Why Does Policy Change: Lessons from British Transport Policy 1945-95 (Routledge Studies in Governance and Public Policy)

Why Does Policy Change? The tension between policy stability and change is a key political phenomenon, but its dynamic...

Author: Dr Geoff Dudley

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Why Does Policy Change?

The tension between policy stability and change is a key political phenomenon, but its dynamics have been little understood. In particular, there is the fascinating paradox of how, from conditions of apparent long-term stability, radical policy change may suddenly erupt with great force. To understand these processes involves a study of prevailing interests and established institutions, and also of more three-dimensional processes involving the potent interrelationships between ideas, individuals, multiple policy arenas and time. Why Does Policy Change? examines and explains these dynamics of major policy change by employing longitudinal case studies from British transport policy since 1945. Geoffrey Dudley and Jeremy Richardson point out that there is a significant contrast between road and rail, in that whilst road policy was dominated by a hegemonic policy community which perceived road building as the ideal policy ‘solution’, rail policy on the other hand has been characterised by a ‘hollow core’. In the case of roads, this book reveals the making of a hegemonic policy, but then the series of dramatic challenges to the dominant paradigm by environmentalists which eventually resulted in the destruction of the roads ‘solution’. In the case of rail, the ‘hollow core’ was notably invaded when British Rail Chairman, Dr Beeching, injected the concept of the ‘commercial railway’. More recently, however, the privatisation idea has imposed itself as one of the most unlikely candidates. Written for researchers in political science and policy analysis, including postgraduates on policy analysis courses, and those in the transport policy community, Why Does Policy Change? is a highly topical book which applies all the latest public policy theories to British transport policy. Geoffrey Dudley is a Research Fellow in the Centre for European Politics, Economics and Society at the University of Oxford. He is the author, with Jeremy Richardson, of Politics and Steel in Britain 1967–88. Jeremy Richardson is the Nuffield Professor of Comparative European Government, Director of the Centre for European Politics, Economics and Society, University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He has published many books including most recently editing European Union: Power and Policy-Making, and co-authoring Managing Policy Change in Britain: The

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Politics of Water Policy. He is the founder and editor of the Journal of European Public Policy, also published by Routledge.

Routledge Studies in Governance and Public Policy

1 Public Sector Ethics Finding and implementing values Edited by Charles Sampford and Noel Preston with Carol-Anne Bois 2 Ethics and Political Practice Perspectives on legislative ethics Edited by Noel Preston and Charles Sampford with Carol-Anne Bois 3 Why Does Policy Change? Lessons from British transport policy 1945–99 Geoffrey Dudley and Jeremy Richardson 4 Social Relations and Social Exclusion Rethinking political economy Peter Somerville

Why Does Policy Change? Lessons from British transport policy 1945–99

Geoffrey Dudley and Jeremy Richardson

Londonand New York

First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the US and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2000 Geoffrey Dudley and Jeremy Richardson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dudley, Geoffrey, 1945– #8211; Why does policy change?: lessons from British transport policy, 1945–1999/Geoffrey Dudley and Jeremy Richardson. p.cm.—(Roudedge studies in governance and public policy) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Transportation and state—Great Britain—History. I. Richardson, J.J. (Jeremy John) II. Title. III. Series. HE243.A2 D83 2001 388′.0941′ 09045–dc21 00–062788 ISBN 0-203-64587-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-67354-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-16918-6 (Print Edition)

For Flo Dudley

Contents

Preface

viii

1

Government, interest groups and policy change

2

The dynamics of the rail ‘hollow core’: theprelude to Beeching

24

3

Occupying the ‘hollow core’: the Beeching era at British Rail 1960–5

43

4

Roadbuilding as a policy idea and a weak advocacy coalition 1900–54

66

5

Ministers and motorways: the making of a hegemonic policy community 1954–9

79

6

Undermining a hegemonic policy community: trunk roads and the first wave of environmentalism 1973–9

107

7

‘Roads for prosperity’ versus ‘sustainable mobility’: new challenges and confrontations 1989–93

136

8

The destruction of Roads for Prosperity: from hegemony to ignominy 1993–9

157

9

The ‘hollow core’ revisited: rail privatisation 1987–92

189

Why does policy change?: the ‘Four Is’ and the significance of time

220

Bibliography

232

Index

243

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1

Preface

This book represents the outcome of a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, entitled Policy Communities and Policy Networks Over Time: British Transport Policy 1945–1995 (Ref. No. R00023482801). Essentially, we were interested in the relationship between policy arenas and policy change, and more precisely in exploring the question: how do we explain radical policy change when most public policy literature—and especially that of policy communities and networks —#8212;places emphasis on inertia and incrementalism? By taking a longitudinal approach and the two (related) sectors of road and rail, we attempted to identify different explanations over time and sector, highlighting the complex interrelationship between exogenous and endogenous factors. As our research developed, we became increasingly impressed by the vital importance of the conditions under which fresh policy ideas or ‘images’ enter a sector. For example, we found that in the case of trunk roads, policy activity in a number of arenas by the environmental lobby can have a significant effect on policy change, even when the central policy community, dominated by road interests, remains unchanged. Consequently, what we termed the rival adversarial communities of the road and environmental lobbies can have varying influence in different policy process arenas. The reward for an adversarial community in adopting the appropriate strategy within a particular arena can be domination of that arena, and also the ability to send influential messages to government and to the wider world beyond a given policy sector. Thus, in the 1970s the environmental lobby took the initiative in the public inquiry arena, while in the 1990s the environmentalists had a similar impact on the road construction sites and in the public arena generally. In contrast to trunk roads, where for forty years the sector was dominated by a hegemonic policy community which successfully imposed road building as the principal transport policy ‘solution’, the rail policy network (or lack of it) has been characterised by a ‘hollow core’ with no dominant interest, resulting in long periods of inertia and indecision. Nevertheless, even this paralysis of interests has occasionally given way to the invasion of powerful ideas which, at least for a period, successfully occupied the ‘hollow core’. Most notably, in the 1960s the British Rail Chairman, Dr Beeching, became synonymous with the policy ‘solution’ of the commercial railway. More recently, in the 1980s and 1990s, the

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privatisation idea, from unpromising beginnings, by degrees inserted itself as the new policy ‘solution’. The answer to the key question of how ideas may bypass a hegemonic policy community or occupy a ‘hollow core’ appears (to our surprise) to relate to the role of individuals. The significance of a Beeching may be easily spotted, but we were impressed by the degree to which, at key moments during periods of radical change, individuals, often acting in an idiosyncratic and unpredictable manner, decisively turned the course of events in their favour. Although these individuals could appear in any policy arena, Ministers appeared to be in a particularly powerful position to bring about radical policy change. Thus they could not only act as network leaders, but could also shape and even recreate networks for their own purposes. We believe that our longitudinal study also suggests that we can only understand the conditions of radical policy change if we also understand the conditions of policy stability. For much of the period under study, the two sectors exhibited considerable stability and continuity. Hence, at least in this respect, policy communities and networks are a significant element in our account, despite our scepticism concerning the utility of network approaches in explaining change. Our understanding of policy change was immeasurably assisted by the many former and current Ministers, officials and representatives of groups who agreed to be interviewed for the project. We are extremely grateful for the degree to which they all gave so freely of their time and knowledge. We would also particularly like to thank Ashridge College for access to the personal ministerial files of Harold Watkinson. We are especially indebted to Carol Phillips for her invaluable help and constant good humour in typing and preparing the manuscript. We would also particularly like to thank Lorraine Banks, Flo Dudley and Julie Lord for their help in preparing and typing earlier draft chapters.

1 Government, interest groups and policy change

Organised interests, political parties, and policy experts do not simply ‘exert power’; they acquire power in part by trying to influence the political discourse of their day. To the degree they are able to do so, they may have a major impact on policy without necessarily acquiring the formal trappings of influence. The resultant flow of ideas is an important dimension of the process in which policy is made. (Peter Hall, ‘Policy paradigms, social learning and the state’, p. 290) Policy communities and policy networks Concepts and models in political science probably reflect the politics of the period in which they were first formulated. This is both unsurprising and desirable, as their utility is to help understand, explain, and even predict events in the real world. An ambition to develop concepts more applicable to the realities of post-war British politics was the foundation of the British origins of what is now termed the network approach. Humble British origins: analysing stability Until the late 1970s, the study of interest groups in Britain, though very well established from the 1950s onwards, tended to play a relatively minor role in British political science (Richardson 1999). This all began to change in the late 1970s, however, with a shift in focus from the study of traditional institutions, towards a different world of power—essentially a post-parliamentary polity (Richardson and Jordan 1979). As Judge later commented, the ‘postparliamentary’ thesis was, for over a decade, a characterisation which was largely unchallenged and found reflection in other important commentaries (Judge 1993:123). The core argument in the post-parliamentary thesis was that policy change generally took place only when the relevant ‘policy community’ agreed it was necessary and a consensus existed on the direction of change. As Judge noted, the policy community concept was descriptive rather than

2 WHY DOES POLICY CHANGE?

definitional (Judge 1993); similarly Dowding has suggested that it was a metaphor rather than a model (Dowding 1995). In fact, it had no great pretensions to being a new theory of British politics. Its purpose, as Judge observed, was to contrast established models of parliamentary and cabinet government with a new reality of governing (Judge 1993). The strength of the empirical tradition in British political science carried the simple, unrefined, concept forward. As Judge comments: ‘the concern for descriptive accuracy has led a whole generation of British scholars to follow’ (Judge 1993:121). This concern was still very much alive in the 1990s but was reflected in more systematic attempts to build theories around the network concept. (For British examples see Rhodes 1986, 1988, 1990, 1996; Marsh and Rhodes 1992; for other, more quantitative examples, see Knoke et al. 1996; Pappi and Henning 1998). Whatever the merits of subsequent attempts to theorise on the basis of network analysis (for an excellent review see Thatcher 1998), current empirical descriptions of British policy-making seem to have changed rather little. Back in 1979, the new emphasis was on the shift of public policy-making away from conventional democratic institutions towards a somewhat hidden world where those deemed to be the legitimate ‘stake-holders’ met and decided both what the problems were and how they should be resolved: In describing the tendency for boundaries between government and groups to become less distinct through a whole range of pragmatic developments, we see policies being made (and administered) between a myriad of interconnecting, interpenetrating organisations. (Richardson and Jordan 1979:73–4) Nearly twenty years later, the current emphasis on the notion of ‘governance’ appeared to stress the very same tendencies. ‘Governance’ is seen as signifying: a change in the meaning of government, referring to a new process of governing; or a changed condition of ordered rule; or the new method by which society is governed. I employ a stipulative definition; it refers to self-organising, interorganisational networks. (Rhodes 1997:35, emphasis in the original) The Achilles heel of these closely related concepts of policy community, policy networks and new governance is the implication of stable policies, as well as stable relationships and a stable membership. Thus, it was argued that: The logic of negotiation also suggests that policy-makers in both government and groups will share an interest in the avoidance of sudden policy change. Working together they will learn what kind of change is feasible and what would so embarrass other members of the ‘system’ as to be unproductive.

GOVERNMENT, INTEREST GROUPS AND POLICY CHANGE 3

(Jordan and Richardson 1982:93–4) Jordan later further emphasised both the stability of policy communities and the existence of shared views. He sees policy communities as: A special type of stable network, which has advantages in encouraging bargaining in policy resolution. In this language the policy network is a statement of shared interests in a policy problem: a policy community exists where there are effective shared ‘community’ views on the problem. Where there are no such shared views no community exists. (Jordan 1990:327, original emphasis) The explicit assumption of stability of relations and stability of actor participation (almost exclusiveness) is evident in most attempts to refine the original policy community and policy network concepts. Thus, as Judge points out, Rhodes repeatedly states (Rhodes 1985:15; 1988:78; 1990: 204; Rhodes and Marsh 1992a:182; 1992b:13) that: policy communities are networks characterised by stability of relationships, continuity of a highly restrictive membership, vertical interdependence based upon shared delivery responsibilities and insulation from other networks and invariably from the general public (including Parliament). (quoted by Judge 1993:122) More recently, Rhodes has stressed that, among the six reasons that policy networks are important is the fact that ‘they decide which issues will be included and excluded from the policy arena’ (Rhodes 1997:34). Our central thesis in this chapter is, however, that the picture of order and especially control which these characterisations of the policy process imply is at variance with the changing nature of policy-making at both the national and supranational levels in Europe. Policy-making within European states and at the European Union level is often much more fluid and unpredictable—and less controllable—than seems to be implied by enthusiasts of the network approach. Whilst there are undoubtedly policy communities and networks which exhibit both stability and exclusiveness and do control policy agendas, there appear to be counter-tendencies which lead to lack of control, policy instability, and unpredictable outcomes. Incentives and costs of group participation The emphasis on stable relationships and shared views fails to capture the reality of many cooperative arrangements between policy stakeholders. In many cases the ‘glue’ which enables the stakeholders to cooperate is often a recognition that,


despite conflicting values and objectives, joint gains can result from cooperation either in the short or long run. Indeed, at the EU level (see below) the development of short-term ad hoc coalitions of extremely strange bedfellows— who certainly do not have common values —#8212;is now quite common. As Sebenius suggests, uncertainty is an important feature of policy-making for all participants. Cooperation, even with enemies, can reduce that uncertainty. He argues that alongside uncertainty in the policy process, there are opportunities for mutual learning and joint problem solving. By combining the politics of uncertainty and the politics of learning, Sebenius probably captures the core meaning of ‘policy community’ as a concept. Thus, he states that ‘beyond understanding technical uncertainties, finding joint gains also requires that each party learn about the other’s priorities in order to craft mutually beneficial trades’ (Sebenius 1992:329). Sebenius quotes Raiffa as follows: In complicated negotiations where uncertainties loom large, there may be contracts that are far better for each negotiating party than the non-contract alternative, but it may take considerable skill and joint problem solving to discover these possibilities. Without the right atmosphere and without some reasonably trustful communication of values, such jointly acceptable contracts might never be discerned. (Raiffa quoted by Sebenius, 1992:329, emphasis added) There may be considerable and bitter disputation, yet the cooperative game continues to be played in order to secure mutual gains or to reduce individual losses. Lax and Sebenius have emphasised that the bargaining process indeed exhibits both conflict and consensus. Thus: the competitive and co-operative elements are inextricably entwined. In practice they cannot be separated…. There is a central, inescapable tension between co-operative moves to create value jointly and competitive moves to gain individual advantage. This tension affects virtually all tactical and strategic choice. (Lax and Sebenius 1986) Participating in joint policy-making activity either on a temporary or more permanent basis has the potential to maximise benefits to the parties involved. Using concepts from negotiation analysis, Sebenius points out that outcomes can be influenced by favourably affecting the zone of possible agreement between the parties. The ‘zone of possible agreement’ means ‘a set of possible agreements that are better for each potential party than the non-co-operative alternatives to an agreement’ (Sebenius 1992:333). Participation in cooperative policy-making institutions is, however, not exclusively about securing direct public policy gains for the participants or maximising the zone of possible agreement. It is also concerned with


straightforward information gathering. As Austen-Smith and Wright (1992) argue ‘lobbying is a two-stage process in which the first stage involves the acquisition of specialised information’ (p. 231). Thus, it is perfectly rational to participate alongside opponents and enemies if this delivers useful information about their positions and possible policy outcomes—even if neither can be influenced. Knowing what is coming, however unattractive that might be, is much better than being surprised. At the European level, especially (see pp. 14– 15), the need to acquire information seems a driving force behind much so-called ‘lobbying’ and the frenetic merrygo-round of committees, seminars, conferences and other meeting opportunities that now characterises politics in Brussels. All of this helps explain why actors will construct cooperative institutions of various types, in the face of uncertainty. The very success of policy community politics might, however, be the cause of its erosion over time. As Heinz et al. observed in the US, interest groups became more active in order to reduce their uncertainty. However, interest group activity begets yet more interest group activity thus increasing, not decreasing, uncertainty as the number of stakeholders increases. Interest groups ‘by creating structures to control or adapt to uncertainty…have contributed to the development of a more complex and rapidly changing policy environment’ (Heinz et al. 1993:371). Thus, ‘although greater numbers of organisations of all types…actively monitor and participate in the making of national policy, and although the scope and intensity of their efforts has increased significantly, the returns on these efforts are not at all clear’ (Heinz et al. 1993:369). Uncertainty is also increased for all stakeholders by the tendency for closer linkages between policy problems across different policy sectors. The current Labour Government of Mr Blair is keen on what it calls ‘joined-up government’, but the reality of joined-up government is that even larger numbers of policy stakeholders are brought together round the bargaining table. This can result in a degree of ‘overcrowding’ of each, hitherto autonomous, policy sector as stakeholders from other policy communities demand and get entry. Policy communities and networks may become linked in a rather messy and unpredictable chain of actors, who do not know each other well and who do not speak the same ‘language’. Of special importance is that they may bring quite different ‘policy frames’ to the table, i.e. they have very different policy or cultural frames through which they view the real world (Schön and Rein 1994; Fligstein 1997). This leads them to make sense of reality in quite different and conflicting ways. Such large and diverse collections of stakeholders may be a ‘network’ only in the very loosest of senses. They inhabit the same policy area or domain but only minimal interaction occurs. This shift—from a world of policy-making characterised by tightly knit policy communities and/or well-structured and stable networks, to a more loosely ‘organised’ and therefore less predictable collection of stakeholders — #8212;was noted in the US as early as the 1970s. In 1978 Heclo noted that policy problems often escape the confined and exclusive ‘worlds’ of professionals and


are resolved in a much looser configuration (if indeed such a structured term can be used) of participants in the policy process. Heclo argued that the nature of power in Washington had begun to change. Exercising power was not as much fun as it used to be in the ‘clubby’ days of Washington politics (Heclo 1978:94). Politics was less ‘clubbable’ because more and more groups had entered the policy process. Thus ‘as proliferating groups have claimed a stake and clamoured for a place in the policy process, they have helped diffuse the focus of political and administrative leadership’ (Heclo 1978:94–5). In a now classic formulation, he argued that: Looking for the few who are powerful, we tend to overlook the many whose webs of influence provoke and guide the exercise of power. These webs, or what I will call ‘issue networks’, are particularly relevant to the highly intricate and confusing welfare policies that have been undertaken in recent years…. An issue network is a shared-knowledge group having to do with some aspect (or, as defined by the network, some problem) of public policy…. But knowledge does not necessarily produce agreement. Issue networks may or may not, therefore, be mobilised into, second, a shared-notion group (creating a coalition) or, third, a shared-belief group (becoming a conventional interest organisation). Increasingly, it is through networks of people who regard each other as knowledgeable, or at least as needing to be answered, that public policy issues tend to be refined, evidence debated, and alternative options worked out—though rarely in any controlled, well-organised way. (Heclo 1978:102–3, emphasis added) We dwell on Heclo’s analysis simply because it focuses our attention so clearly on the core motivation for interest group participation—the need to acquire and share knowledge about both the real world and the political opportunities for changing it. Following the assumption that interest organisations are rational actors (Christiansen and Rommetvedt 1999:210), we have argued that participation in cooperative structures—be they policy communities, issue networks, or even looser configurations—is perfectly rational, even though its consequences may not necessarily reduce uncertainty. However, interest groups also have to deal with other actors in the policy process—especially governments. As Christiansen and Rommetvedt argue, ‘powerful actors may choose to change institutions if they have the power to do so and if they calculate change to be in their favor’ (Christiansen and Rommetvedt 1999:210). Governments can seize power over established institutions such as policy communities and networks. The British case, post-1979, seems to be such an example.


