possible. I don’t think British Rail would have become a super railway if it was never privatised, with an infinite amount of passenger numbers and electrification as far as the eye can see, but generally I think the investment we saw in the railways from the early 2000s to the present would of possibly of happened in the 1990s to mid-2000s.The 90s would definitely not have been the quiet era of change and uncertainty it was in our timeline, but I think for BR to have been a truly successful railway, it would have needed robust government support from decades before.
Our story begins in December 1990-Thatcher wins her leadership challenge.
The reasons why are unimportant. Perhaps the public backlash from the poll tax was not as bad as in our timeline. Perhaps threre was no Party favourite over who would replace Thatcher and the leadership election tilted to Maggie's favour, or perhaps she simply took a gamble to see challenge to the end which somehow payed off. Whatever it was, Thatcher survives another close encounter with the death of for her premiership.
For the country, the Party and Thatcher herself, her victory was bittersweet-but mostly bitter. Her victory was slight and she commanded less than 10% of a majority. To make things worse, her party was divided at what she should do, as many in the party were certain the Tories would be finished in the forthcoming 1992 General Election. Polls were predicting a Labour win in 1992, the Press reported sensationalist articles of a possible pro-Europe, ‘one nation’ Tory breakaway party led by Heseltine himself (which he denied on several occasions). But for Thatcher herself, she was more bullish than ever. She was always a woman attracted to power and revelled in her high profile meeting with Gorbochev in Moscow back in '87. A new decade had dawned, and for her, it was yet more fertile ground for her premiership.
RESTABLISHING AUTHORITY-THATCHER STYLE
The first thing Thatcher did after victory was perform a cabinet reshuffle, which for the case of BR, might have been the one single action that saved it from privatisation. The Westland Affair was still in the back of her mind which was one of the rare occassions she was reduced to tears, and she knew too well her own party could be her worst enemy. Europe was another huge thorn in her side-she was an outright Eurosceptic, but much of her party such as the infamous Heseltine, were staggeringly pro-European. Railway privatisation was another loaded gun barrel which pointed at her. So, with the foresight of another bitter ideological spat that could bring down her government, she displaced the pro-privatisation Cecil Parkinson as Transport Secretary and sent him elsewhere. Can't be too careful over who could be an enemy in the future. She would appoint a Transport Secretary either loyal enough to Thatcher to leave the privatisation of BR alone, or be against it entirely.
Over at BR, there were quiet sighs of relief. Moreover, latest polls were showing Labour with a double point lead against the Tories, meaning the privatisation of BR would be too contentious for the Tories to even talk about. Should Labour get in, which at the time looked incredibly likely, BR would be truly safe. However, it was not all fanfare at 222 Marylebone Road (BR's headquarters)-BR had been facing terrible problems as the golden age of the 1980s sectorisation had worn off and the 90s recession began to tear into BR’s passenger numbers. Network South East was crumbling on the Kent Coast and LTS sub-sectors, Thameslink was looking further as a pipe dream and over on Intercity, a modernisation of the WCML was badly overdue.
*EDIT 14.01.18-NEW DEVELOPMENTS BELOW*
Very quickly, the problem of railway privatisation had fallen to the bottom of the Prime Minister's list of problems. Instead, Thatcher's focus turned to the floundering British economy which by early 1991 was in a very bad state. While a recession was englufing most developed countries around the world, it was in Thatcher's mind that it was the high interest rates, caused by the insistence of her previous chancellor-Nigel Lawson to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. She had performed two cabinet reshuffles within two years, her infamous "Poll Tax" had caused riots on the streets in cities if there was one true redeeming factor she could use to give her the slightest of chances to be the PM in '92, it would be to stop the economy from falling off a cliff.
In January 1991, Margret Thatcher a drastic 5% cut in interest rates, bring the level down to 8%-how it was back in 1988.
