CARPAL TUNNEL RAIL LINK SUNDROME
“If there’s one thing to know for certain...it was I didn’t particularly enjoy being Prime Minister.”-Michael Portillo, 2010 interview.
“I was Frankenstein, so we know what that made him.”-Margret Thatcher, 2003
When Michael Portillo first entered the Black Door, the country didn’t quite take him seriously.
Tabloids took great delight making puns from his name, gloss magazines focused on the size of his lips and his own backbenchers saw him initially as a bit of a laughing stock. He was voted the most handsome man in Britain in 1993. Then, rather unflatteringly, just the most handsome man in politics in 1995. To his party, he was too young, too out of the ordinary, and to the public, “A bit of a Tory.”
Regardless, he attracted a surprising amount of support in the 1992 leadership competition. Like it or not, Margret Thatcher had essentially ended the debate on Europe, by refusing to sign the Maastricht Treaty causing it to stall across the entire continent. But Heseltine could not help yapping about the Exchange Rate Mechanism in his first ballot challenge to Portillo, turning away support from MPs. However commenters of the competition suggested MP’s support of Portillo was an attempt to oust Heseltine from the competition in favour of a new candidate on the second round. When the second candidate turned out to be John Redwood however, the Party reluctantly picked Portillo.
Labour rose quickly in the polls in the first half of 1993, but as quickly as they rose, as quickly they fell. Portillo proved himself slowly as a commendable PM. While he was known for being dogmatic and almost sneery to the public, his performances in PMQs and his ability to contain the witty criticisms of John Smith gained him respect in the Party. His handling on the Bosnia Crisis,where he defied the UN arms embargo and sided with the Americans to attack the Bosnian Serbs, earned him a boost in the public eye. In the 1993 Conservative Conference, he reiterated the Thatcherite “strong leader, strong economy, strong Britain” mantra, which lead the Daily Mail to name him the “Iron Baby”. which was criticised by the Guardian on the other hand, criticised his speech for sounding “mildly fascist”.
But over at British Rail, 1993 was proving to be another busy year. The Intercity 250 route upgrade was proving to be the most challenging project BR had ever undertaken, but at the same time, dealing with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was proving to be much more daunting.
Intercity 250 was a completely in-house project, but constructing the CTRL had attracted the attention of many unwanted third parties, most notably werer Ove Arup. Who had been lobbying relentlessly since 1991 for the government to build the line through Stratford, rather than through BR’s treasured Southern Approach through Peckham.
The project was kicked into the long grass in 1991, due to the dawning general election the next year. And BR’s southern route, which according to Atkins would require the demolition of over 5000 houses, would be a sore point for the dilapidated party. Whereas Ove-Arup’s rival route via East London and Stratford to Kings Cross would affect just over 100 houses. However it later transpired in a 2003 article by the Daily Telegraph, that the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was turning out to be as explosive as the Westland Affair. Politicians and consultants had tried to convince Thatcher that the eastern routing would be more politically viable, but she was adamant against spending money in the Labour stronghold of Newham-a similar sentiment she had her to the Chelsea to Hackney Line, which would pass through the Labour borough of Hackney.
Moreover, with Heseltine still lurking in the background, the eastern routing was quietly dropped by the party as it was his own personal preference, to create an East Thames Corridor should (when?) he become Prime Minister. In fact, he had privately written a letter to Michael Portillo asking if he could become his transport secretary, as he would like to oversee the construction of the CTRL. Portillo, never replied to his letter-apparently still furious for causing his near early termination of Thatcher’s leadership in 1990.
In early 1993, with a new government, hostile to the eastern route, British Rail argued that its Southern route would bring more value for money, seeing as more domestic Kent commuters would use a route that would run into familiar terminals, such as Waterloo or City Thameslink-via the proposed Warwick Gardens spur. The battle began between Arup and BR, with Arup retaling stating the eastern route attract more passengers by passing closer to Canary Wharf and Stratford being the site of a large scale regeneration project. In a counter strike to the Arup proposal, BR tweaked the Southern route to run via Lewisham, where a station could be built to interchange with a future Docklands Railway extension from Island Gardens. Unsurprisingly, Arup fired back once more, suggesting that Stratford allowed greater opportunities for regeneration and had better access to the Docklands.
But of course, BR pointed out Stratford would soon be connected to Crossrail and the Jubilee Line extension-ample amount of connections for regeneration. BR also proposed a junction which could also be placed at Lewisham with the Kent Link lines and the CTRL, allowing Kent domestic trains to access all south Eastern London terminals at Victoria, Blackfriars, Charing Cross and Cannon Street. BR once again hired Norman Foster, to come up with a “Lewisham Junction” station proposal, that would involve a large interchange station with the BR lines and the CTRL, with space for a Docklands Railway extension, and would rearrange the tangle of suburban lines in the lewisham area to allow a more frequent metro arrive across the 5 suburban branches and to promote regeneration in a run down part of London. However, even though Lewisham was a borough in and of itself and also a Labour stronghold, perhaps it was close enough to the Tory boroughs of Bexley and Bromley that the government would support it.
However the choice of BR’s southern route could be seen as an extreme case of the tail wagging the dog. In October 1992, Network South East began tentative design work on a high speed electric multiple unit that could work on the fast lines of the upgraded West Voast Main along the Class 93s. BR has a vague proposal for the class 342 Networker that would run on the CTRL, along with the class 371 “Thaneslink Express” Networker, that would be designers to take advantage of the higher line speeds on the East Coast Mainline . NSE combined the two to create a train that would run from the WCML, into the trough the CTRL tunnel via Kings Cross and London Bridge then onto the Kent Towns. However,as Network South East grew from a unit of 1000s to 10,000s, following the Organising to Quality project under BR, it began to gradually draw up its own competing CTRL route, that would bend the new BR route through London Bridge, creating a station there with access to the other side of the river. It was the perfect station for Eurostar services, being next to the City and just minutes from Canary Wharf and the West End via the Jubilee Line Extension.
In the meantime the Universal Networkers were being delivered for West Ham depot to commence testing on the LTS routes, while the Main Line Networkers entered into revenue earning service that summer. As 1993 turned into 1994, the first class 93 locomotive rolled off GEC-Alsthom’s production line at Crewe ready for testing. British Rail and London Transport were hoping to soon begin construction on Crossrail, but more unexpectedly, the Portillo government would put Railway privatisation on the agenda yet again.