Challenging policy communities and networks Heclo’s emphasis on lack of control and organisation, and greater unpredictability in policy-making, was based on empirical observation. He had noticed that Washington politics was different by the 1970s. However, the typical ‘European polity’ (Heisler and Kvavik 1974) was, at that time, still relatively unaffected by the erosion of policy communities which he described. Old style politics based on policy communities and neocorporatist arrangements appeared to continue for most of the Western European states. Yet this established policy style has shown signs of change in Western Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. We have seen two decades of sometimes radical policy reform, leaving no Western European nation untouched and few policy sectors undisturbed. After this wave of reform, at least two outcomes can be observed. First, actors in many policy sectors now operate under radically changed rules of behaviour. Labour market policies are an obvious specific sectoral example, although many other policy areas have been greatly affected by the deregulatory and privatisation fashion which has swept Europe. Second, the distribution of power within and across policy sectors has seen major changes. The mix of winners and losers has changed amongst traditional stakeholders as a result of public policy change. Also, new stakeholders have sometimes been introduced—either by importation from cognate (but hitherto excluded) policy areas or the emergence of completely new sets of actors (environmentalists and women’s organisations being obvious examples) and institutions. Many deeply entrenched interests, who had been granted the ‘franchise for public policy’ seem to have been challenged by more assertive governments. For once, Britain is the first mover, rather than the laggard, in Europe. As an extreme example, it is an important test case of the capacity of network approaches to explain the process of policy change. Britain: the shift from ‘governing under pressure’ to ‘policy communities under pressure’ In the British case it seems reasonable to argue that the consensual policy style was a clear enough feature of post-war politics (Beer 1956, 1965). This is not to say that groups were never challenged by governments (the clash between the Heath Conservative Government and the coal miners in 1972/3 being an obvious example). However, confrontation and imposition was not the preferred policy style. As Wyn Grant has noted, the policy community ‘model’ caught on because it seemed to be a good fit with reality (Grant 1989). It took Margaret Thatcher’s succession of Conservative governments to give policy community politics a real jolt as the new policy style unfolded. It is quite true, as Jordan and Maloney argue, that consultation with interest groups continued under the Thatcherite ‘revolution’. However to argue, as they do, that ‘consultation is the predominant policy-making routine in British politics—a pattern scarcely touched by supposed Thatcherite antipathy to groups’ (Jordan and Maloney 1997), is


misleading. It places insufficient emphasis on the extent to which the Conservatives systematically changed the underlying bases of the consultations which they continued to conduct with the ‘affected interests’. The consultations were often only after the extensive re-writing, by government, of old public policy ‘franchises’. Consultation yes, but after what and on whose terms? A hidden assumption of much of the policy community approach (less so of the network literature) is that the interests of the state and groups often coincide. However, as Dowding suggests, we need to look at the beliefs and desires of state actors to understand state interests (Dowding 1991:124). This is very relevant to understanding the trajectory of British policy-making post-1979, after Mrs Thatcher’s election in that year. Rhetoric is that this introduced a retreat of the state, but this so-called retreat can be understood only in terms of ‘state actor interests’ or ‘state actor autonomy’. Mrs Thatcher and her leading Ministers had their own ideas, policy frames and policy preferences. The 1979 election was the start of a period of party and ministerial (though still post-parliamentary) government, not seen since the post-war Labour victory. Relatively few of the new policy ideas emanated from the plethora of embedded policy communities around Whitehall that had grown up in the post-war years. Some ideas were imported (e.g. the idea of an internal market in publicly funded healthcare) from thinkers or policy watchers in the US, and others were generated by UK-based think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute. Yet others were drawn from a seemingly worldwide intellectual fashion for deregulation and privatisation, the origins of which are difficult to specify clearly. Thus, in many ways, the Thatcher Government’s preference formation process became detached from the traditional post-war institutions of British policy-making. The eighteen years (as it turned out) of Conservative rule saw major policy change across a very wide range of policy areas. It is difficult to accommodate this within any policy community or network ‘model’. Hitherto stable and well ‘regulated’ (via public or private regulation) policy sectors were systematically destabilised by the Thatcher government, with resultant dissent from typically insider groups such as the British Medical Association and even the Confederation of British Industry. In essence, the old policy communities lost control of policy framing and agenda setting and had to react to agendas set by others. As in Canada, the British medical profession ‘faced with external challenges and cut off from their traditional points of access to the decision-making process…resorted to classic lobbying and public relations strategies’ (O’Neill 1998:15). However, there was no escaping the fact that, as Klein argues, ‘the introduction of the reforms advertised the impotence of the profession in the national policy area’ (Klein 1995:245). Post-1979, two broad categories of governmental response to policy reform can be identified. First, there was a definite shift in the policy style of government (Richardson 1982, 1993). There was a conscious attempt to move from a consensual to an impositional style of governing. Second, and to a lesser degree, there was also an attempt to move to a more anticipatory approach to problem


solving. The former is best illustrated by the Prime Minister’s public pronouncement of her own distaste for the post-war traditions of consensual policy-making. To Mrs Thatcher, the politics of compromise was the politics of ‘fudging’ issues—by which she meant that many if not most issues could not be resolved by agreement. Solutions had to be imposed on recalcitrant interests if change was to take place. In this simple diagnosis lay the origins of the conflictual politics that emerged post-1979 (most notably, of course, between the Conservative Government and the coal miners in 1985, but also in the health service, local government, education and many other sectors). This conflict became a key element in external perceptions of Britain post-1979. If the British experiment in rolling back the state is unique, it is in the willingness of its government to withstand the high decibels of protest (or whinging as Mrs Thatcher would describe it, no doubt) when the Olsonian ‘distributional coalitions’ were challenged (Olson 1982). In popular British parlance, Mrs Thatcher took her famous large handbag and beat various entrenched interests into submission with it—a new policy style which can be described as ‘serial handbagging’ of policy communities. Evidence of a more anticipatory approach to problem solving is less reliable, but it can be argued that the Conservative governments, post-1979, finally developed a long-term strategy for changing the nature of British society, and the shape of the state itself. A more competitive and flexible society, alongside a much reduced role for the state in industry emerged as the goal. The goal could not be achieved, it was thought, without a change in government/interest group relations and a change in the relative power of established stakeholders. The greatest paradox in these shifts in style and purpose is that Britain witnessed a large increase in direct state intervention. The Thatcherite years were years of more government, not less. Most policy sectors were eventually put under the governmental microscope, destabilised, and then radically reformed. This is not to suggest that there was always a clear plan or a clear policy outcome in mind. Sometimes, the government had only a general notion that all was not well, that change was necessary— #8212;that there was a reform deficit—and only a rudimentary idea of what might be achieved. The new policy style is aptly described by Wistow, who quotes a newspaper report as follows: Mr Willets, the closest of the ‘outsiders’ to the NHS review, said that he asked a senior civil servant what he would do to the NHS if he were Minister. The reply was ‘I’d leave it entirely alone because it is too politically dangerous or I’d destabilise it and see what happened’. (Wistow 1982) Thus, as Peters suggests, governments may challenge existing networks (and create new ones) because existing networks may approximate the world of the ‘joint decision trap’ described by Scharpf (Peters 1997:57; Scharpf 1988). Networks can easily produce decisions which are sub-optimal for society. In the


face of lowest common denominator decisions, ‘the role of government then becomes providing the leadership to shape the debate and move decisions away from that lowest common denominator realm into a more socially desirable space’ (Peters 1997:57). In Britain, as the existing rules of the game were generally sub-optimal ‘peace treaties’ agreed in the past after long and difficult negotiations (the outcome of policy community politics, in fact), there was considerable resistance to these major ‘perturbations’ (Sabatier 1998:118). The Thatcherite style was to stand firm on the principles (e.g. the internal market for health) embodied in the reform proposals, but to offer concessions at the margin and over implementation. At some point in the trajectory of these dirigiste reform initiatives, the Conservatives, therefore, reinstated the old consultative style. Thus, after initial destabilisation and conflict, there would follow a more familiar phase of consultation and even negotiation between government and groups, in order to allow the interests to have their say (and real influence) on the detailed points of implementation. Technically Jordan and Maloney are correct—consultation did continue as before. Indeed, so glad were interests (such as doctors) to be back in the policy process that they often found themselves actively helping the government to make new policies work, despite their earlier bitter and public opposition. An added incentive to rejoin the consultation process was that many interests had been starved of resources since the early 1980s. The Government’s simple strategy of announcing what was going to happen and then attaching some ‘new’ (often re-allocated) public money to the new proposal was sufficient to cause a stampede of hitherto hostile groups anxious to get their heads in the meagre trough. This technique, though cynical, may help maintain some degree of legitimacy and support from affected interests. As Della Salla notes in the Italian case, ‘the question remains, however, of whether a hollow state with a hard shell can mobilise support and maintain cohesion in a period of economic and political transition’ (Della Salla 1997:31). By not totally excluding interests, the British Conservatives ameliorated some of the opposition it encountered on the reform process. The really significant change, post-1979, was, therefore, not so much less government as the emergence of strong government (see Smith 1993). Government became a more self-confident institution willing to act against what it saw as vested interests. Faced with this new style of governing, groups had little practical option but to re-enter the policy process on the government’s own terms. Whilst in earlier decades governments may have seemed weak actors— certainly not particularly strong when compared with the big economic and professional interest groups—by the mid-1980s the balance of power had shifted decidedly in favour of government in terms of setting the agenda and initiating policy change. Thus, the policy process could often take on an episodic character —bouts of an impositional style as new policy ideas were introduced by the Government, followed by old style consultation via (often reconstructed) policy communities and networks (Maloney and Richardson 1995). The episodic nature of British policy-making is, in fact, a recurring theme in our study.


Alternative venues as an interest group resource When interest groups who are members of an existing policy community lose out, they have two basic choices. They can accept defeat on the issue at hand, hoping to win on another issue at some future date. This, after all, is the underlying logic of exchange relationships which sustain policy communities over time. In a continuous game, there is always hope of future gains which can balance current losses. However, other strategies are available if it appears that reliance on policy community politics is not delivering sufficient gains over time. A common strategy is to seek alternative Venues’ where policy-making can be influenced. Public policy-making is often carried out in several venues, each presenting a different package of costs and benefits to groups. Thus, there are incentives to abandon reliance on one stable and restricted policy community or network. We deal first with alternative national venues, as they are of special relevance to our study. Alternative national venues As Baumgartner and Jones have demonstrated from their US case studies, established insider groups, well entrenched in long-standing policy communities which have delivered high returns for their investment in insider status, can eventually lose out to other groups who choose to operate in different ‘venues’ and who manage to construct a new ‘image’ of existing policy problems (Baumgartner and Jones 1991). They argue that political actors are capable of strategic action by employing a dual strategy as follows: On the one hand, they try to control the prevailing image of the policy problem through the use of rhetoric, symbols and policy analysis. On the other hand, they try to alter the roster of participants who are involved in the issue by seeking out the most favourable venue for consideration of their issues. (Baumgartner and Jones 1991:1045) Baumgartner and Jones see the interaction between image and venue as producing ‘punctuated equilibrium’, whereby a period of stability is replaced by one of rapid, dramatic and non-incremental change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:18). Policy change can result from a conscious rejection of the policy community approach to policy-making— #8212;either by choice or necessity— on the part of interest groups. Fritschler’s much earlier study of the politics of smoking in the US produced similar findings. He argued that ‘public interest politics uses the policy-making powers of legislators, bureaucracies, and the courts in patterns of conflict inducing strategies’ (Fritschler 1975:3). The net result of this type of antipolicy community politics was that the tobacco subsystem in the US was ‘changed completely in eight years. The small group of


people in Congress, in the agencies, and in the tobacco groups lost control of policy-making processes’ (Fritschler 1975:3). Our longitudinal study of trunk roads policy in Britain uncovers a similar phenomenon—namely, of the loss of power by an entrenched policy community. As we shall see, the pro-road lobby had the ideal stronghold in dominating the core policy-making arena centred on the Department of Transport (DTp). Beyond this apparently key venue, however, lay a potentially hazardous arena in the form of the Public Inquiry process for highways. In the 1970s, the environmental lobby was able to combine with local protest groups to embarrass the DTp at a number of Highway Inquiries. Not only did the opposition to major road schemes disrupt the DTp’s specific plans, it also led to a public debate on the values underlying the trunk roads programme. For the first time, roads policy became public business, rather than the private management of public policy. The Highway Inquiry process became the venue where the two ‘adversarial policy communities’ fought. By selecting a more favourable venue, the environmental lobby exposed a weakness in the road lobby’s historical domination of the policy process, and directed public attention to alternative transport policies. The environmental lobby was able to influence the policy system by at least changing the ‘image’ or ‘framing’ of transport policy problems, without gaining admittance to the core policy-making arena. Essentially, the discourse had shifted from a 1950s/60s’ perception of trunk road building as a solution to a problem, to a perception that trunk roads had become a problem to which we needed a solution. As in the case of smoking and nuclear energy policy in the US, the changing politics of trunk roads policy in the UK took place outside (and despite) established policy communities which were thought to be hegemonic in their respective policy areas. A similar example is provided by the 1999/2000 campaign against genetically modified (GM) foods in Britain. The use of direct protest, on the roads model, has successfully shifted the debate from the closed world of scientific advisory bodies to the public domain. Not only has there been a venue shift, but the opponents of GM foods have begun to change the image of the GM issue. GM crops are increasingly seen not as a solution to many food supply and environmental problems of the world, but as a threat to both. The use of alternative national venues is not confined to what may be seen as outsider groups, however. The Countryside Alliance, in Britain, consists of some deeply entrenched interests (such as farming and land-owning) who have chosen to shift the focus of the campaign against the proposed ban on foxhunting from traditional forms of lobbying to a French-style programme of demonstrations and events. As Christiansen and Rommetvedt noted from the examples of Denmark and Sweden, even established interests may be forced to explore alternative arenas. Thus, if access to traditional corporatist institutions is restricted (for whatever reason), interest organisation will exploit other channels of influence (Christiansen and Rommetvedt 1999:212).