Naturally, this caused further bitter devision in her Party. Cutting the interests rates that low essentially was a de facto decleration of exiting the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Pro-Europe MPs lead by Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke along with Nigel Lawson, attempted to bring down the government's descsion to lower intrest rates and effectively abbandon Britain's membership of the ERM by calling for a Parliamentary vote. However, their attempted rebellion ended before it began when it was found over 100 Conservative MPs would accept a bill to leave the ERM. Thatcher herself, did not want the political and economic turbulance of leaving the ERM so soon after joining, and confided with her new Chancellor of the Excheqour that she would, if re-elected in 1992, bring Britain out of the ERM.
"Why am I cutting interests rates? Because I will not destory the British economy in favour of the fortunes of the German economy!"-Margret Thatcher, Prime Minister's Questions-29th January 1991.
Over at British Rail, the cut in interest rates slowed the deterioration of the economy and thus, the Networker and Intercity programmes were cautiously going ahead as planned.
However, to take the privatisation element off the table for ever, Thatcher had met with the then chairman of BR-Sir Bob Reid and managing director of Network South East-Chris Green in March 1991, to discuss what could be done to improve BR. “The way I see it,” she said apparently to Green, “the railways serve no other purpose other than an advert for the motor industry”. Thatcher apparently gave them a long and sanctimonious lecture that the railways were too inefficient and too badly run and subsequently were causing a great deal of strife for the Conservative Party. Green's reply, was a rather curt- "The person you should be complaining to, is the one that holds the purse strings."
Humbled after the meeting, but more likely desperate to sweep the burden of BR under the mat forever, the government came out with a list of reforms, in the early spring of 1991 on how to improve BR. These weren't completely radical ideas. In fact, they were exactly the initiates that should have been handed to BR decades ago to make life easier for it. These were:
1. BR would be allowed to make a profit, and not have to hand over any funds to the Treasury.
2. BR would delegate much of the passenger operations to the business sectors, who would be able to pay for projects with cheap loans, private sector investment and private bank loans.
3. The government would pay for large infrastructure projects when needed, although that project would be incorporated as a separate company in its own right, then private sector bidders would pay back the government and thus pay back their investment via a return on BR's receipts.
4. The business sectors would be able to lease their own trains from the suppliers.
In addition, the government established the "Strategic Railway Commission", which became a thorn in the Railway's side until its scrapping under Blair in 2000. The SRC was set up to make sure that BR had allotted spare paths and physical infrastructure to private competitors. It also actively scoured Britain looking for private companies to run train services to compete against BR. In effect, all it managed to do was stop BR from running lines at max capacity, in order to save the paths for future operators. Sidings at Crewe Basford Hall freight yards were left empty, waiting for future private freight operators which eventually came, but didn’t use the sidings. It cost over £2.5 million a year to run and caused maybe the same amount in lost revenue to BR.
BR was mostly pleased about the reforms, aside from the third clause which to them seemed like a backdoor to privatisation. However, with the interest rates now at the 1988 level, Network South East would just be able to afford borrowing £150 million out of the £350 million for the modernisation of the Kent Coast services. With the government providing a further £50 million grant. BR's investment was lumped in with a general cycle of public investment that government was pumping into the economy, to see it through the economic downturn-and of course as a bone to the public in next years election.
In reality, the reforms were working really well-conveniently well, in time for the General Election. NSE would have had enough money from its own pockets to complete more or less the entire Networker Programme by 1998.
Back in Number 10 however, panic was starting to take hold. Opinion polls had not shifted much by the autumn of '91, and the Tories were destined to lose it seemed. Rumblings of another leadership election had continued throughout the summer, so it was decided what the Tories needed was an infrastructure project. A huge one. One to paint a busy, fast paced Britain for the 90s. One that would paint a bright, prosperous future after the recession. One to, hopefully, pull Britain out the recession. But what would it be? Heathrow expansion? Too London centric. A new motorway? To Thatcherite. A Channel Tunnel? Already being built.
The answer came in Intercity 250.
Intercity 250 was the perfect pet project the Tories needed to sway public onion for the creeping General Election. Not only would it be a major economic lifeline for the Midlands and North, but would paint a picture that perhaps ardent, anti-public service transport Thatcherism was softening. It was announced in time for the autumn statement in 1991, that the Government would provide £500 million for the Intercity 250 scheme. While it would be payed back to the Treasury by a private finance buyback scheme. It was more of a political project than a railway project. A massive mock up of a power car was commissioned and placed on the station concourse at Manchester Piccadilly in December 1991. It drew a lot of publicity, particularly with a picture of a smiling Maggie in the train’s "cockpit" as it was called grinning like a schoolboy with her fingers on one of the cabs many buttons. Around this time, the name “Intercity 250” quietly dropped and replaced with “Intercity Super Train”. A name which was denied by BR several times to have come from their own marketing department, hinting it may have been from the Conservatives’ public relations department.
THE FIGHT BEGINS
As a last-ditch effort to win votes, a massive new plan for railway modernisation was taken up. This was deemed as a "one-off" investment that would kickstart BR (Don’t think we like you now, railways), along with the previous reforms in the hope BR would rocket it under its own weight. A total investment, including the Intercity 250 projects of £1.1 billion over the next 10 years was drawn up, involving-
· Electrifying remaining suburban lines in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh with a massive bulk of class 323s. The “Regional Networker”- Regional Railways impressively dubbed it.
· The construction of the Main Line and Universal Networkers
· Thameslink
Ironically, as this was the first major cash injection BR had in decades, NSE had now enough freedom and money to lease its entire Universal Networker fleet for the Great Northern, LTS and Thameslink lines. In January 1992, towards the end of the production of the class 465 Kent Link Networker Units, NSE ordered, a lease of 35 class 471 vehicles and a small batch of the class 381/1 Universal Networkers for the flagging LTS routes. The 471s were to begin construction at what was BREL York by the end of the year, using traction packages from Brush, while the 381s were allocated to GEC at Washwood Heath. Politically, this is exactly what Thatcher needed-it was on her watch that railway privatisation was so passionately scrapped, so she had to make the nationalised railway work, or fear another "affair" and the threat of a coup.
However, railway privatisation was about to be put on the back burner for a while, or at least before it became part of an either bigger weight to dethrone Thatcher-the Maastricht Treaty. On the 1st December 1991, EC leaders met in Maastricht for the drafting of the treaty. The fallout of the Treaty was already being felt in the Conservative Party, as a much Europhile core began to push Thatcher to sign the treaty. There were no outright cries for federalism within her Party, but they knew what her Party opinion on Brussels were. “Don’t go there.” A close aide of hers told George H Bush on the matter in 1991. But the pro-Europe wing of her Party was becoming increasingly frustrated with her lack of will to meet the Treaty halfway-sign it, but asking for redrafts and concessions. No. There will be no treaty for Thatcher. Ironically, it proved to be a godsend her election campaign, she attacked it every which way she could. Most notably, during a House of Commons debate on the Treaty in late 1991, Thatcher, in an unprecedented attack on her own party declared "I said this once, and I will say this again-'No. No. No!' No to the Euro, no to ERM, no to Euro Federalism and no to Maastricht!" The House erupted in howls of rage and applause on both sides of the chamber. It took the then Speaker of the House of Commons-Bernard Weatherill, almost five minutes to bring the House to order again. Ken Clarke stormed out the chamber. The anti-Brussels Bennite faction of Labour stood to applause Thatcher. Newer Labour MPs-such as Gordon Brown-MP form Dunfermline East and Dianne Abbott-MP for Hackney were furious with them. Apparently, Kinnock had rung Thatcher that evening, congratulating her at the courage to take on her own party the way she did. A week later, she declared once more "I was ticked once to fall for Brussels by joining the ERM, I won't be tricked again into signing Maastricht. I will rather be stabbed in the back 1000 times than willingly sign away Britain's most precious democracy by members of my own Party!" Then, she turned around and faced her benches "You know who you are, shame on you all!". “She’s on our side!” The Sun and Daily Mail announced on their front pages the next day.