The Countryside Alliance is also engaged in an attempt to shift the image of countryside interests from that of a rather privileged land-owning class to a somewhat oppressed and threatened minority, trying to defend a traditionally English way of life. The French case, of course, is the classic example of groups using alternative venues as a means of influencing public policy. Agricultural interests have traditionally used direct action successfully and have been joined more recently by lorry drivers who have used similar strategies to force policy concessions by governments. However, as Cole points out, the French tradition of direct action does not necessarily mean that groups are excluded from more conventional, lobbying strategies. He notes that ‘for groups such as farmers, direct action tactics go alongside private negotiations between interest group representatives and state officials’ (Cole 1998:200). Similarly, in Britain, Lord Melchett, Executive Director of Greenpeace, has argued that direct action and working within the system have always gone hand in hand (Financial Times 15 February 2000). Other European examples of the successful use of alternative venues in the form of direct action include the ecology movement in Germany in the 1980s (Rüdig 1988) and the so-called ‘battle of the elms’ in Stockholm in the early 1960s where environmental groups picketed the location of a new underground station in one of the city’s main squares. By-passing existing structures in order to gain attention for new ideas and issues is, of course, a key part of the repertory of actions used by social movements (Tarrow 1988; Rootes 1999a, b). The ecology movement seems particularly adept in its innovative approach to venues. For example, ecology groups are finding that their skill in using the Internet —#8212;both to acquire information and to coordinate lobbying nationally and cross-nationally—is often greater than their traditional opponents. They are also increasingly adept at using the courts. For example, the Financial Times recently described a new breed of ‘eco-yuppie’. The ecoyuppies can achieve in pinstripes what others do in combat boots. As one of them (a thirty-eight year old Oxford-educated barrister) remarked ‘we are palpably respectable, we know our rights, we know the law, and we’re not going to go away’ (Financial Times 15 February 2000). An increasingly common phenomenon, however, is the extension of venue shopping beyond national borders. This is especially the case within the European Union. The EU as an alternative venue Our discussion so far has focused on national policy-making. For the fifteen member states in the European Union, however, the locus of policy-making for many policy areas has shifted to the European Union (EU). We need not delve into the somewhat sterile debate between neo-functionalists and intergovernmentalists (see Sandholtz and Stone Sweet 1998; Moravcsik 1998). Suffice to say that amongst scholars of the European Union almost all accept it as given that the EU policy process is best characterised as a multi-level, multiarena, multi-venue game. Rather like the US, the EU provides a multitude of


access points for policy professionals and interest groups of all kinds. Interest groups from EU member states have some very effective alternative arenas or venues in which to play. These venues are attractive to those excluded (for whatever reason) from national policy communities, to those who receive insufficient pay-offs from their participation, and even to those who remain active and successful participants in them. As we suggested earlier, interest groups are capable of making rational calculations concerning the allocation of lobbying resources as between possible lobbying targets—deciding which public institutions to lobby (Coen 1997, 1998; Bennett 1997, 1999) or deciding which individual legislators to bribe (Snyder 1991). Increasingly, groups are aware of the potential gains from transnational lobbying. Indeed, in their study of what they term ‘activists beyond borders’, Keck and Sikkink lay great emphasis on the autonomy from states which transnational action can deliver to activists and interest groups (Keck and Sikkink 1998:4). They are at pains to emphasise the open access to the international system that groups and activists have gained. In many policy sectors in the EU, a ‘push-pull effect’ has been at work. The ‘push’ has come from the kinds of changes in national policy styles —#8212;a more active and impositional policy style from some national governments, often accompanied by a relentless resource squeeze. The ‘pull’ has been provided by the logic of the shift in the locus of power from national capitals to Brussels. One does not need to accept the old neo-functionalist argument about the transfer of loyalty to the supranational level to accept the empirical fact that the centre of gravity of lobbying has shifted to Brussels (Mazey and Richardson 1993, 1996). This is not equally true for all policy sectors. Indeed, for much of the long period under study in this volume, transport policy remained anchored in national politics and is still relatively un-Europeanised. However, the EC/EU has impinged as a relevant venue from time to time, both in rail and road transport. Moreover, the tendency appears to be that all sectors eventually become ‘Europeanised’, albeit at quite different rates. Increasingly, transport policy seems to be subject to the same processes of Europeanisation as in other policy areas. Whilst Europeanisation has presented a relatively subdued challenge in transport policy, the impact of new ideas has played a major role. Thus, not only interest groups have to adjust their position and tactics according to the prevailing climate of opinion and new ideas—so do public bureaucracies and national governments. In the end, they are all vulnerable to ‘shifts in policy fashion’ as new ideas gain good currency. It is to this topic that we turn in our attempt to identify some further causes of policy change. Ideas as ‘policy viruses’: policy communities die or mutate? John Kingdon, in his study of agenda setting, quotes a Washington official who observed that the origin of public policies was difficult to determine. As he put it ‘this is not like a river. There is no point of origin’ (Kingdon 1984:21). If this is true (as surely it is) then identifying the origins of new policy fashions or policy


frames is likely to be extremely difficult. Yet, clearly, there are major changes, periodically, in the way that public and private actors view policy problems. Moreover, as we suggested on pp. 7–11, actual policy changes too. New problems and solutions can become fashionable and cut across sectoral and national boundaries. This is not to suggest that even profound change (what Hall would term ‘third order’ change—see Hall 1993) cannot come about endogenously in policy communities and networks. However, exogenous changes in policy fashion, ideas, or policy frames presents a very serious challenge to existing policy communities and networks. New ideas have a virus-like quality and have an ability to disrupt existing policy systems, power relationships and policies. As Reich suggests, public preferences and support for policies grow and change ‘as people have come to understand and engage with the ideas underlying them’ (Reich 1988:4). Such exogenous shifts in preferences, influenced by new ideas and knowledge, are rather like viruses present in the atmosphere we breathe. Policy systems, particularly when they are engaged transnationally, contain a plethora of ideas at any given time. Thus, as Kingdon suggests: many ideas are possible in principle and float around in a ‘policy soup’ in which specialists try out their ideas in a variety of ways…proposals are floated, come into contact with one another, are revised and combined with one another, and floated again…the proposals that survive to the status of serious consideration meet several criteria, including their technical feasibility, their fit with dominant values and the current national mood, their budgetary workability, and the political support or opposition they might experience. Thus the selection system narrows the set of conceivable proposals and selects from that large set a short list of proposals that is actually available for serious consideration. (Kingdon 1984:21) Extending our ‘virus’ analogy, national policy stakeholders are increasingly internationalised—they, literally, travel a lot and meet all sorts of other policy stakeholders from foreign systems. They bring new ideas and policy frames back home. Thus, like natural viruses, policy viruses spread too. For well-established policy communities who have long held the ‘franchise’ for a policy area, new ideas are a potential threat, unless they emanate from the community itself or can be adapted to suit the existing needs of the community. A key issue for the entrenched interests is the degree to which the new ideas and knowledge can be accommodated in existing and agreed ‘policy frames’ (Schön and Rein 1994) or whether completely new frames emerge, backed by new ‘adversarial coalitions’ (Dudley and Richardson 1998). Examples of the effect of policy viruses abound in the post-war period. Thus, why is it that so many cities throughout the world adopted similar high-rise, highdensity, housing policies to deal with the problem of an outdated housing stock, only to find that this policy ‘virus’ caused untold damage to urban communities


and created more policy problems than it solved? Similar effects can be seen in the field of transport policy, with the universal adoption of massive road construction schemes to deal with the problems of increased car ownership and growth of the trucking industry, again only to find that this fashionable solution appeared to create more problems than it solved. Both the housing and transport cases seem to illustrate Reich’s observation of ‘how much the critical definition of problems and choices influences the subsequent design and execution of public policies’ (Reich 1988:5). Thus, as Moore argues, in institutional settings ‘ideas seem to guide public action in the same way that Kuhn’s “paradigms” guide “normal” scientific inquiry’ (Moore 1988:72). To Moore, ideas establish: the context within which public policy is debated and executed. That is, the ideas simultaneously establish the assumptions, justifications, purposes, and means of public action. In doing so, they simultaneously authorise and instruct different sections of the society to take actions on behalf of public purposes. (Moore 1988:75) He goes on: ideas matter because they establish the contexts within which policy debates are conducted, organisational activities are rendered coherent and meaningful, and people’s actions are animated and directed… although related to existing political forces and institutions, they seem to follow a logic of their own, which sometimes unbalances or rebalances existing forces (Moore 1988:78, emphasis added) Moore’s reference to the unbalancing of existing forces is especially apposite to our consideration of the relationship between policy communities and policy change—hence our resort to the ‘virus’ analogy. Of course, ideas, institutions and interests become entwined. As Jacobsen correctly observed, the pervasive flaw in ‘power of ideas’ arguments is the fact that ideas and interests cannot be separated (Jacobsen 1995:309). Similarly, Moore also notes that it is possible that ‘particular ideas are nothing more than a smokescreen for the institutional and personal interests that are really animating and guiding action’. He concedes that it is difficult, empirically, to disprove this (Moore 1988:71). However, it does seem reasonable to argue, for example in the British case post-1979, that new ideas, such as de-regulation, privatisation, contracting-out, marketisation, did indeed spread virus-like across policy sectors, ‘unbalancing’ existing forces (policy communities) as they did so. Existing policy communities faced three basic choices in the face of this exogenous change. First, they could accept their own demise in the face of the new ‘virus’. Second, they could adapt or ‘mutate’ the virus itself. Third, they could themselves mutate in order to survive. In Mrs


Thatcher’s Britain, the latter generally proved to be the easiest option. Thus, actors learned to adapt to de-regulation, privatisation, internal markets, and even externally imposed research and teaching quality exercises in universities. A key aspect of this adaptiveness was the acceptance of completely new rules of the game and the admittance of new stakeholders. The notion of an adaptive stakeholder is described as part of an evolutionary process by John. He argues that the evolutionary process in public policy ‘is different to the classic Darwinian selection mechanism in that human actors are capable of consciously adapting to their environment’ (John 1998:185, 1999:43–5). In contrast to the thrust of the argument here, John appears to see the evolutionary process in public policy as largely intramural activity—‘thus it is better to see the emergence of policy as an evolution of ideas and interests within generally preset institutions, patterns of group politics and socioeconomic constraints’ (John 1998:186). Our resort to the virus analogy is meant to convey the importance of exogenously generated ideas as a shock to both existing institutional arrangements and the actors which benefit from them. Ideas are, of course, anchored in institutions and interests, at some point, as Jacobsen implies. Ideas are also anchored, more or less, to knowledge of some kind. Indeed, it might be argued that knowledge often precedes ideas in the policy process. Whether knowledge precedes or follows ideas, there is no doubt that knowledge is a powerful ‘change agent’ (either endogenous or exogenous) for policy communities and networks. As Radaelli points out, various writers have suggested that ‘knowledge is an independent and highly significant variable in the investigation of the policy process’ (Radaelli 1995:161). Space precludes a review of the large body of literature concerned with knowledge in the policy process, but it is sufficient for our purposes to posit knowledge as a major ‘perturbation’ (Sabatier 1998:118) which can lead to change. Again, there are some obvious empirical examples, such as knowledge about the effects of smoking on health, the effects of diet on heart disease, the depletion of the ozone layer, all of which lead to major changes in public policy and to the power and composition of existing policy communities and networks. Similar examples can be found in the field of drug addiction, education, crime prevention, water treatment etc. As we shall see, the politics of trunk road building has been especially characterised by the emergence of new knowledge, concerning environmental and health damage, for example. Thus, change is often knowledge-driven, albeit via a very political process such as competing advocacy coalitions, each of whom claims ownership of the truth. For example, in the US, Laird argues, ‘the system of policy making encourages partisans to buttress their cases by claiming that they are grounded in valid scientific and technological knowledge’ (Laird 1999:4).


Why does policy change? Chief themes and structure of the book A key contemporary challenge, therefore, is to provide some effective answers to the question: Why Does Policy Change? If models of policy communities and networks appear to be more efficient at describing stability and incremental policy change, then it seems to be a logical proposition to focus attention chiefly on determining the dynamics of radical policy change. Consequently, in this book the emphasis will be on identifying the causes of what Hall terms, ‘third order’ policy change. First and second order change can be seen as cases of ‘normal policy-making’, namely of a process that adjusts policy without challenging the overall terms of a given policy paradigm, much like normal science. ‘Third order’ change, by contrast, is likely to reflect a very different process, marked by the radical changes in the overarching terms of policy discourse associated with a ‘paradigm shift’. If first and second order changes preserve the broad continuities usually found in patterns of policy, ‘third order’ change is often a more disjunctive process associated with periodic discontinuities in policy (Hall 1993:279). Hall goes on to emphasise that an implication of this analysis is that first and second order changes in policy do not automatically lead to third order changes (Hall 1993:279). In other words, we should not fall into the trap of assuming that a paradigmatic shift involves only a more intense version of the ‘normal’ policymaking dominated by policy communities and networks. ‘Third order’ policy change is likely to encompass more three-dimensional and spatial dynamics, involving a range of variables. These dynamics can be complex, but certain elements, and the interrelationships between them, appear to be crucial. In this book, we will concentrate particularly on a comparative analysis of the ‘Four Is’ as key determining variables of ‘third order’ policy change: ideas, interests, institutions and individuals (Peters 1996). These four variables provide a powerful framework on which to build our analysis. There is, however, one further key element in determining the dynamics of ‘third order’ policy change—that of time. Notwithstanding its pervasive influence, time is often overlooked as a vital variable, and yet in a longitudinal study its importance becomes clear. In developing the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), Sabatier stresses that understanding the process of policy change—and the role of policy-oriented learning therein —#8212;requires a time perspective of a decade or more (Sabatier 1993:16). Once time is absorbed into the policy change equation, then it too becomes a variable which must be taken into account. The various analytical strands will be developed within the case studies themselves, but here we will briefly summarise the chief policy process questions to be dealt with in the context of the ‘Four Is’ and time. In the final chapter, for each of the variables, we will assess the extent to which it tends


towards being an independent or a dependent variable in ‘third order’ policy change processes. Thus the chief analytical themes of the book are: • the relationship between ideas and interests and the status of each as an independent or dependent variable of ‘third order’ policy change; • the role of separate policy arenas as institutions; • the role of individuals as key agents of ‘third order’ policy change; and • the significance of time as an independent or a dependent variable. The relationship between ideas and interests and the status of each A key element in our analysis here is the manner in which ideas may mutate, and so be transplanted (Dudley 1999) in a particular sector. As John observes, the evolutionary process is different to the classic Darwinian selection mechanism in that human actors are capable of consciously adapting to their environment (John 1998:185). The mutation of policy ideas may therefore involve not only the chance element emphasised by Kingdon’s policy streams model (Kingdon 1995), but also a more deliberate choice implied by the ACF (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993). This latter, more deliberate, mutation of ideas is of particular importance here because it provides an insight into the crucial relationship between the transplanting of ideas and processes of ‘third order’ policy change. Interests may play an important role in transplanting ideas but, if these same interests are also in fact value based advocacy coalitions, sharing deep core beliefs (Sabatier 1993: 16), then they too will ultimately be shaped and driven by ideas. In disentangling causality between ideas and interests, it is vital to identify the extent to which key interests may also be ‘framed’ by contemporary policy ideas and values. The evolution of an idea may therefore provide us with not only an explanation of ‘third order’ policy change dynamics, but also the timing of that change through processes of policy learning. In fact, the mutation of ideas may be signified by periods of discontinuous or ‘development’ learning (Laird 1999). The role of separate policy arenas as institutions which act as instruments of ‘third order’ policy change The ‘image and venue’ model quoted earlier (Baumgartner and Jones 1991, 1993) is particularly valuable here in indicating how institutional restructuring can be synonymous with periods of ‘punctuated equilibria’ which produce processes of ‘third order’ policy change. New institutional models emphasise the role of institutions as islands of imperfect and temporary organisation in potentially inchoate political worlds (March and Olsen 1989: 16). This concept has much in common with policy networks and communities, i.e. they both operate on a large foundation of implicit and voluntary trust, and unofficial rules


of appropriateness. As such, they are more effective in describing periods of policy stability rather than change. Instead, by inverting institutional and community models, it could be said that change is more likely when institutions possess no rules, criteria of appropriateness or communities. These ‘arenas without rules’ can be powerful instruments of change, as illustrated by our roads case study when, at various times, both the public inquiries and the road construction sites were employed for this purpose (Dudley and Richardson 1996a, 1998). The ‘image and venue’ model nevertheless implies that some kind of transmission process is taking place, whereby ideas are being transmitted from one arena and received in another, such as a policy core. This involves the vital process, as indicated by Hall, of organised interests acquiring power by trying to influence the political discourse of the day. He concedes that it is difficult to model the transmission of ideas, but notes that shifts in the locus of authority seem to be a critical component of the process whereby paradigms shift (Hall 1993:291). These shifts, often leading to multi-arena games, are therefore vital elements in ‘third order’ change processes, but are themselves a function of the transmission of ideas. In this respect, institutional processes are dependent variables of the dynamics of ideas. Similarly, policy networks, as exemplified by (in the case of roads) a hegemonic policy community, or (in the case of rail) a ‘hollow core’, are important in determining the trajectory of ideas, but are also, ultimately, dependent variables of those ideas. The role of individuals as key agents of ‘third order’ policy change Kingdon stresses the importance of policy entrepreneurs in coupling the separate policy streams of problems, policies and politics (Kingdon 1995: 20), while the ACF also emphasises the role of policy brokers, whose principal concern is to find some reasonable compromise that will reduce intense conflict (Sabatier 1993:18–19). Both of these models thus envisage the individual as an agent who, to a significant extent, not only stands apart from established networks and communities, but also plays an important role in shaping ideas and advocacy coalitions, and so determining policy outcomes. In the dynamics of ‘third order’ policy change, our case studies suggest that individual Ministers appear to be particularly influential agents of these processes. The implications of this distinctive perspective for the study of policy networks are that Ministers may have a view of the policy process markedly different from that of other actors (Dudley 1994). Not only do they have more formal power than other network actors—they may often have a different set of values and almost always a different timescale. Consequently, the old adage of ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’ could be adapted to become, ‘where you stand depends on what you see from where you sit’. Where the vision of