By 1992, Thatcher’s fortunes really were beginning to clear up. Kinnock, who was enjoying a double point lead in 1990, was reduced to being neck and neck. Labours campaign was “too flaccid” according to senior Labour officials at the unstoppable ferment that seemed to be gripping Thatcher, and it was true. It didn't help that Liberals and Labour focused primarily on the fairly plain issues of the NHS and Education, while Thatcher made withering speeches about Europe and democracy, "a vote for Liberals is a vote for Deolors" was a famous Tory slogan before the election. Kinnock, rather clumsily branded Intercity 250 as a "rich man's toy" when the cities of Lancaster, Preston and Crewe were crying out for it. But it was too late, the public was not enthusiastic enough for Labour or the Liberals. On the 9th of April 1992, the election was held. Britain, and Europe too, held their breaths.
Would BR’s "90s dream" ever come to fruition? Would NSE get its treasured and much yearned for Networkers? What about Thameslink? Crossrail? Would Intercity 250 ever come about? And what on Earth would become of the unloved, forgotten Regional Railways? For British Rail, let alone Britain, the 90s were proving to look very interesting indeed.
I have tried to pin down generally what might have happened. Of course, it's not entirely accurate, partly because I've only used what I can easily and cheaply find such as; Tanya Jackson's The Nation's Railway, Chris Green's The Intercity Story and the Network South East Story, various online newspaper articles from the area and gauged Margret Thatcher's personality from the book-Mrs Thatcher's Revolution by Peter Jenkins. In order to keep the timeline as accurate as possible, I would have to have trawled through National Archives records at Kew, numerous government records and probably even conducted interviews with people from that era. If I were making a book for publishing, I would have done so. But for a forum post, I'd have to use as much resources as I can with as little time and money as possible.
First, before we jump in- some real history:
The road to privatisation lasted about 10 years. In the mid-1980s, the Thatcher government privatised many non-core assets of BR. Such as its advertising and hotel arms, and Sealink-BR’s ferry services. Thatcher herself, was always against privatising BR in its entirety. However, in 1988, her transport secretary-Cecil Parkinson, declared in a Tory conference speech the Conservative commitment to the future privatisation of BR. Thatcher was not pleased. Nonetheless, a year later in 1989, Parkinson declared privatisation a matter of "not if and when but how". Coupled with the downturn in the economy in 1990 freezing BR’s investment programmes and the rise of John Major, who relentlessly pursued railway privatisation, BR as we knew it finally died on the 1st April 1994. An April fool’s joke too far, perhaps.
So how would this alternate timeline play out? Before we begin, I'll say I haven't written this timeline with any political bias to glorify or scorn any politician or Party, nor have I written it as a platform to fantasise about a glorious, perfect railway under BR. Some things may be better and some things may be worse than our own timeline, but I've tried to write it was as much reason and little personal feelings as possible. I don’t think British Rail would have become a super railway if it was never privatised, with an infinite amount of passenger numbers and electrification as far as the eye can see, but generally I think the investment we saw in the railways from the early 2000s to the present would of possibly of happened in the 1990s to mid-2000s.The 90s would definitely not have been the quiet era of change and uncertainty it was in our timeline, but I think for BR to have been a truly successful railway, it would have needed robust government support from decades before.
Our story begins in December 1990-Thatcher wins her leadership challenge.
The reasons why are unimportant. Perhaps the public backlash from the poll tax was not as bad as in our timeline. Perhaps threre was no Party favourite over who would replace Thatcher and the leadership election tilted to Maggie's favour, or perhaps she simply took a gamble to see challenge to the end which somehow payed off. Whatever it was, Thatcher survives another close encounter with the death of for her premiership.
For the country, the Party and Thatcher herself, her victory was bittersweet-but mostly bitter. Her victory was slight and she commanded less than 10% of a majority. To make things worse, her party was divided at what she should do, as many in the party were certain the Tories would be finished in the forthcoming 1992 General Election. Polls were predicting a Labour win in 1992, the Press reported sensationalist articles of a possible pro-Europe, ‘one nation’ Tory breakaway party led by Heseltine himself (which he denied on several occasions). But for Thatcher herself, she was more bullish than ever. She was always a woman attracted to power and revelled in her high profile meeting with Gorbochev in Moscow back in '87. A new decade had dawned, and for her, it was yet more fertile ground for her premiership.
RESTABLISHING AUTHORITY-THATCHER STYLE
The first thing Thatcher did after victory was perform a cabinet reshuffle, which for the case of BR, might have been the one single action that saved it from privatisation. The Westland Affair was still in the back of her mind which was one of the rare occassions she was reduced to tears, and she knew too well her own party could be her worst enemy. Europe was another huge thorn in her side-she was an outright Eurosceptic, but much of her party such as the infamous Heseltine, were staggeringly pro-European. Railway privatisation was another loaded gun barrel which pointed at her. So, with the foresight of another bitter ideological spat that could bring down her government, she displaced the pro-privatisation Cecil Parkinson as Transport Secretary and sent him elsewhere. Can't be too careful over who could be an enemy in the future. She would appoint a Transport Secretary either loyal enough to Thatcher to leave the privatisation of BR alone, or be against it entirely.
Over at BR, there were quiet sighs of relief. Moreover, latest polls were showing Labour with a double point lead against the Tories, meaning the privatisation of BR would be too contentious for the Tories to even talk about. Should Labour get in, which at the time looked incredibly likely, BR would be truly safe. However, it was not all fanfare at 222 Marylebone Road (BR's headquarters)-BR had been facing terrible problems as the golden age of the 1980s sectorisation had worn off and the 90s recession began to tear into BR’s passenger numbers. Network South East was crumbling on the Kent Coast and LTS sub-sectors, Thameslink was looking further as a pipe dream and over on Intercity, a modernisation of the WCML was badly overdue.
*EDIT 14.01.18-NEW DEVELOPMENTS BELOW*
Very quickly, the problem of railway privatisation had fallen to the bottom of the Prime Minister's list of problems. Instead, Thatcher's focus turned to the floundering British economy which by early 1991 was in a very bad state. While a recession was englufing most developed countries around the world, it was in Thatcher's mind that it was the high interest rates, caused by the insistence of her previous chancellor-Nigel Lawson to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. She had performed two cabinet reshuffles within two years, her infamous "Poll Tax" had caused riots on the streets in cities if there was one true redeeming factor she could use to give her the slightest of chances to be the PM in '92, it would be to stop the economy from falling off a cliff.
In January 1991, Margret Thatcher a drastic 5% cut in interest rates, bring the level down to 8%-how it was back in 1988.
Naturally, this caused further bitter devision in her Party. Cutting the interests rates that low essentially was a de facto decleration of exiting the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Pro-Europe MPs lead by Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke along with Nigel Lawson, attempted to bring down the government's descsion to lower intrest rates and effectively abbandon Britain's membership of the ERM by calling for a Parliamentary vote. However, their attempted rebellion ended before it began when it was found over 100 Conservative MPs would accept a bill to leave the ERM. Thatcher herself, did not want the political and economic turbulance of leaving the ERM so soon after joining, and confided with her new Chancellor of the Excheqour that she would, if re-elected in 1992, bring Britain out of the ERM.
"Why am I cutting interests rates? Because I will not destory the British economy in favour of the fortunes of the German economy!"-Margret Thatcher, Prime Minister's Questions-29th January 1991.
Over at British Rail, the cut in interest rates slowed the deterioration of the economy and thus, the Networker and Intercity programmes were cautiously going ahead as planned.
However, to take the privatisation element off the table for ever, Thatcher had met with the then chairman of BR-Sir Bob Reid and managing director of Network South East-Chris Green in March 1991, to discuss what could be done to improve BR. “The way I see it,” she said apparently to Green, “the railways serve no other purpose other than an advert for the motor industry”. Thatcher apparently gave them a long and sanctimonious lecture that the railways were too inefficient and too badly run and subsequently were causing a great deal of strife for the Conservative Party. Green's reply, was a rather curt- "The person you should be complaining to, is the one that holds the purse strings."