officials may be restricted to the principal producer interests within a policy subsystem, a Minister may be aware of a whole range of actors operating in different policy sectors and different policy-making arenas. Thus Ministers are often acutely aware of those who are not directly participating—in particular party members, party activists and, especially, voters. Filling the ‘empty chair’ of public opinion can be a crucial element in processes of ‘third order’ policy change. Consequently it could be said that a Transport Minister may ‘see’ millions of motorists disgruntled at the slow progress in building new roads; or thousands of angry rail commuters upset because their trains are persistently late and overcrowded; or local groups protesting at plans to build a trunk road through their neighbourhood. None of these interests may be involved directly as the regular clients of the Ministry, but Ministers are likely to take into account the electoral consequences of alienating a potentially significant proportion of the population. Yet Ministers are not pre-programmed or blank sheets of paper, but, like all of us, possess a unique set of conceptual lenses, with a personality to match. Thus Ministers are in situations of choice when dealing with national policy communities and networks. In our terms, they can choose to be ‘promiscuous’ with a range of other policy actors, or can be ‘celibate’, making lonely or internalised policy decisions, according to their own beliefs and principles, or in response to other external pressures, i.e. they are mobile rather than static policy actors. Within a relatively short period of time, they can act as leaders and shapers of advocacy coalitions, policy entrepreneurs, or policy brokers. This inherent mobility places a Minister in a position to introduce policy innovations and to produce change in the composition of the policy network itself (Dudley and Richardson 1996b, c). Notwithstanding the particular importance of Ministers, key individuals generally can appear in any policy arena, and can possess the mobility and flexibility to act as vital agents of ‘third order’ policy change, particularly in the transmission and reception of new ideas. The significance of time as an independent or a dependent variable A longitudinal study, in itself, highlights the importance of time. Although we are studying the dynamics of ‘third order’ policy change, which may take place over a relatively short period of time, the foundations of that change may lie in events which took place many years previously, or in conditions of stability which have persisted for many years. For example, established interests can rely on time not only to fulfil their longterm objectives, but also to hope that any challenge to their authority will dissipate itself through campaigns running out of energy and ideas. On the other hand, ‘policy windows’ (Kingdon 1995:20) can provide limited periods of time when circumstances permit major policy change to take place. Time therefore


highlights particularly the often complex relationship between the conditions of policy stability and policy change, which a longitudinal study allows us to analyse. Thus, although a ‘snapshot’ approach may be necessary in order to satisfactorily analyse intense periods of ‘third order’ policy change, it is likely that this change can only be properly understood if we also appreciate the dynamics of possibly many years of relative stability and only incremental policy change. In this context, concepts such as policy communities and policy networks can also form an integral (if subsidiary) part of ‘third order’ policy change studies. In the light of our case study analyses, we conclude that, in the dynamics of ‘third order’ policy change, ideas and individuals are probably best characterised as independent variables, while interests and institutions are probably best characterised as being the dependent variables. There is an ambivalence about time which makes it in some respects a dependent variable, but also the ultimate independent variable. Our case studies of five turning points in UK road and rail policy since 1945 are intended to analyse and illustrate the conditions necessary for ‘third order’ policy change. There is a clear contrast between the network structures in road and rail. For nearly forty years the trunk roads sector was dominated by a hegemonic policy community which succeeded in imposing road building as the principal transport ‘solution’. In contrast, the rail sector has been notable for the persistent lack of an established policy community or even policy network, giving it the character of a ‘hollow core’. For roads, therefore, new and alternative ideas, particularly those propounded by the environmental advocacy coalition, have largely been forced to bypass the established community in order to penetrate the policy core. In the case of rail, it has been possible to inject new ideas more directly, but the paradox of the ‘hollow core’ is that it is not necessarily easy for ideas to take hold, and ‘third order’ policy change to take place. For both road and rail, however, key individuals appear to be essential agents of a shift in dominant paradigms. The two rail case studies concern periods when new ideas penetrated the ‘hollow core’ and brought about ‘third order’ policy change. First (Chapters 2 and 3) in the early 1960s, Dr Richard Beeching, as Chairman of the British Transport Commission and then the British Railways Board, introduced the concept of ‘the commercial railway’. In this process, Beeching was assisted and supported particularly by the Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples. The Beeching plan involved radical large-scale line and station closures, and carried obvious political risks and costs. Nevertheless, much of the Beeching plan was eventually implemented, even after he and Marples had departed the scene. Even up to the present day, the name ‘Beeching’ has become a powerful symbol of particular policy ideas. The second rail case study (Chapter 9) concerns the years 1987–92, when the idea of privatisation was transplanted. The economic problems and the political status of the rail industry made it an unlikely candidate for privatisation, but the continued existence of the ‘hollow core’ allowed a succession of individual


privatisation advocates to advance the idea. Progress was spasmodic, and at times unpredictable, but eventually the privatisation advocates won the day. The first roads case study (Chapters 4 and 5) concerns the period when the road lobby was transformed from a weak advocacy coalition into a hegemonic policy community. This ‘third order’ policy change took place over a surprisingly short period of time (1954–9), and was brought about particularly by two influential Transport Ministers. In transplanting the policy idea, however, a mutation took place in the form of the concept of ‘popular consumerism’ attaching itself to roads as the policy ‘solution’. The power of the new policy idea was such that, by the time the first major stretch of motorway was opened in 1959, a previously sceptical government was enthusiastically embracing road building as a key element in its election winning strategy. The hegemonic roads policy community ruled unchallenged through-out the 1960s, but by the early 1970s environmental ideas were at least beginning to gain some ground. The second roads case study (Chapter 6) describes the period 1973–9 when the environmentalists, and particularly a handful of key individuals, challenged the roads community with some success. In particular, the disruption of a number of public inquiries sent messages to government which were acted on by sympathetic Ministers. There were also some effective challenges to the expertise of the knowledge-based roads epistemic community (Haas 1992). Nevertheless, the environmentalists lacked a strong policy idea which could unite a wide advocacy coalition, and also centrally placed policy entrepreneurs who could organise a collective action strategy. Consequently, true ‘third order’ change was not brought about. In the 1980s, the fortunes of the roads policy community revived, with the result that in 1989 a new large-scale road building plan was published. The third roads case study (Chapters 7 and 8) describes the period 1989–99 when this road building plan was eventually destroyed by a coordinated environmental advocacy coalition employing an effective multi-arena campaign. Skilful policy entrepreneurs organised this strategy, which could unite under the mutated policy idea of sustainable mobility. Consequently, unlike the 1970s, ‘third order’ policy change took place when road building as the principal policy ‘solution’ was destroyed.

2 The dynamics of the rail ‘hollow core’ The prelude to Beeching

Trevithick, Stephenson, Brunel—these names and possibly a handful more still signify railways to a majority of the British public. But neither in their owners’ lifetimes nor since have they become part of the language. This is the unique achievement, as a railwayman, of Dr Richard Beeching. In this century, certainly, no-one else involved in railways (unless one includes in this category the Minister who appointed the Doctor, Ernest Marples) has been similarly known by name to every man, woman and child of—say—ten-plus in the Kingdom…. And all this on the basis of four years’ absorption with railways, no more. (G.Freeman Allen, British Railways After Beeching, p. 1) The paradox of the ‘hollow core’ The concept of the ‘hollow core’ provides an effective image to describe a sectoral policy network with no strong central community. Heinz et al. perceive the ‘hollow core’ as cases where networks of policy makers lack central actors who stand in the middle of the system and have the ability to shape winning coalitions. That is, the ‘hollow core’ might be an image that is something like the opposite of the power elite (Heinz et al. 1993: xvi). Nevertheless, there is an important paradox at the heart of this image, for if the core really is hollow, then why is it so difficult to occupy? i.e. why does a ‘hollow core’ stay hollow, and what are the conditions which are required to occupy it? This chapter and the next concern a sector, that of rail policy in Britain, which has indeed been a network ‘hollow core’ for much of the last fifty years, but which, on a handful of occasions, and for relatively short periods of time, has been penetrated by powerful agents of change. Consequently, we are centrally concerned here with the years 1960–5 when Dr Richard Beeching, in various capacities, acted as a ‘change champion’ in rail policy (Pitt 1990:68–69). This case study provides some important explanations of the conditions under which the ‘hollow core’ is actually occupied. We will see that it was ideas, riding in on the back of influential individuals acting as agents and entrepreneurs of

THE DYNAMICS OF THE RAIL ‘HOLLOW CORE’ 25

policy change, which successfully penetrated the policy network ‘hollow core’. To some extent, the ideas’ survival depended on the continued presence of these advocates in order to hold political control of the ‘hollow core’, and the network gradually reverted to type after they departed. Nevertheless, the ideas, together with distinctive policy ‘images’, have achieved a sort of immortality in the public consciousness. Thus the name ‘Beeching’ lives on through the ideas and values which he promoted. A key element in understanding how the ‘hollow core’ is occupied is to once more appreciate the degree of discontinuity in the policy process. Over the past two decades, a number of key policy process and change models have depended to a significant extent on stressing the importance of ‘the spaces between things’. For example, the garbage can model of Cohen et al. describes organisations as ‘organised anarchies’ having the properties of problematic preferences, unclear technology and fluid participation. Running through the organisation are four separate streams: problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities (Cohen et al. 1972:1–35). As Kingdon notes, each of the streams has a life of its own, largely unrelated to the others (Kingdon 1995:85). To Cohen et al. therefore, the ‘organised anarchy’ is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work (Cohen et al. 1972:2). To only a limited extent, the garbage can model complements the explanation for the ‘hollow core’ provided by Heinz et al. For example, the Heinz et al. model emphasises the extent to which national policy-making is shaped by the distinctive structure of the interests that make up specific policy domains (Heinz et al. 1993:22). Thus, their findings suggest that structure and uncertainty are mutually reinforcing processes. In the attempt to deal with bigger stakes and rising uncertainty in the policy-making process, interests have organised their representational activities to reinforce control over their agents, to increase the amount of policy-relevant information they process, and expand their capacity to participate in policy deliberations. Yet, in the process of creating structures to control or adapt to uncertainty, they have contributed to the development of a more complex and rapidly changing policy-making environment. Interest representation has thus become a self-producing organisational field (Heinz et al. 1993:371). Heinz et al. therefore see the ‘hollow core’ chiefly as the result of an increasing complexity of interests. In this sense, the model is analogous with Heclo’s concept of the issue network, as characterised by a large number of participants with minimum stability and continuity (Heclo 1978). The emphasis on complexity and uncertainty clearly strikes a chord with the garbage can concept of the ‘organised anarchy’, but there are also important differences. Of particular relevance here is the concentration of Heinz et al. on the structure of a sectoral policy network. Consequently, it lacks the breadth and threedimensional quality of the garbage can model as an explanation of sectoral


change processes. For example, in the case of rail policy in Britain, we need to understand not only the structure of the interests, but also how new ideas and values can enter and dominate a sectoral network. On the one hand, rail does confirm the ‘hollow core’ model in the close link between structure and uncertainty. In particular, the typical Morrisonian (named after the Minister who developed the concept) arm’slength relationship between the government and the state owned rail industry had the effect of creating a policy vacuum which no interest, or combination of interests, could occupy. On the other hand, it could not be said that the ‘hollow core’ was attributable to a growing complexity of interests. Instead, it was caused by a paralysis of interests, which in its turn could be attributed chiefly to a lack of political leadership and the failure to build a stable policy community. Beeching proved to be the agent through which new ideas entered the sector; and it is in explaining this multi-dimensional change process where models which emphasise discontinuities come into their own. Ideas, policy streams and policy windows The rail policy network (such as it was) lacked a coherently organised core of actors, brought together by agreement on values and goals. Superficially, therefore, it was structurally weak and vulnerable to outside pressures and intrusions. Nevertheless, the introduction of new ideas required particular agents and instruments of change. In itself, the policy network was unlikely to initiate radical change, and so the ideas had to bridge the discontinuities separating the network from the outside world. As Majone argues, public policy cannot be understood solely in terms of concepts like power, influence, interest pressure and decision. Ideas and arguments, far from being mere rationalisations or rhetorical embellishments, are integral parts of policy-making (Majone 1991:290). Nevertheless, as Radaelli points out, once accepted by policy-makers, ‘an economic paradigm undergoes a process of institutionalisation’ (Radaelli 1995:167, original emphasis). Thus institutions give stability to shared causal beliefs, set up structures of meaning, create networks of actors, and constrain the perception of interests and of socioeconomic change (Radaelli 1995:178). It is this penetration by ideas, and their subsequent and attempted institutionalisation, which we are chiefly concerned with here. The garbage can model provides a vital insight of the separate dynamics of policy process elements such as problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities. Kingdon utilises this model to place the emphasis more on ‘organised’ rather than ‘anarchy’, and to discover structures and patterns in the process (Kingdon 1995:86), i.e. Kingdon also emphasises the discontinuities between elements, but then seeks to explain how these largely independent ‘policy streams’ can be brought together to describe the phenomenon of ‘an idea whose time has come’ (Kingdon 1995:1). Kingdon defines three policy streams


flowing through the system—those of problems, policies and politics. Although these streams are separate and have their own dynamics, at some critical juncture they are joined, and the greatest policy changes grow out of that coupling. Thus ideas float around in a ‘policy primeval soup’, in which the strongest come to the forefront by a process of natural selection. At certain critical times, however, the policy streams come together. This coupling is most likely when policy windows—opportunities for pushing pet proposals or conceptions of problems—are open. These windows are opened either by the appearance of compelling problems or by happenings in the political stream (Kingdon 1995: 20), In essence, therefore, Kingdon is attempting to describe the process whereby ideas as policy solutions attach themselves to sectoral problems in the appropriate political climate. In the case of rail, the policy problem had an economic and a political dimension. From the economic perspective, during the 1950s rail had suffered mounting deficits, so that by 1960 there was increasing concern within government that these losses could not be staunched by the sole use of traditional instruments such as raising fares. From the political viewpoint, rail was beginning to experience tough competition from the motor vehicle. As we described in the previous chapter, after a slow start in the early post-war years, by the late 1950s the road building programme was gaining an increasing momentum, and had become the favoured policy ‘solution’ of Ministers to the transport problem (e.g. see Starkie 1982; Hamer 1987; Dudley and Richardson 1996a). In contrast, rail was perceived as a first class policy ‘problem’. By the early 1960s, the contrasting fortunes of these two modes gave rail a highly vulnerable appearance. It could be said, therefore, that any policy ‘solution’ for rail was viewed from the perspective that this was a sector in secular decline, which could not recover from the effects of ever increasing vehicle ownership and the generally cheaper rates charged by road haulage. The chosen ‘solution’ introduced by the ‘outsider’ businessman Beeching, involved a ruthless closures programme. Thus the policy ‘problem’ and the ‘solution’ did indeed have their own separate dynamics. As Kingdon acknowledges, however, the coupling of the policy streams can require the services of an entrepreneur, who will take responsibility not only for prompting important people to pay attention, but also for coupling solutions to problems and for coupling both problems and solutions to politics (Kingdon 1995:20). In the case of rail, this particular entrepreneurial role was assumed by the Minister of Transport 1959–64, Ernest Marples. Earlier, we have noted that Ministers are mobile rather than static policy actors. Consequently, they can choose to be ‘promiscuous’ with a range of other policy actors, or can be ‘celibate’ making lonely or internalised policy decisions, according to their own beliefs and principles, or in response to other exogenous pressures (Dudley and Richardson 1996b). Hennessy observes that transport is one of the most highly politicised subjects. The department which embodies it in Whitehall is, by extension, probably the most vulnerable ministry in terms of


swinging political fashions and the application of ideology to policy and administration. It is also a department where reputations can be made and a kind of immortality achieved (Hennessy 1990:451). This was certainly true in the case of Marples—a livewire minister with a great talent for self-promotion. It was Marples who not only introduced Beeching to the rail sector, but promoted and championed his ideas, enlisted the support of the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and initiated a large-scale restructuring of the nationalised transport industries. Marples’ five year tenure at the Ministry of Transport, itself highly unusual in a job generally noted for its high casualty rate, enabled him, with Beeching, to couple the policy streams and to occupy the ‘hollow core’. It is highly significant that, when Marples did finally leave Transport at the defeat of the Conservative government in the general election of 1964, Beeching’s position was fatally undermined. He never enjoyed a harmonious rapport with Labour Ministers who, apart from having serious doubts about his policy ‘solutions’ (although they were not averse to adopting some of them), also regarded him as a figure personally identified with a Conservative government. When Beeching resigned as British Rail Chairman in 1965, he apparently had few regrets about leaving an industry where the political climate had turned hostile towards him. As Radaelli shrewdly notes, Kingdon’s model of policy change breaks with a long tradition in political science, dedicated to structural variables: by contrast, in Kingdon’s model ‘individuals’ (i.e. policy entrepreneurs) are placed into the limelight (Radaelli 1995:169, original emphasis). Nevertheless, he notes also that the crucial theme of ‘knowledge transmission’ as the key element of the agenda setting process also appears in Kingdon’s analysis (Radaelli 1995:169, original emphasis). Marples and Beeching did indeed try to transmit their ideas throughout the policy network, but with decidedly mixed results. Beeching brought in his own men to fill many of the senior rail management positions, and a large-scale closures programme did take place. On the other hand, there were also some influential managers who were sceptical of his policy. Although not an extrovert showman, such as Marples, Beeching did value the importance of presentation and public relations. This was particularly evident in his Reshaping of British Railways report in 1963. At the same time, he was not a natural manager or motivator, and so ultimately there were limitations to his powers of communication to the railways and beyond. Advocacy coalitions as instruments of radical change This insight about the coupling of the policy streams provides the key to understanding the conundrum posed at the beginning of the chapter of why the ‘hollow core’ can be so difficult to occupy. This is particularly so in the case of rail where, unlike the Heinz et al. model, there was not any increasing complexity of interests. Crucial as the role of individuals was, it was ‘the idea whose time has come’ which was coupled with the political stream and, for a


period, dominated the sector. Ironically, this conclusion is highlighted by the very survival of the name of ‘Beeching’. Thirty years after he left the rail industry, and over a decade after his death, the name ‘Beeching’ still has a deep resonance in rail policy. Hence, in the 1990s, a rail union leader could refer to potential line closures as a result of privatisation as: ‘raising the spectre of Dr Beeching once again stalking the land to close rural and loss-making lines’ (Guardian 8 April 1992). Nevertheless, the work of Beeching and Marples illustrates an important analytical problem which is never quite resolved by Kingdon in his model of separate policy streams, policy windows and coupling by entrepreneurs. This is the extent to which new policy ideas may emerge by a process of natural selection, or alternatively how much they are manipulated to the top of the agenda by skilful policy advocates and entrepreneurs. Kingdon himself refers to the process as ‘softening up’, whereby entrepreneurs try to ‘educate’ inertiabound policy communities and also larger publics into accepting new ideas (Kingdon 1995:128). At the same time, he continues to argue that the policy streams flow along largely on their own, each according to dynamics not much related to the others, and that the critical event to understand is how these largely independent streams come together (Kingdon 1995:228). A model which to some extent counters that of policy streams is the concept of advocacy coalitions proposed by Sabatier (Sabatier 1988, 1993). Significantly, Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier, like Kingdon, emphasise the degree of discontinuity in the policy process. Consequently, they claim that the stages model, which stresses process, is not really a causal model at all. They believe that it lacks identifiable forces to drive the policy process from one stage to another and generate activity within any given stage. Thus, they argue, it does not specify the linkages, drives and influences that form the essential core of theoretical models (Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier 1993:3). In addition, like Kingdon, they argue that policy evolution often involves multiple interacting cycles involving multiple levels of government (Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier 1993:4). Sabatier acknowledges that Kingdon is one of the few political scientists to deal seriously with the role of ideas and analysis in policy-making (Sabatier 1993:36–7). On the other hand, he differs from Kingdon by arguing that the ‘analyt ical’ stream is much more integrated with the ‘political’ stream than is claimed by the latter (Sabatier 1993:37). Instead, Sabatier proposes that: Within the subsystem, it is assumed that actors can be aggregated into a number of advocacy coalitions composed of people from various government and private organisations who share a set of normative and causal beliefs and who often work in concert. At any particular point in time, each coalition adopts a strategy envisaging one or more institutional innovations that members feel will further policy objectives. (Sabatier 1993:18)


Sabatier does not believe that ideas necessarily just evolve in a separate policy stream by a process of natural selection, but argues that they are appropriated by coalitions of actors holding common values and seeking certain objectives. The breadth of an effective advocacy coalition allows it to campaign in a wide range of policy arenas. In order of decreasing resistance to change, advocacy coalitions will share a deep core of fundamental beliefs, a policy core of basic strategies and policy positions, and a set of secondary aspects comprising a multitude of instrumental decisions and information searches necessary to implement the policy core in the specific policy area (Sabatier 1993:30). A great strength of Sabatier’s model is that it demonstrates how ideas and interests may be integrated to become a powerful instrument of radical policy change. In certain circumstances, therefore, advocacy coalitions may ‘short circuit’ the system and create their own ‘policy windows’. In this interpretation, Beeching and Marples can be seen as leaders of an advocacy coalition which ‘made its own luck’ in order to occupy the ‘hollow core’. The case study tends to, at least partly, bear this out, for although there were serious economic and political problems in the rail sector in the early 1960s, it was Beeching and Marples who forced through radical change, rather than a momentary ‘policy window’ which presented itself. Advocacy coalitions also allow us a greater understanding of radical change processes. As Baumgartner and Jones point out, the generation of new ideas makes many policy monopolies unstable in the long run (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:4). They argue that major political decisions affecting the political system for decades to come are often made in the absence of counter-mobilisation. Rather, waves of enthusiasm sweep through the political system as political actors become convinced of the value of some new policy. They create the institutions to pursue the policy, often in the absence of serious opposing voices (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:5). Following Schattschneider’s famous dictum that ‘organisation is the mobilisation of bias’, they contend that the right connection between institution and idea provides powerful support for the prevailing distribution of political advantage (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:16). Nevertheless, through the mechanisms of agenda access and issue definition, the broader forces of political control may intervene from time to time, changing policies from what the self-interested may prefer. These periodic turbulent disruptions can produce conditions of what they call punctuated partial equilibria (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:20–1). Access to the agenda, and resetting the terms in which policy is debated, provides a further important insight into the conditions required for successfully occupying the ‘hollow core’. For the advocacy coalition led by Beeching and Marples, it was not enough just to have a new policy idea, the agenda also had to be ‘framed’ in a fresh way. Thus ‘framing’ an issue can involve not only resetting the policy agenda, but also what Rein and Schön term the whole policy discourse (Rein and Schön 1991:263). Schön and Rein provide a useful definition of policy ‘framing’ as a way of selecting, organising, interpreting, and making sense of a complex reality so as to provide guideposts for knowing,


analysing, persuading and acting. A ‘frame’ is, therefore, a perspective from which an amorphous, ill-defined problematic situation can be made sense of and acted upon (Schön and Rein 1994:26). The importance of ‘framing’ is illustrated in the case of rail where, as Henshaw points out, Beeching and Marples had to convey the message to the public and the political community that the only realistic policy ‘solution’ to the mounting losses of the railways was the closure of apparently unprofitable lines. It had to be demonstrated, therefore that these lines had become a public liability, and that their sacrifice was required in the interests of the nation as a whole (Henshaw 1994:118). For Baumgartner and Jones, the question of changing the issue ‘frame’ is interpreted in terms of policy ‘image’. Hence each policy ‘image’ has two components: an empirical and an evaluative. They refer to the evaluative component of a policy image as its tone. As an example they cite the case of civilian nuclear power in the US, which once was positively associated with economic progress, but today is more likely associated with danger and environmental degradation (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:26). In the case of Beeching, there is some ambivalence over this question of ‘image’, which goes a long way to explaining the controversy surrounding his name even today. For Beeching himself the Reshaping report was intended as a highly ‘rational’ plan, intended to indicate where the railways should concentrate their resources, and so become more profitable and competitive. Instead of this positive ‘image’, however, his policy of mass closures instilled in the public imagination the ‘image’ of Beeching as the ‘Butcher of the Railways’, and of the railways themselves as an old and dying industry withering away against unstoppable competition from the new and expanding trunk roads network. Successfully ‘framing’ an issue is a key factor in achieving agenda change, but Baumgartner and Jones add an institutional element when they argue that images and venues are closely related. They define venue as the location where institutions or groups in society have the authority to make decisions concerning an issue. Thus policy-makers attempt both to manipulate the dominant understanding of the issues with which they deal, and to influence the institutions that exert jurisdiction over them (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:35). In the case of Beeching, the 1962 Transport Act abolished the established British Transport Commission, and set up a British Railways Board, which Beeching was able to build as his power base. The rail ‘hollow core’ and the lack of any dominant ideology and interests also assisted him in this process, although, as we have noted, his ability to project the defined ‘image’ was to prove limited. In the image and venue model we see again the importance of discontinuities, but this time expressed in another form to that set out in such models as the garbage can, policy streams and, to some extent, advocacy coalitions. In the latter, policy change comes about through a coupling or bridging of disparate process elements. In the case of image and venue, it is the institutional


separateness of a venue which can make it a powerful instrument of change. In fact, as we have noted elsewhere, it is important to see institutional venues not only as rival loci of power, but as fortresses from which those who control them can transmit the desired message or ‘image’ (Dudley and Richardson 1996a). Dunsire’s notion of ‘orders of comprehension’ as clusters of activities separated by their characteristic ‘universe of discourse’ is useful here. Thus, institutions can exhibit separate ‘orders of comprehension’ permitting discontinuities between them (Dunsire 1978:161). Consequently, Beeching and Marples not only controlled the locus of power, but could transmit their ideas from the occupied ‘hollow core’ to the wider world beyond. It is important to note also that alternative policy arenas can be appropriated by rival interests in order to transmit messages which undermine the prevailing orthodoxy. For example, as we will see in Chapters 7 and 8, in the case of British trunk roads policy, the environmental lobby gained control of the public inquiry process in the 1970s in order to transmit the image of roads as a policy ‘problem’ rather than a policy ‘solution’. As we will see in Chapter 7, in the 1990s the environmentalists have appropriated the construction sites themselves in order to transmit their chosen messages, with apparently significant success in shifting the policy ‘frame’ of the issue (Dudley and Richardson 1998). There is only limited evidence of this in the case of rail. Although the rail unions publicly opposed the Beeching plan, there was no systematic campaign to challenge his ‘framing’ of the issue. Individual line closures were challenged through the statutory process, and Ministers were undoubtedly sensitive about electorally damaging closures and service reductions, but the rail lobby never achieved the type of coordinated campaign seen in the case of roads. Frustrating a ‘clear home run’ As Kingdon emphasises, managing the policy agenda is not in itself a guarantee of ensuring policy change (Kingdon 1995:54). Peters notes that very few issues come to government already neatly wrapped and identified. Rather, they become defined through a complex process of contending ideas, advocacy, learning and ultimately either political domination or synthesis. In this process information and ideas may be as important as power, and policy entrepreneurship becomes a process of marshalling evidence as well as counting votes (Peters 1994:13). Significantly, Sabatier believes a study of policy change requires a time perspective of a decade or more, and sees advocacy coalitions working throughout policy subsystems at all levels of government (Sabatier 1993: 16). From this perspective, Marples and Beeching needed to find allies throughout BR and in the public arena beyond in order to win long-term acceptance for their ideas. In the term employed by Héritier to analyse European regulatory policymaking, Beeching and Marples could then achieve a ‘clear home run’ (Héritier 1996:151).


In the event, however, this ‘clear home run’ was frustrated, at least for Beeching and Marples personally, by a mixture of endogenous and exogenous forces. Endogenously, elements of BR management were reluctant to accept the Beeching ‘frame’ and advocated a different policy of cutting costs to save threatened lines, rather than Beeching’s favoured policy of outright closures. Exogenously the key factor was the onset of the 1964 general election and the ensuing defeat of the Conservative government. This defeat ensured the departure of Marples and in the following year a disillusioned Beeching resigned as BR Chairman. Ironically, many of Beeching’s policy ideas were implemented by the Labour government, including the large majority of the proposed line closures, although the idea of the commercial railway was mitigated by the introduction of subsidies. Nevertheless, although Beeching was himself not particularly sympathetic to the road lobby (unlike the keen roads advocate Marples), implementation of the Beeching Plan implied a settlement and accommodation with the (as they had become by the 1960s) hugely powerful road interests. For rail, the exogenous fact of the expansion of roads added another dimension to the ‘hollow core’. Beeching and his ideas dominated rail policy in the 1960s, but the core of the roads community, and in particular the close relationship between the MoT and the road lobby, remained an impenetrable fortress. Before describing and analysing this period in more detail, however, it is important to understand the evolution in the 1950s of the fragmented and politically messy rail ‘hollow core’. The dynamics of the rail ‘hollow core’ The rail sector has a wide range of key interests, including operators, government, unions and passengers, but no real sense of a policy com munity or common culture. As we outlined earlier, there is a vivid contrast here with roads, where for many years from the later 1950s, the tightly knit relationship between government and trunk road construction ensured that policy was ‘framed’ in a particular way. Rail interests, on the other hand, have encountered great difficulty in forming any sort of stable alliance with government which could succeed in projecting a more positive image of rail as a mode of transport with a positive future. A brief examination of the policy developments up to 1960 will illustrate the political weaknesses which hampered the development of the industry up to the advent of Beeching in that year. Regulation and nationalisation When the Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened in 1830 as the first substantial line to rely completely on steam power, it heralded not only a transport revolution, but also signified an irrevocable break with the past in terms


of industrial, commercial and political life. Dyos and Aldcroft graphically describe its impact: Here, then, was a major railway between the two most important industrial and commercial cities in the provinces, solidly engineered despite great difficulties, completely mechanised, creating a demand that had not been thought to exist, working to full capacity with unparalleled efficiency, and distributing to the shareholders year after year with the same measured power that drove its engines a dividend of 9.5 per cent. (Dyos and Aldcroft 1974:124–5) The rapid development of the railways in the 1830s and 1840s inevitably made them a matter of political salience, with a boom in Parliamentary Acts authorising the building of lines. As McLean and Foster point out, although the Victorian era is generally portrayed as a triumph of laissezfaire, from the early days the government took action to control the companies (McLean and Foster 1992:313). For example, although there continues to be considerable controversy about its true significance, the 1844 Regulation of Railways Act signified the government’s concerns about the potential monopoly power of the railway companies (e.g. see Dyos and Aldcroft 1974:142–3; McLean and Foster 1992: 313–31; Foster 1992:21–36). The government continued to take an increasingly interventionist approach towards the railway companies, particularly in limiting the system of charging, so that by 1914 it could be said that the railways were the most regulated form of economic activity in Britain (Dyos and Aldcroft 1974: 163). Even in what is generally thought of as the heyday of the railways, therefore, we see the ability of the government to ‘frame’ policy in terms of the railways serving a wider economic interest. Significantly, the companies lacked the political strength or guile to break away from their controls, and project a more commercial ‘image’. After the First World War, the companies were in a depressed state, and it was clear that a considerable degree of rationalisation was required. The government had taken control of the companies during the war, and was empowered to retain this control for two years after it. Nationalisation seemed the most likely option, but in the event the government imposed a rationalisation into four companies based on the regional main lines. Prices were still controlled through a legalistic Railway Rates Tribunal, and during the inter-war years the companies remained in a generally depressed state. By now, competition from motor vehicles was intensifying, and road haulage and coach operators could be much more flexible in their pricing. After the Second World War, therefore, there was a general acceptance that the old structure was beyond repair. Consequently, nationalisation of the railways was swept up in the giant 1947 Transport Act, which not only nationalised the railways, but also the hotels owned by the railway companies; the London passenger transport system; the canals and inland waterways; the road


haulage industry; and gave the new British Transport Commission (BTC) the power to reorganise and transfer to public ownership the principal trade harbours and the road passenger services throughout the country (Robson 1960:95). Five executives were given functional control of railways, road haulage, road passenger transport hotels and catering, and docks and inland waterways. The sixth executive took over London passenger transport. Over all of this the BTC was designed to determine overall policy and coordinate the various executives. From the outset, it became clear that the massive and unwieldy structure of the BTC was not conducive to achieving the objective of an integrated and efficient transport system for Britain. In the event, when the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, they set about a process of denationalisation, so that the 1953 Transport Act provided for the return to the private sector of the road haulage industry and the repeal of the BTC’s powers relating to road passenger services and trade harbours. As Robson emphasises, by far the most important question which now faced the BTC was the modernisation of the antiquated railway system (Robson 1960:96). Here we have one important indicator, therefore, for the existence in the early post-war years of the ‘hollow core’ on railway policy. The BTC, overwhelmed by its massive and complex responsibilities, and besieged by the political and practical problems of nationalisation and then denationalisation, was totally incapable of addressing its collective mind to devising a long-term strategy for the railways. In recognising the severe limitations of the BTC and the railway executive, the government decided that a much more decentralised system was required. Consequently, the country was divided into six Area Boards, which were given general supervision of the railways within their areas, although the BTC remained in overall control. This removed one tier of management, the Railway Executive, where relations with the Commission had never been good (e.g. see Gourvish 1986:47). The 1955 modernisation plan: coupling problems and policies By the mid-1950s, the persistent railway deficits were becoming a major policy headache for the BTC and the government. The BTC did not disaggregate its figures, but from 1953 the sell-off of the generally profitable road haulage operations threw into stark relief the position of the railways. In 1954 the deficit was £11.9 1.9 million, but by 1955 this had shot up to £30.6 million. The BTC itself had no doubt that the main explanation for the deficit of £70 million accumulated during the previous eight years was the persistence of inflation (BTC Annual Report 1955, para. 35). The Commission was understandably aggrieved that it had to present applications for price rises before the Transport Tribunal (the successor of the Railway Rates Tribunal), which placed it at a great disadvantage against competition from road transport, and also caused serious


delays in gaining revenue which was failing to keep pace with inflation. The 1953 Transport Act had attempted to give the BTC more freedom on charging, and proposed that the Tribunal should have powers in deciding only on the maximum charges, and should allow the industry to charge as it felt fit below these maxima. In the event, however, the BTC was slow in providing a charging structure, and the measure was not implemented until July 1957 (Reid and Allen 1970:114–15). Even so, the continued existence of the Transport Tribunal emphasised the by now unrealistic public controls under which the rail industry was labouring. By the mid-1950s the BTC was also struggling to keep down labour costs, and had been involved in a number of damaging disputes with the three main rail unions: the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) and the Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA). Traditionally, there was considerable rivalry between the general railway workers, who belonged to the NUR, and the drivers who belonged to ASLEF, with the latter regarding themselves as an elite, and jealously guarding differentials. For example, in 1955 negotiations on differentials between the BTC and ASLEF broke down, and the union called a damaging strike which lasted sixteen although the NUR refused to join the dispute. Gourvish emphasises (1986: days, and involved ministerial intervention (Boyd-Carpenter 1980:112–14) 228–31) that nobody could take much comfort from the 1955 strike: In short, the Commission’s policy was confused. It was torn between resisting union claims, in the face of its financial problems, and yielding to demands which a number of officers inside the organisation felt were fair and reasonable. (Gourvish 1986:231) The 1955 strike offers another good illustration of the existence of a policy network ‘hollow core’. Rivalry between the unions prevented a coordinated approach not only to wages, but also to applying concerted pressure for an investment policy. The BTC was indecisive, and veered between seeking to do the bidding of Ministers and a reluctance to take on the unions. The government itself had no clear strategy on industrial relations for the railways, encouraging BTC management to take on ASLEF, but then fearing the political impact of a strike, particularly as the stop-page took place during the period of a general election. Ironically, however, 1955 was finally the year when the BTC attached a policy ‘solution’ to the rail ‘problem’. The answer to the growing deficits was to be a large-scale and expensive investment plan, which should be implemented as quickly as possible. An important clue to the policy ‘frame’ of this period comes, significantly, not from the government, but from a barrister, Sir John Cameron, who in 1954–5 chaired a government appointed inquiry into an NUR claim for a significant pay increase. In his report Cameron came down in favour of the