Humbled after the meeting, but more likely desperate to sweep the burden of BR under the mat forever, the government came out with a list of reforms, in the early spring of 1991 on how to improve BR. These weren't completely radical ideas. In fact, they were exactly the initiates that should have been handed to BR decades ago to make life easier for it. These were:
1. BR would be allowed to make a profit, and not have to hand over any funds to the Treasury.
2. BR would delegate much of the passenger operations to the business sectors, who would be able to pay for projects with cheap loans, private sector investment and private bank loans.
3. The government would pay for large infrastructure projects when needed, although that project would be incorporated as a separate company in its own right, then private sector bidders would pay back the government and thus pay back their investment via a return on BR's receipts.
4. The business sectors would be able to lease their own trains from the suppliers.
In addition, the government established the "Strategic Railway Commission", which became a thorn in the Railway's side until its scrapping under Blair in 2000. The SRC was set up to make sure that BR had allotted spare paths and physical infrastructure to private competitors. It also actively scoured Britain looking for private companies to run train services to compete against BR. In effect, all it managed to do was stop BR from running lines at max capacity, in order to save the paths for future operators. Sidings at Crewe Basford Hall freight yards were left empty, waiting for future private freight operators which eventually came, but didn’t use the sidings. It cost over £2.5 million a year to run and caused maybe the same amount in lost revenue to BR.
BR was mostly pleased about the reforms, aside from the third clause which to them seemed like a backdoor to privatisation. However, with the interest rates now at the 1988 level, Network South East would just be able to afford borrowing £150 million out of the £350 million for the modernisation of the Kent Coast services. With the government providing a further £50 million grant. BR's investment was lumped in with a general cycle of public investment that government was pumping into the economy, to see it through the economic downturn-and of course as a bone to the public in next years election.
In reality, the reforms were working really well-conveniently well, in time for the General Election. NSE would have had enough money from its own pockets to complete more or less the entire Networker Programme by 1998.
Back in Number 10 however, panic was starting to take hold. Opinion polls had not shifted much by the autumn of '91, and the Tories were destined to lose it seemed. Rumblings of another leadership election had continued throughout the summer, so it was decided what the Tories needed was an infrastructure project. A huge one. One to paint a busy, fast paced Britain for the 90s. One that would paint a bright, prosperous future after the recession. One to, hopefully, pull Britain out the recession. But what would it be? Heathrow expansion? Too London centric. A new motorway? To Thatcherite. A Channel Tunnel? Already being built.
The answer came in Intercity 250.
Intercity 250 was the perfect pet project the Tories needed to sway public onion for the creeping General Election. Not only would it be a major economic lifeline for the Midlands and North, but would paint a picture that perhaps ardent, anti-public service transport Thatcherism was softening. It was announced in time for the autumn statement in 1991, that the Government would provide £500 million for the Intercity 250 scheme. While it would be payed back to the Treasury by a private finance buyback scheme. It was more of a political project than a railway project. A massive mock up of a power car was commissioned and placed on the station concourse at Manchester Piccadilly in December 1991. It drew a lot of publicity, particularly with a picture of a smiling Maggie in the train’s "cockpit" as it was called grinning like a schoolboy with her fingers on one of the cabs many buttons. Around this time, the name “Intercity 250” quietly dropped and replaced with “Intercity Super Train”. A name which was denied by BR several times to have come from their own marketing department, hinting it may have been from the Conservatives’ public relations department.
THE FIGHT BEGINS
As a last-ditch effort to win votes, a massive new plan for railway modernisation was taken up. This was deemed as a "one-off" investment that would kickstart BR (Don’t think we like you now, railways), along with the previous reforms in the hope BR would rocket it under its own weight. A total investment, including the Intercity 250 projects of £1.1 billion over the next 10 years was drawn up, involving-
· Electrifying remaining suburban lines in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh with a massive bulk of class 323s. The “Regional Networker”- Regional Railways impressively dubbed it.