NUR, and concluded that having willed the end (of a nationalised railway system) the Nation must will the means (Cmnd. 9352, 1955:4–7). Although Cameron was referring to wage comparability, his comment could be taken as a good summary of the values then underlying rail policy. Even for a Conservative government, the railways were a natural case for public ownership, and the arguments for major capital investment could no longer be ignored politically. By 1954, the BTC was sure that Britain was falling well behind other European countries in the development of diesel and electric services and the continued reliance on steam. Henshaw starkly puts the position that the railways had become victims of their own heritage, and the Victorian infrastructure was regarded as anachronistic and outmoded (Henshaw 1994:86). The plan for the Modernisation and Re-equipment of British Railways (BTC 1955) was published in January 1955, and envisaged the expenditure of £1,240 million over fifteen years (although it is important to note this period just to maintain the existing equipment. BTC Annual Report that the BTC estimated about £600 million would have to be spent over 1954, para. 117). The modernisation plan included the expenditure of £365 million on freight services, including a drastic rationalisation of inefficient marshalling yards; £285 rnillion on passenger carriages and stations; and £345 million on electrification and dieselisation. Of the major modernisation plans, it was decided that priority should be given to the electrification of the London Midland Region main line from London to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Unfortunately, this well intentioned plan was to hit a large number of operational economic and political obstacles, i.e. the ‘problem’ and ‘policy’ streams might be coupled but, as so often in the post-war history of the railways, transplanting into the ‘political’ stream was to prove much more wayward. In operational terms, as Henshaw points out, the extraordinary speed of the dieselisation programme proved to be a major economic blunder, for expensive diesels were put into service before prototypes had even completed trials (Henshaw 1994:79). More fundamentally, for many parts of the Modernisation Plan, costs and expected receipts had not been estimated, and implementation of the Plan would not boost profits to the extent hoped for by the BTC (Reid and Allen 1970:116). Gourvish describes how the Ministry of Transport put pressure on the BTC to produce a plan quickly, and ‘Modernisation Policy’ rather than ‘Plan’ would have been a more apt description of what was put together (confirming the extent to which ‘problems’ and ‘policies’ occupied separate policy streams) (Gourvish 1986:265). This haste limited the opportunity to pursue sophisticated traffic forecasts and financial calculations. There also appeared to be a strong element of presentational gloss on the BTC’s assertion in the Plan that its implementation would make it economically self-supporting for many years to come (see Gourvish 1986:266–7). Although there was some internal scepticism about the validity of the plan within both the BTC and the Treasury, the government gave its blessing for the Commission to proceed. There was a growing economic expansionist mood by


the mid-1950s, and it could be said that it was no coincidence that the rail Modernisation Plan coincided with the government’s commitment in February 1955 to commence construction of a motorway network and spend more on roads generally. After the austerity and restrictions of the early post-war years, there was a lighter and more optimistic public mood which the politicians wished to lead and reflect. Ironically for rail, it was to be the motor vehicle and roads which would be the chief beneficiaries of this public mood, with rail acquiring the ‘image’ of a transport mode whose halcyon days lay in the past. Another important problem in implementing the Plan, and also one more important explanation for the existence of the political ‘hollow core’ was, as Gourvish points out, that Ministers and officials lacked the expertise to truly evaluate and possibly challenge the analysis which lay behind the investment proposals of the Plan (Gourvish 1986:272). This was a problem which bedevilled relationships between many of the nationalised industries and government over a long period of time (e.g. see Foster 1971; Hannah 1982; Dudley and Richardson 1990). For some of these industries, however, such as electricity and steel, their central strategic importance gave their managements considerable political strength, which Ministers were reluctant to challenge, i.e. the managers asserted themselves politically, and prevented the occurrence of a ‘hollow core’. In contrast, the declining ‘image’ of rail, combined with a generally unassertive management, left the door open for a resourceful Minister, such as Marples, to take charge. Departments might lack the expertise to challenge the BTC, but business ‘experts’ could be hired to fill this gap, and if necessary supplant the status quo. Perhaps the biggest weakness of the 1955 Modernisation Plan, however, was its construction by an insular management who were generally back-ward looking, and had little awareness of the new threats from other modes of transport. This insularity is summarised by Allen: The (Modernisation)… Plan was permeated with an assumption that the railways had a God-given right to passengers and freight. It would still come their way automatically so long as trains travelled faster, and the railways could make a profit from it so long as they were lavishly reequipped with every known device that promised more economic working. (Allen 1966:6) Even by the late 1950s, therefore, the BTC stuck to the idiosyncratic policy ‘frame’, that new investment in itself would turn around the increasing deficits. In this respect, it was not just competition from the roads which threatened the railways. The rundown of the industries which traditionally provided the major customers for rail freight was also a serious, but unanticipated, problem. Thus Reid and Allen note that in 1956 the railways were carrying 168 million tons of coal and coke but only 122 million tons in 1967, and that the greater part of this


fall was a result of the diminished size of the coal industry rather than competition from alternative transport modes (Reid and Allen 1970:110). In any case, any financial benefits from the Modernisation Plan were going to take several years to come through and meanwhile the railway deficits were mounting. The 1947 Transport Act had required the BTC to balance their revenue account ‘taking one year with another’. Now, however, ‘taking one year with another’ the railways were facing an everaccumulating deficit. If the Modernisation Plan was to be financed, then this situation could not be allowed to continue. Consequently, between 1956 and 1958, £221 million was advanced under the Finance Act of 1956, which gave the Minister of Transport powers to lend money to the BTC as an alternative to the issuing of British Transport Stock (Gourvish 1986:296). Second, the Transport (Railway Finances) Act of 1957 gave the BTC authority to borrow from the Consolidated Fund a sum required to meet the deficits on revenue account of British Railways during the years up to 1962—up to a total of £250 million (later raised to £400 million) plus the interest on those advances. The BTC was also authorised to borrow moneys required to meet the interest on capital spent on the modernisation programme in the period before it was expected that it could become revenue earning (Jenkins 1959:117). In other words, the railways had now become a ‘special case’, with the government covering their losses. The problem was that they now also had a target of breaking even by 1962, and an expectation that all the money borrowed would eventually be paid back. In the event, this was to prove an entirely unrealistic objective. The other side of the coin to the government agreeing to prop up the railways was a requirement in 1956, and again in 1959, for the Commission to reassess its economic and financial future. On each occasion, the Commission produced a White Paper (Cmnd. 9880, 1956 and Cmnd. 813, 1959). Although in 1957 the BTC lifted the cost of the Modernisation Plan to £1,500 million, basically the government accepted the Commission’s arguments. It could be said that this acceptance reflected another facet of the ‘hollow core’. As we will describe in Chapter 5, the Minister of Transport 1955–9, Harold Watkinson, was primarily interested in the roads programme, and became integrally involved in the policy of constructing the first section of the M1 (see Watkinson 1986:67–92). In contrast, his Permanent Secretary, Sir Gilmour Jenkins, was an expert on merchant shipping. Although neither was particularly hostile to the railways, both had other priorities, and so there was a sense of drift at the centre. This sense of drift tended to be exacerbated by the character of the BTC Chairman since 1953, Sir Brian Robertson. A former Army General, Robertson was a keen advocate of the Modernisation Plan, but developed an overcomplicated administrative structure at the THC, and generally lacked the political stature to challenge the ever growing influence of the road lobby at the Ministry of Transport. By 1959, therefore, although investment in the railways had increased (net investment rose from £16.2 million in 1955 to £45.4 million in 1959) (Gourvish


1986:602), the BTC lacked either the organisational skill to the impact on their industry of changes in society as a whole. For its part, implement its Modernisation Plan smoothly, or the vision to appreciate the government was now bankrolling the railways, but had little sense of strategic leadership. Meanwhile, the other element in the equation of railway finances—the possibility of extensive line closures—remained largely a matter of low political salience. The line closures problem and policy ‘frames’ Given the monopoly position held by the majority of the nationalised industries, the Labour government of 1945–51 was anxious to accommodate the interests of the consumer, which might otherwise be overlooked. Consequently, a range of statutory consumers’ councils was set up for the various industries. In the case of transport the 1947 Transport Act provided for the establishment of several consultative committees, including a Central Transport Consultative Committee (CTCC) and area Transport Users’ Consultative Committees (TUCCs) for passenger and goods traffic, so that the whole country should be covered. The committees were to consist of an independent chairman, with members appointed to represent agriculture, commerce, industry, shipping, labour and local authorities, but with members also appointed by the BTC (Robson 1960:247). This BTC input inevitably threw into doubt the true independence of these committees, given that their membership included representatives of the principal transport operator. Their independence was dubious also because, ultimately, all the appointments were made by the Minister after consultation with the interests concerned. As Tivey notes, a high proportion of members were drawn from local authorities, and hence from local political parties. In addition, some interests, such as railway passengers, were not naturally organised, while some of those who did sit on the committees had no particular specialised knowledge or interest in rail policy (Tivey 1973:153–4). Consequently, the way could be left open for the committees to be dominated by professionals such as BTC representatives. Officially, the Consultative Committees were given the responsibility to make recommendations in regard to any matter (including charges) affecting the services and facilities afforded by the Commission which had been the subject of representations made to the committee by users of those services or facilities, or which appeared to be a matter to which consideration ought to be given, or which the Minister or Commission might refer to the committee for consideration (Robson 1960:247). In reality, although the CTCC and TUCCs were consulted by Ministers on most major policy issues, the Minister had no obligation to act on their recommendations, and indeed rarely did so. The generally infrequent meetings of the committees (Robson 1960:248) added to their image as political lightweights.


One important function they did perform, however, was in holding hearings on proposed closures of lines. In many respects, these hearings are analogous with the public inquiries held in the case of proposed road schemes, i.e. over time, they have acquired a quasi-judicial image, although their true role is basically consultative, as we will see in Chapter 6. Briefly, however, in the 1970s public inquiries into a number of controversial trunk road schemes became matters of high political salience when the environmental lobby exploited them by means of a number of well publicised disruptions of proceedings. Essentially the environmental lobby was seeking to change the manner in which the issue was ‘framed’, so that government would see roads as a policy ‘problem’ rather than a policy ‘solution’. At least for a period they succeeded in this aim. In the case of rail, although there was opposition to line closures, there was only limited success in changing the policy ‘frame’, i.e. to project an image of the lines as essential components of a total network rather than an expendable drain on railway resources. In the 1950s the principal opposition to line closures came from the Railway Development Association (RDA) founded in 1951. The RDA fought a number of campaigns against line closures, most notably on the Isle of Wight in 1953, where the BTC had proposed closing almost half the network. Henshaw describes how the RDA had become convinced that the Railway Executive had been providing false figures to TUCC inquiries so as to smooth the flow of closures, and so was determined to force a public debate on the issue (Henshaw 1994:66). The RDA hired a well known barrister and later High Court judge, Melford Stevenson, to fight its case, and also called a number of expert witnesses who threw considerable doubt on the figures produced by the railway executive. Nevertheless, when the decision came, the CTCC backed the BTC, and closure went ahead after the Minister of Transport promised road improvements for the island (Henshaw 1994:66–71). It could be said that the RDA was ahead of its time in its campaigning technique of hiring expertise, but that, unlike the environmentalists at road inquiries in the 1970s, it made the strategic mistake of fighting to the ‘rules’ constructed by the BTC itself. The Isle of Wight case also illustrates how the CTCC and the TUCCs had largely been ‘captured’ by the BTC. For example, in its 1954 Annual Report the BTC noted with satisfaction that, since they were set up, the Consultative Committees had examined closure schemes for 102 branch services, and that the resultant net economies were estimated at a minimum figure of £900,000 a year (BTC Annual Report 1954, para. 40). Notwithstanding the work of the RDA, there was little hope that any nominal consumers’ interest would be willing or able to challenge the policy ‘frame’, and so the Consumers’ Councils were one more key component in the rail policy network ‘hollow core’. A highly revealing comment was made by a senior BTC official in 1957 who thanked the Consultative Committees for their thoroughness and impartiality at hearings on controversial closure cases. He concluded:


They have established facts and then reached conclusions on the basis not of who is right but what is right in the national interest. In the process they have done much to educate public opinion on the issues involved in branch line cases. (quoted in Robson 1960:251) By a fortunate chance, therefore, the national interest coincided with that of the BTC, and the Consultative Committees were doing their bit by convincing the public at large that those in charge had the correct policy ‘frame’. Nevertheless, compared with what was to come later, the 1950s was not a period when line closures generally achieved high political salience. As Henshaw comments, there were plenty of contenders for the title of ‘least remunerative branch line’ (Henshaw 1994:84), and some of the closures were uncontested. It could also be argued that the political mood of the 1950s generally was against radical action in this field. As we have seen, successive Ministers of Transport were reluctant to take a hard line with the BTC, and generally settled for a quiet life. In addition, although rail passengers were not an organised interest, they did have votes, and so held an important ‘empty chair’ at discussions on rail policy (in the 1960s even Marples was to discover this hard political reality). As the 1950s progressed there was also a change of thinking within the BTC itself. Henshaw describes how, in the early 1950s, there was tension within the Railway Executive between the Branch Line Committee, which sought closures, and the Light Weight Train Committee which pushed for light railcars to be introduced on the branch lines (Henshaw 1994:59–63). From the mid-1950s, and the development of the Modernisation Plan, senior officials within the BTC were converted to the view that a number of unremunerative branch lines should be supplied with new diesel multiple units and railcars, in the hope that business would pick up. Consequently, closures were postponed (see Henshaw 1994:100– 5). By the end of the 1950s, therefore, the policy ‘solution’ of the Modernisation Plan was underway, but with little control over its development. Meanwhile, the rail deficits continued to grow. Consequently, by 1960 this ‘solution’ was rapidly becoming decoupled from the ‘problem’. In addition, as we have seen, throughout the middle to late 1950s there was no sense of a policy community of rail interests, with the result that the political stream was never truly coupled to the other two. The unions were divided; BTC management passive; Ministers indecisive or even indifferent; and consumers quiescent. At the heart of this political ‘hollow core’ lay the lack of political leadership to direct the industry and introduce new policy ideas. Into this political void stepped Beeching and Marples, to ‘frame’ policy issues in a fresh way and to commandeer the ‘hollow core’.

3 Occupying the ‘hollow core’ The Beeching era at British Rail 1960–5

The thought underlying the whole Report is that the railways should be used to meet that part of the total transport requirement of the country for which they offer the best available means, and that they should cease to do things for which they are ill suited. To this end, studies were made to determine the extent to which the present pattern of the railways’ services is consistent with the characteristics which distinguish railways as a mode of transport, namely: the high cost of their specialised and exclusive route system, and their low cost per unit moved if traffic is carried in dense flows of well-loaded through trains. As a result, it is concluded that, in many respects, they are being used in ways which emphasise their disadvantages and fail to exploit their advantages. (British Railways Board, The Reshaping of British Railways, p. 57) The Stedeford Committee and coupling the policy streams By 1960 ‘the inexorable march of problems’ was advancing rapidly on the government. Thus the railways’ mounting deficits, and the apparently escalating costs of the Modernisation Plan, were assuming alarming proportions. Thomson and Hunter summarise the position: The recession in 1958, which badly affected the heavy industries on which rail freight largely depended, caused the operating deficit to reach almost £50 million, and although the trend was temporarily broken the following year, the three years 1960–62 each added almost £20 million to the operating deficit, so that in the last of these years it topped the £100 million mark. (Thomson and Hunter 1973:134) In addition, problems were mounting up for the future through the cost of the Modernisation Plan. Thus, at constant 1948 prices, gross investment in British Railways rose from £46.9 million in 1955 to £98.4 million in 1959 (Gourvish


1986:595). As we have seen, the government had deferred the interest charges on capital for the Modernisation Plan, but this only increased the sense of foreboding about how the railways would ever be in a position to pay this money back. The government itself, of course, had been partly responsible for the deficits by its refusal to lift price controls, but in 1960 Ministers were inclined to look elsewhere when apportioning the blame! In response to this crisis, the government adopted a new ‘frame’ for policy, and an alternative ‘solution’. No longer was there to be talk of ‘the Nation has willed the ends, and so must will the means’. The railways would remain in public ownership, but would be subjected to a much harsher regime. Replacing investment as the policy ‘solution’ would be an emphasis on a commercially viable network, with the implication of closures on a large scale. The first major public intimation of policy change came with a Commons statement in March 1960 by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. Officially, Macmillan was commenting on the findings of the Guillebaud inquiry into pay comparability between the railways and other industries. After sitting for fifteen months, Guillebaud had decided, in essence, that rail workers should receive an 8 per cent increase to make them comparable with other industries. In commenting on the report, Macmillan accepted the Guillebaud findings, apparently echoing the words of Cameron five years earlier. He went on, however, to put these higher wages in a very different policy ‘frame’: First, the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects. In particular, the railway system must be remodelled to meet current needs, and the Modernisation Plan must be adapted to this new shape. Those working in the industry must accept this. This is the only way of bringing about conditions in which a fair reward, not only in terms of money, but of satisfaction with their job, can be secured. Secondly, the public must accept the need for changes in the size and pattern of the industry. This will involve certain sacrifices of convenience, for example, in the reduction of uneconomic services. It will also be necessary to examine urgently the question of relieving the industry of restrictions and obligations which limit the Commission’s earnings and prevent them from making the best use of their resources. Thirdly, the Commission must accept a radical alteration of its structure, so as to secure a more effective distribution of functions and a better use of all its assets. (H.C.Debates 10 March 1960, cols. 642–4) The Prime Minister had therefore put the official stamp of approval on the new policy ‘frame’. The railways were no longer to be seen as providing a national public service, i.e. a ‘special case’ bound by regulatory control on matters such as charging, but also with the nation ‘willing the means’ to provide this service. Henceforth, it would be construction of the motorway network which would

OCCUPYING THE ‘HOLLOW CORE’ 45

assume the mantle of a political ‘special case’, and the railways must take their place as just another mode of transport in a hard and competitive world. In addition, Macmillan’s statement intimated that the concept of an overarching BTC was to be ditched. It was this policy of a commercial railway which fitted so well with the introduction into the industry of Beeching, the rational and hard headed businessman, who had been bound by the competitive pressures of the private sector, and would not be swayed by public pressure for a return to the sentimental old days of the railways as a public service. Beeching, therefore, was to represent the perfect human embodiment of the new policy idea. As we will see, however, in some sectors the government was not so averse to policies embodying central planning, and so Beeching would not fit comfortably into these other meta-policy values. It could nevertheless be argued that, particularly for those sympathetic to road interests, the idea of a commercial railway could be a euphemism for its decline and destruction. As we will see, the evidence suggests that Beeching did not regard himself as a tool of the road lobby, but genuinely wished to apply a rational plan which would give a viable future for the railways. Nevertheless, in time Beeching was to acquire the popular ‘image’ of the ‘axe-man’ of the railways, with lines and services radically pruned in order to accommodate the ever growing number of motor vehicles and the rapidly expanding motorway network. Beeching as the embodiment of a policy idea brings us to the third separate policy stream, that of politics, and in particular the ambivalent figure as policy entrepreneur of Ernest Marples, the Minister of Transport. It was Marples who played a decisive role in coupling the three policy streams, and in particular skilfully manoeuvred the political system in his favour. Unlike Beeching, it could not be said that Marples had no special interest in policy outcomes on transport. As Hamer describes, even after he was appointed Transport Minister, Marples continued to own 64,000 out of 80,000 shares in Marples Ridgeway, a civil engineering firm which specialised in roads. Eventually, these shares were sold to his wife, but Marples was inevitably identified politically with road interests (Hamer 1987:50). As we will see in Chapter 5, however, Marples’ championing of roads as a policy ‘solution’ to a large extent reflected the growing influence of ideas concerning popular consumerism. The number of motor vehicles on Britain’s roads doubled between 1952 and 1961, and for many families the experience of owning a car for the first time chimed in excellently with Macmillan’s astute discourse of ‘you never had it so good’ in the general election of October 1959. The Hall Report on road transport, commissioned by the Ministry of Transport (MoT 1963) and published around the same time as Beeching’s key 1963 report on The Reshaping of British Railways, emphasised the problems of congestion which would ensue from the huge increases in the number of vehicles, but in the early 1960s it was more roads rather than public transport which was seen as the


‘solution’. For millions of people, therefore, buying a car was commensurate with casting aside the ‘second class status’ of a public transport user. The rail passenger might continue to occupy one of the Minister’s ‘empty chairs’, particularly when elections drew near, but now the ‘empty chair’ of the car owning voter had moved up to the head of the table. In this emerging political climate it was perhaps inevitable that, regardless of the Minister in charge, the railways would struggle to hold their position against the apparently inexorable progress of road development. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to see the radical policy for rail which was established in 1960 as merely an extension of what had gone before. As we have seen, even in 1959 the government still had a largely passive approach to rail policy and was basically content to let the BTC get on with the job. It was Marples’ skill in pulling together the three policy streams of the rail ‘problem’ caused by mounting deficits; the policy ‘frame’ of a commercial railway; and the political weakness of the BTC itself, which was instrumental in bringing about radical policy change. In the 1950s this vital political stream was not coupled, but Marples was not to be so naïve. It was the addition of this political element which truly constituted occupation of the ‘hollow core’. Marples’ position was also strengthened by events within the Ministry of Transport. As we remarked earlier, the Permanent Secretary, Sir Gilmour Jenkins, had taken little interest in railways, but this position changed with his retirement in 1959. His successor, James Dunnett, soon made it clear that he was keen on the idea of moving towards a much smaller but cost effective railway system. With these objectives in mind, he secured the transfer of David Serpell from the Treasury as Deputy Secretary (Gourvish 1986:299). Serpell shared Dunnett’s views and both men were much less sympathetic to the existing BTC management. We can therefore see how a policy ‘window’ appeared and provided the foundations within the MoT of a potentially powerful advocacy coalition which would establish a bridgehead in occupying the ‘hollow core’. The inexorable march of problems (Kingdon 1995:94–6) is well illustrated by the Cabinet minutes during the crucial early months of 1960. In particular the conclusions of the Guillebaud Committee, and the implications for higher wages for railway workers, was particularly influential in concentrating minds on the railway ‘problem’. For example, in February the Cabinet was given advance notice of the Guillebaud conclusions, and it was pointed out that if the recommendations were to be met in full, and if the BTC’s current deficit was to be met, then it would be necessary to raise an additional £100 million in taxation. The Cabinet demonstrated its lack of faith in the BTC management by not ruling out the possibility of placing the BTC under direct ministerial control for a period, although this would increase the risk of a direct conflict between the unions and the government. In the circumstances, it was not surprising that the Cabinet encouraged the Minister of Transport to push ahead with his plan to separate the Commission’s various activities and also change its capital structure (CAB 128/34). Within the Cabinet, therefore, there was a barely suppressed state


of panic that railway finances were running out of control, and that the government would probably need to bail out the BTC, both financially and politically. Later in the month, and after a number of meetings with Marples, the Prime Minister announced to the Cabinet that although the government would have to decide the broad lines of the reorganisation of the BTC, the details should be worked out by a planning committee composed of representatives of the Commission, officials of the Treasury and the Ministry of Transport and probably some independent advisers. It would be desirable to appoint an independent person as special adviser to the Minister of Transport, who could also be chairman of the planning committee. At the same time, Macmillan there and then sketched quite a detailed plan of what form the BTC reorganisation would take. A Transport Council would act as trustees of the assets, but each undertaking would become a separate organisation, with an independent board. With regard to the railways, restrictions on their commercial freedom would be removed, and they would be divided into autonomous groups, although coordination would be entrusted to a central body which might be composed of the general managers of the autonomous groups (CAB 128/34). Although the Prime Minister considered that a financial reconstruction of the BTC would have to await further study, Macmillan’s in fact quite detailed vision of BTC reorganisation suggests that the independent planning committee was likely to have other political purposes than merely filling in policy details. It is also significant that although Macmillan’s March 1960 statement to the House of Commons, quoted above, referred to the need for a reduction in uneconomic rail services, at no time during this period was the matter discussed in Cabinet. Discussion of such a politically sensitive topic could be postponed until another day! Macmillan’s House of Commons statement nevertheless indicated that he had been recruited to the advocacy coalition in favour of a new policy ‘frame’ for the railways. As Lamb points out, Marples had been a great help to Macmillan as his Under-Secretary when Macmillan was Minister of Housing in the early days of Churchill’s 1951 government, enabling him to achieve a target of 300,000 houses a year (Lamb 1995:434). This personal debt placed Marples in a strong ministerial position to convert the Prime Minister to his views. Marples lost little time in recruiting the members of the advisory group, and on 6 April announced its membership to the Commons. The true political purpose of this group became evident when, contrary to Macmillan’s earlier Cabinet statement, the BTC was excluded from the group. When questioned about this by the Labour Transport spokesman, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Marples gave the not very convincing reply that the government had decided the group should be small, and that neither the BTC nor the unions should be on it because the latter should be able to put their views in evidence without inhibitions (H.C.Debates 6 April 1960, cols. 394–5). In reality, both the BTC and


the unions, for different motives, would decidedly not form part of the emerging advocacy coalition, and their presence on the group would not be welcomed. Instead, the group was dominated by four businessmen from the private sector. Appointed Chairman was Sir Ivan Stedeford, Chairman and Managing Director of Tube Investments Ltd. The other three were Frank Kearton, joint Managing Director of Courtaulds; Henry Benson, a partner in the chartered accountants, Cooper Bros; and Dr Richard Beeching, the Technical Director of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The group was later completed by Matthew Stevenson, an Under-Secretary at the Treasury and, significantly, Dunnett’s appointee, David Serpell, from the Ministry of Transport. Reflecting Macmillan’s wishes, the Stedeford Committee was given the task of examining the structure, finance and working of the organisations at present controlled by the BTC, and to advise the Minister of Transport and the British Transport Commission as a matter of urgency how effect could best be given to the government’s intentions as indicated in the Prime Minister’s March statement. The day after Marples’ announcement, a leader in The Times asked the key question that, as the government had, rightly, taken the responsibility of setting a reorganisation plan, why did it not set out to decide the details too? (The Times 7 April 1960). In this context, to a certain extent, the Stedeford Committee fits the definition of an epistemic community as: a network of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue area. (Haas 1992:3) Opportunities to apply this knowledge are created through uncertainties amongst policy-makers when confronted with fresh problems which require novel solutions. Change comes about when policy-makers tap into the expertise within an epistemic community. Consequently, it could be argued that Ministers were tapping into the business expertise of the Stedeford Committee, but in fact there was too great an element of political expediency for the committee to be defined as an epistemic community in its purest form. Instead, it served an important function for the government by bypassing both the BTC and the unions, and legitimising a decision which to a large extent had been made already. The approval of leading businessmen would confirm the government’s actions in constructing a new policy ‘frame’ for the railways, and emphasise also the extent to which the current management was falling down on the job. In the event, the Stedeford Committee developed a dynamic of its own, and became deeply split. As Gourvish describes, the heart of the problems lay in the alternative approaches to the Committee’s remit adopted by Stedeford and Beeching. To some extent, however, the difficulties could also be attributed to the personalities of the two men. On the one side, Stedeford was keen to keep the


Committee strictly within the remit of examining the details of BTC reorganisation. He was also sympathetic towards the BTC Chairman, Sir Brian Robertson. Consequently, he put forward a plan which proposed retention of a coordinating British Transport Council, but with an executive Central Railways Board and relatively autonomous Regional Railway Boards. Beeching, on the other hand, favoured merely an advisory central Transport Council, and a much stronger British Railways Board, with the regions very much subordinate to this authority (see Gourvish 1986:310–16). In reality, the differing views on reorganisation were only symptoms of far deeper differences between Stedeford and Beeching. Stedeford could be classed as one of the ‘great and the good’, who had earlier served on a Committee of Inquiry into the BBC, and had also recently retired as a member of the Atomic Energy Authority. As something of an ‘Establishment’ figure, he was keen to get the job done with the minimum of fuss and controversy, i.e. he wished to create a community of interests where all the chief actors could arrive at a consensus. In a sense, he epitomised the British policy style—construct a consensus and avoid policy imposition. Beeching, on the other hand, was much more the ‘outsider’ figure who was not prepared to play this game. From his perspective, the railway ‘problem’ was much more complex, and so the ‘solution’ required a fundamental appraisal of its services, investment strategy and finances. Consequently, he proposed to the Committee that its chief priority should be a consideration of the size and pattern of the railway system (Gourvish 1986:310), and began his own calculations on this subject for which he was later to become famous (or, as some would argue, infamous). Beeching’s distinctive ‘frame’, therefore precluded the construction of a policy consensus. In more normal times, and even as late as 1959, the government might have been expected to side with Stedeford, but 1960 was not a normal year for the railways, and change was in the air. The proceedings of the Stedeford Committee were not helped by one of its members, Kearton, usually siding with Stedeford, while the other business figure, Benson, tended to side with Beeching. When the time arrived for the Committee to present its conclusions to the Minister in October 1960, it was still hopelessly split, and so both the Stedeford and Beeching plans for reorganisation were put forward. Although great pressure was put on the government, the conclusions of the Stedeford Committee were never published. Henshaw comments that, according to available records, the conclusions were fairly innocuous and included the politically expedient recommendation that another body should be set up to consider the size and pattern of the railway system required to meet current and foreseeable needs (Henshaw 1994:128). For the government, however, the Committee’s split on reorganisation plans must have been a great political embarrassment, and would certainly account for their reluctance to publish. After all, the government had appointed the Committee specifically to sort out the details of reorganisation, but in this task it had signally failed. This would account for Marples’ remarks to the Cabinet in


November 1960 that the government intended to resist any suggestion that the reports of Sir Ivan Stedeford’s Special Advisory Group (as it had become known) should be published. He added, somewhat cryptically: It would be easier to carry out this intention if it were emphasised that responsibility for policy in respect of nationalised transport lay with the government, and not with any other body, and that the proposals which were now being put forward were in fulfilment of the government’s responsibility. (CAB 128/34) In fact, as Marples knew, Stedeford had dumped the problem of reorganisation back in the lap of the government. In this official sense, therefore, the Stedeford Committee had been a failure, and confirmed the wisdom of Wedgwood Benn’s earlier question to the Minister that, if the government had already decided the form of organisation, then why could it not work out the policy details for itself? In another, and politically unexpected, sense, however, the Committee had proved to be a great success for the government. The ‘outsider’ Beeching, in ‘framing’ the railway problem in his own distinctive style, had not only moved the policy debate on, but had identified himself as a policy entrepreneur who would couple, at least intellectually, the three policy streams of problems, policies and politics, and so provide the vital link in the occupation of the ‘hollow core’. Building an advocacy coalition As the end of 1960 approached, events moved with gathering speed, but all confirmed the triumph of Beeching, and the new policy ‘frame’. In addition to the work of Beeching, a few months earlier the government had received support from an unexpected source. In July, the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries had published a report (SCNI 1960) on the railways which was highly critical of BTC management, particularly in its lack of expertise on implementation of the Modernisation Plan. Although the Committee was also critical of the government for its lack of supervision over the BTC, its report was another powerful weapon for Ministers seeking to discredit the BTC. It also indicated that the new policy ‘frame’ had been taken up by influential actors in an alternative arena, so providing another element in building an advocacy coalition for change (Gourvish suggests that the SCNI was heavily influenced by evidence given to it by officials such as Dunnett of the MoT and Stevenson of the Treasury (1986:301)). When the government produced its White Paper outlining the proposals for reorganisation of the nationalised transport industries (Cmnd. 1248, 1960), it largely (if not quite entirely) sided with the Stedeford Committee proposals put forward by Beeching. The BTC was to disappear, and be replaced by a merely


advisory Nationalised Transport Advisory Council (in the event this body proved to be totally ineffective and was abolished by the 1968 Transport Act). Instead, each of the five main activities of the BTC’s undertakings would have its own separate board, vested with its own assets and responsible for its own capital debt. The five were: British Railways; the London Passenger Transport Board; British Transport Docks; the Inland Waterways Authority; and a Transport Holding Company for road haulage, buses and other activities. The government’s intention was that there should now be a soundly based and viable nationalised transport industry, which it considered was the only way efficient and economic services could be provided, and also secure jobs in the industry (Cmnd. 1248, para. 3). At the heart of the problem, however, was the serious financial plight of the railways, and in addition to modernisation the White Paper emphasised that there would have to be a streamlining of services (Cmnd. 1248, paras. 5–8). Macmillan had ensured that all references to actual closures were removed from the White Paper (Lamb 1995:435), but the emphasis on a viable railway indicated the direction policy would take. Indeed, in 1961 the government was to produce a White Paper on the nationalised industries as a whole, which set a target for all of them to be breaking even within five years (Cmnd. 1337, 1961). The British Railways Board (BRB) would be given the task of running the railways as an effective national system. The White Paper stated that the new Regional Boards would be autonomous in all matters of regional concern and would have the character of company boards (Cmnd. 1248, 1960, para. 25). Beeching, however, was to insist on holding greater authority in the BRB, and so the Regional Boards had much less authority than intended originally. The government also bowed to the inevitable, and £400 million of the railways’ accumulated losses, financed by the Exchequer, were written off. In addition, out of £1,200 million of capital debt, £800 million was to be placed in a suspense account, with the possibility that this money too would eventually be written off. Nevertheless, it was pointed out that the railways would still be borrowing large sums of money to pay for the Modernisation Plan (in January 1961 Marples renewed permission for work to continue on London-Manchester electrification), and so the government would review the financial progress of the railways year by year, with a special review at the end of five years, and so targets would be set (Cmnd. 1248, 1960, paras. 43–53). In return, all regulatory control over charging and other matters would finally be removed. After much hesitation and deliberation, therefore, the 1950s’ ‘solution’ of modernisation and investment was to continue, but now placed under much stricter official control. Nevertheless, it is an important reminder that at least a degree of policy succession is incorporated, even when new ‘solutions’ assume priority. Likewise, as we will see, important elements of Beeching’s plan survived his departure from BR. Almost simultaneously with publication of the White Paper, the government was acting to place Beeching at the head of the new railway organisation. The