· The construction of the Main Line and Universal Networkers
· Thameslink
Ironically, as this was the first major cash injection BR had in decades, NSE had now enough freedom and money to lease its entire Universal Networker fleet for the Great Northern, LTS and Thameslink lines. In January 1992, towards the end of the production of the class 465 Kent Link Networker Units, NSE ordered, a lease of 35 class 471 vehicles and a small batch of the class 381/1 Universal Networkers for the flagging LTS routes. The 471s were to begin construction at what was BREL York by the end of the year, using traction packages from Brush, while the 381s were allocated to GEC at Washwood Heath. Politically, this is exactly what Thatcher needed-it was on her watch that railway privatisation was so passionately scrapped, so she had to make the nationalised railway work, or fear another "affair" and the threat of a coup.
However, railway privatisation was about to be put on the back burner for a while, or at least before it became part of an either bigger weight to dethrone Thatcher-the Maastricht Treaty. On the 1st December 1991, EC leaders met in Maastricht for the drafting of the treaty. The fallout of the Treaty was already being felt in the Conservative Party, as a much Europhile core began to push Thatcher to sign the treaty. There were no outright cries for federalism within her Party, but they knew what her Party opinion on Brussels were. “Don’t go there.” A close aide of hers told George H Bush on the matter in 1991. But the pro-Europe wing of her Party was becoming increasingly frustrated with her lack of will to meet the Treaty halfway-sign it, but asking for redrafts and concessions. No. There will be no treaty for Thatcher. Ironically, it proved to be a godsend her election campaign, she attacked it every which way she could. Most notably, during a House of Commons debate on the Treaty in late 1991, Thatcher, in an unprecedented attack on her own party declared "I said this once, and I will say this again-'No. No. No!' No to the Euro, no to ERM, no to Euro Federalism and no to Maastricht!" The House erupted in howls of rage and applause on both sides of the chamber. It took the then Speaker of the House of Commons-Bernard Weatherill, almost five minutes to bring the House to order again. Ken Clarke stormed out the chamber. The anti-Brussels Bennite faction of Labour stood to applause Thatcher. Newer Labour MPs-such as Gordon Brown-MP form Dunfermline East and Dianne Abbott-MP for Hackney were furious with them. Apparently, Kinnock had rung Thatcher that evening, congratulating her at the courage to take on her own party the way she did. A week later, she declared once more "I was ticked once to fall for Brussels by joining the ERM, I won't be tricked again into signing Maastricht. I will rather be stabbed in the back 1000 times than willingly sign away Britain's most precious democracy by members of my own Party!" Then, she turned around and faced her benches "You know who you are, shame on you all!". “She’s on our side!” The Sun and Daily Mail announced on their front pages the next day.
By 1992, Thatcher’s fortunes really were beginning to clear up. Kinnock, who was enjoying a double point lead in 1990, was reduced to being neck and neck. Labours campaign was “too flaccid” according to senior Labour officials at the unstoppable ferment that seemed to be gripping Thatcher, and it was true. It didn't help that Liberals and Labour focused primarily on the fairly plain issues of the NHS and Education, while Thatcher made withering speeches about Europe and democracy, "a vote for Liberals is a vote for Deolors" was a famous Tory slogan before the election. Kinnock, rather clumsily branded Intercity 250 as a "rich man's toy" when the cities of Lancaster, Preston and Crewe were crying out for it. But it was too late, the public was not enthusiastic enough for Labour or the Liberals. On the 9th of April 1992, the election was held. Britain, and Europe too, held their breaths.
Would BR’s "90s dream" ever come to fruition? Would NSE get its treasured and much yearned for Networkers? What about Thameslink? Crossrail? Would Intercity 250 ever come about? And what on Earth would become of the unloved, forgotten Regional Railways? For British Rail, let alone Britain, the 90s were proving to look very interesting indeed.
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