‘policy’ stream had been coupled with the ‘problem’ stream, but there remained the coupling of the ‘political’ stream. Just before Christmas, Marples met Macmillan and Lord Mills, the Paymaster General, who advised the Prime Minister on industrial matters. Marples told them that he intended to appoint Beeching as Chairman of the BTC at the then unprecedented public sector salary of £25,000 a year (as BTC Chairman, Robertson was earning only £10,000 a year), commensurate with his earnings at ICI. Mills expressed significant doubts about Beeching’s qualities, but was overruled by the Prime Minister (Lamb 1995: 433–4). Beeching therefore accepted the job, although at the slightly lower figure of £24,000 a year. He had a five-year contract from 31 May 1961, and would take over as Chairman of the BRB when the BTC was wound up. There was a predictable public and political furore about Beeching’s salary, and it says much about the government’s new found faith in Beeching’s ‘solution’ that Ministers were content to ride out the storm. In a sense, it could be said that the salary itself was part of the new policy ‘frame’ and ‘image’. A top businessman had been recruited who would bring the market disciplines of the private sector to an ailing nationalised industry. Consequently, it could not be expected that such high quality expertise would come cheap. From this perspective, Beeching’s appointment, although controversial, did give the railways a higher public profile as an industry with a ‘Star’ Chairman. In turn, the faith the government placed in Beeching tended to give greater political authority to his ‘solution’ for the railways. There was, of course, also a strong institutional element in this ‘punctuated equilibrium’. As outlined in the 1960 reorganisation White Paper, and eventually made statutory by the 1962 Transport Act, the BTC was abolished and with regard to the railways, its powers transferred to the new BRB. As Baumgartner and Jones argue, if the structures are changed, then dramatic changes in the mobilisation of bias may result (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:12). Beeching could therefore use the BRB as his power base, and mould it to his own policy ‘frame’. In the case of Beeching, we can see these punctuated equilibria in two senses. First, in the purely institutional sense, the BRB was a new organisation which could recruit outside personnel and evolve its own distinctive culture. Beeching took full advantage of this opportunity, and brought in many of his own choices from outside the railway industry. Inevitably, these outsiders were given a mixed reception by the established order. For example, Gerard Fiennes, BR’s Chief Operating Officer, described his response to one particular Beeching appointment: Dr Beeching had pressed Dr Russell Currie on us. Russell was a great gift to work study and to ICI, but he didn’t manage to teach railways to do it properly. (Fiennes 1967:31)


This was an indicator that Beeching’s values could not necessarily be transplanted into the operational culture of the railwayperson. Nevertheless, although Beeching’s appointments enjoyed mixed success, at least the new Chairman could be reassured by having his own people in key positions. At Beeching’s insistence, the 1962 Transport Act dropped any impression the earlier White Paper had given about the significance of decentralisation, and the Chairman grasped the opportunity to build his own power base. Consequently, three key full-time board members were Leslie Williams from Shell, Philip Shirley from Unilever and Sir Stewart Mitchell, an official from the Ministry of Aviation (Gourvish 1986:326). It was also significant that Beeching recruited a new Public Relations Adviser from Shell. As Gourvish perceptively comments, for a man who was at first unnerved by the glare of publicity surrounding his job, Beeching quickly came to appreciate the value of good public relations and improved industrial relations (Gourvish 1986:336). The importance Beeching attached to public relations indicates a second facet of punctuated equilibria in this case, i.e. the ‘hollow core’ as a political vacuum, where no interest is able to gain supremacy. Beeching saw the importance of widening the commercial railway advocacy coalition beyond government into the public arena, and was anxious to hold the high ground in the politically salient debate which would inevitably accompany his policies. The ‘Reshaping of British Railways’ report: the policy ‘solution’ made manifest The whole period of Beeching’s Chairmanship, first of the BTC, then of the British Railways Board, revolved around the preparation, publication and implementation of the two-part report The Reshaping of British Railways (BRB 1963). Published in March 1963, this report attracted huge public interest at the time, and in the years since has acquired an almost legendary status as a document which starkly set out the policy ‘problem’ and offered a radical ‘solution’. Written largely by Beeching himself, its style undoubtedly reflects the dispassionate and rational personality of its author. Nevertheless, it is also a document of its time, and so demonstrates the political and economic climate in which it was written. Politically, there-fore, it is an excellent example of a distinctive policy ‘frame’ of reality, and how Beeching personally, at least for a period, was able to occupy the ‘hollow core’ which had previously existed in rail policy. Inextricably entwined with the content of the ‘Reshaping’ report is the popular public ‘image’ of Beeching as a large man, both physically and intellectually, who demonstrated little human emotion, and who harboured few doubts about the need to shut down as quickly as possible railway lines and stations which were not paying their way.


His work on the finances of the railways also gave Beeching the popular image of the dry accountant, although in fact he was trained as a physicist, and had risen through the ranks of ICI to become Technical Director largely through his ability to solve complex engineering problems. Beeching therefore approached the problems of the railways with the eye of the scientist, rather than that of the business entrepreneur or commercial manager. In a sympathetic portrait of Beeching, Hardy, himself a railwayperson, gives a good explanation of why the Chairman, although in private quite human, in public lacked a certain warmth: The answer, I think is that he had a certain intellectual arrogance which prevented him, at times, from understanding why he was creating an immense furore, an Olympian touch perhaps, also a civilised and deeply veiled disdain for people in the abstract who could not understand. To convince the great majority, the thousands of railwaymen, never mind the public, that what he was doing was in their long-term interests required a more outward-going personality and more obvious drive. (Hardy 1989:52) Hardy acknowledges that this did not make Beeching an obvious ally of the politician, but that he formed a powerful alliance with the extrovert Marples because he realised that the astute Marples could get things done (Hardy 1989: 54). Hardy is nevertheless critical of Beeching for only having three professional railwaypersons on the original board of eight, and that he did not draw his general managers extensively and regularly into central policy-making, preferring to work through a small circle of tried and trusted people (Hardy 1989: 61). Adapting the ministerial model, therefore, Beeching was the epitome of the ‘celibate’ policy-maker, basically cutting himself off from outside influence. The passage of the 1962 Transport Act meant that the new BRB did not officially come into being until 1 January 1963. In reality, however, Beeching had been operating with a ‘shadow’ Railway Board since April 1962. As we noted earlier, the Regional Boards were much more tightly controlled from the centre than the old Area Boards, and reflected Beeching’s determination to keep a strong personal hold over strategic policy (see Gourvish 1986:341). From 1961, therefore, Beeching took charge of a series of traffic studies which were to form the basis of his plan. With an eye to softening up and moulding public opinion, towards the end of 1962 Beeching ‘trailed’ an outline of the Plan, but without its closure detail, and also set out his appraisal of the railway situation in a televised speech to the annual conference of the Institute of Directors (Allen 1966:19). Again we see that, although he lacked an extrovert public personality, the ‘celibate’ policy-maker Beeching understood the importance of at least attempting to persuade influential and general public opinion that his ‘frame’ was the correct one, i.e. he perceived the importance of seeking to influence the ‘empty chair’ of public opinion.


Such an objective could also be attributed to one of the most idiosyncratic features of the 1963 Reshaping of British Railways report. This was that Part Two consisted entirely of a set of twelve maps. Each of these maps was designed to illustrate powerfully a particular aspect of Beeching’s argument. Consequently, the maps literally presented the Beeching policy ‘image’. For example, Map Number One depicted British Railways Density of Passenger Traffic over Britain as a whole. Thick black lines show the lines with over 200, 000 passengers per week, and these emanate from London like the tentacles of an octopus and connect with the chief cities and commuter routes such as Brighton and Reading. Where traffic was less dense, however, the lines become thinner, culminating in a dotted line for 0–5,000 passengers per week. These dotted lines criss-cross the map, forming a complex patchwork, and provide a vivid contrast with the relatively few thick black lines. To follow up this argument, Map Number Three illustrates British Railways Distribution of Passenger Traffic Station Receipts. Stations with receipts of £25, 000 per annum and over are signified with green dots, while those with receipts of only £0–5,000 per annum are shown as red dots. Here, the eye is hit by a rash of vivid red dots covering large parts of Britain. Suitably ‘softened up’ by these images, the reader is therefore prepared for Map Number Nine, which shows the large number of proposed line closures (around 5,000 route miles from a 1961 passenger total of around 13,700 route miles). On the other hand, Map Number Twelve shows routes covered by stage and express bus services. This time, apart from Northern Scotland, the whole of Britain is covered by a bewilderingly intricate network of lines (there is no attempt here to show differing densities with different colours —#8212;the whole map is a uniform black). The obvious policy ‘image’ is that people who lost their local train service should have no fears, for there was bound to be a bus service which could do the job just as well, and probably more efficiently and cheaply. This view betrays the ‘solution’ of both Beeching and the government that the bus operators would automatically fill the gaps left by the railways. In reality, by the 1960s the bus companies themselves were in financial decline, and were not in a good position to provide the policy resource favoured by Beeching, particularly in the rural areas. Only in the 1970s was a national system of bus subsidies put in place. Instead, it could be argued that ‘the spectre at the feast’, and the missing map, was the one which would have shown the increasing densities of vehicle ownership and the proposed network of motorways! Nevertheless, without reading a word of the report, the maps convey the policy ‘image’ desired by Beeching. The archetypal railwayperson Fiennes believed that Beeching had not many outward and visible signs of human frailty, but one was his love of maps and another his love of publishing them (Fiennes 1967: 101). An even more politically powerful policy ‘image’ than the publication of the maps, however, was Beeching’s decision to publish as an appendix to the report


the full list of lines and stations due for closure as a result of his findings. In particular, the list of over 2,000 stations to be closed in England, Scotland and Wales, stretching for twenty pages, epitomises the ruthless logic which Beeching applied to the rail ‘problem’. This was the other side of the coin to Beeching’s ‘solution’, and conveyed starkly to Ministers and MPs the full political cost to be paid in the political stream for the commercial railway. Even the arch rationalist Beeching recognised the political limits of his plan, particularly in the case of suburban services. Here, he advocated greater coordination between rail and bus operators and the local authorities, with subsidies if necessary (an idea which was taken up later in the decade by the Labour government which set up a number of Passenger Transport Authorities in the largest conurbations outside London) (BRB 1963:20–3). Significantly in this context, Marples was him-self a Merseyside MP, and locally played a prominent part in coordinating the local authorities and the railways in order to prevent a suburban closure recommended by Beeching (Hardy 1989:76). Marples may have been a keen roads and commercial railway advocate, but he was not averse to adopting the ‘promiscuous’ ministerial style in order to ensure the even higher priority of being re-elected as an MP! We will see that, as the 1964 general election approached, Marples also adopted this role at the national level. Notwithstanding Beeching’s attitude to suburban services, there is an unvarnished simplicity about the maps and lists of closures which is sustained throughout the report, and gives it a distinctive symbolic niche in British political history. It is argued, correctly, that many of the solutions suggested by Beeching were not in themselves original, and had their origins in thinking within the BTC in the 1950s (e.g. Gourvish 1986:402). The Reshaping report, however, is undoubtedly a watershed in rail policy, not only for the radical closures proposals themselves, but also for the manner in which Beeching packaged these ideas in the form of the concept of the commercial railway. For example, as a first principle Beeching chose to consider what are the basic characteristics of railways, and under what circumstances these characteristics are likely to make railways the best available form of transport: Railways are distinguished by the provision and maintenance of a specialised route system for their own exclusive use. This gives rise to high fixed costs. On the other hand, the benefits which can be derived from possession of this high cost route system are very great. Firstly, it permits the running of high capacity trains, which themselves have very low movement costs per unit carried. Secondly, it permits dense flows of traffic and, provided the flows are dense, the fixed costs per unit moved are also low. Thirdly it permits safe, reliable, scheduled movements at high speed. (BRB 1963:4)


Having established these basic principles, Beeching concluded that we should expect the provision of railways to be limited to routes over which it is possible to develop dense flows of traffic, with trainload quantities, and which benefit from the speed and reliability which the railways are capable of achieving. Consequently, the report was concerned entirely with showing, as quantitatively as possible, how far the existing system departed from this condition, and to decide what changes were necessary to put matters right (BRB 1963:5). For Beeching, therefore, solving the rail ‘problem’ was a matter of ensuring that trains operated to their commercial strengths, and jettisoned those parts which failed to fulfil these conditions. Having examined the figures, on the passenger side it was clear to Beeching that stopping-trains were by far the worst loss-maker, and often ran on routes which carried little traffic of any kind. On the other hand, fast and semi-fast services, provided with through trains, had much greater prospects of paying their way. On the freight side, wagon-load general merchandise was hopelessly unprofitable, while minerals and coal showed the best margins over direct cost (BRB 1963:7). Remarkably, the traffic surveys on which Beeching based his calculations were taken from only one week—that ending 23 April 1961, because the massive recording effort could not be sustained for a longer period. From these, he produced the apparently damning statistic that one-third of the route mileage carried only 1 per cent of the total passenger miles, and 1 per cent of the freight ton miles of BR (BRB 1963:10). Similarly, one-third of stations produced less than 1 per cent of total passenger receipts and half of the stations produced only 2 per cent (BRB 1963:11). On the freight side, Beeching recommended that the over 900 stations and depots should be reduced in number, and that BR should concentrate more on inter-city flows. In addition, BR should speedily develop the Liner Train concept, where large containers would be easily transferable between road and rail (BRB 1963:142). Beeching believed that, if his whole plan was implemented with vigour, then much (but not necessarily all) of BR’s deficit should be eliminated by 1970 (BRB 1963:60). A full analysis of the Reshaping report lies beyond the scope of this study. There is no doubt, however, that a wide range of criticisms can (and have been) directed at Beeching’s highly distinctive ‘framing’ of reality. For example, to base such radical conclusions on just one particular April week was no doubt too restrictive (see Henshaw 1994:148). Perhaps the most perceptive comment, however, is made by Pryke, who believes that Beeching was too preoccupied with those lines and activities on which the most spectacular losses were being incurred and, perhaps because he came from ICI which is extremely capital intensive, his principal aim was to improve the utilisation of equipment rather than to use manpower more productively (Pryke 1981:74). This point illustrates that, just as Beeching had a scientific rather than an entrepreneurial mind, so


private companies develop their own particular functional cultures and values. For the government, it was not just a matter of buying a homogeneous expertise, but an individual policy ‘frame’ based on character and experience. As Hardy comments, the Reshaping report did not specify a need to examine working practices, or analyse how unit costs could be reduced (Hardy 1989:105). As we will see, some of the most significant early opposition to Beeching’s plans came from within BR itself, from managers who judged that some of the lossmaking lines could be made viable with a more flexible attitude towards reducing costs. The publication of the Reshaping report represented a high water mark for Beeching personally in his rail career. In the event, the ideas he initiated were to live on after his own demise from the BRB. After publication of the report, it is important to distinguish Beeching the individual from the implementation of his ‘solution’. With some significant modifications, the Beeching plan was largely executed, even by the Labour government which came to power in 1964. On the other hand, Beeching the individual was to become progressively uncoupled from the political stream, and eventually departed a disillusioned man. Even the close relationship with Marples became soured when it became clear that the Minister was somewhat more ‘promiscuous’ in his policy style than Beeching had hoped. Individuals such as Beeching may act as key agents of policy change, but their essentially ‘celibate’ style may not be conducive to a long life in the more flexible and dynamic political stream. Implementing the Beeching ‘solution’ while uncoupling Beeching the individual The initial media response to the Reshaping plan was generally sympathetic, reflecting the careful way in which Beeching had prepared the ground (Hardy 1989:83). Not surprisingly, the government was highly sensitive about the public reaction to such radical proposals, and confidential briefings were held with a number of national newspapers (Lamb 1995:438). The rail unions, although critical, were ultimately not prepared to launch a concerted campaign against the report. Beeching took care that the rail workers generally received either relatively generous redundancy terms or pay increases, and this effectively ensured their ultimate compliance. The ever active Marples was also concerned about the union attitude to closures, and so arranged a dinner between Beeching and the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, George Woodcock. As it turned out, Beeching and Woodcock got on well (see Lamb 1995:436). In the case of the unions, therefore, there was at least the hint of the formation of a policy community based on resource dependencies, if not shared core values. It could also be argued, however, that the unions did not possess the expertise to challenge Beeching’s deceptively simple ideas, i.e. they lacked a powerful epistemic community, around which a counter expertise could coalesce.


One group which did at least attempt to challenge Beeching on his own ground was the National Council on Inland Transport (NCIT), founded in 1962. As Henshaw describes, this consortium of pro-rail groups employed the technical expertise of such figures as Professor Hondelink, an eminent transport economist and consultant, and Roger Calvert, who had previously been a senior railway manager. At a number of inquiries held into proposed line closures, the NCIT did quite effectively challenge BR’s figures, and on one occasion employed a QC to put its case (Henshaw 1994:157–63). The NCIT represented an emerging epistemic community, but lacked the resources to consistently challenge BR. In addition, like the RDA in the 1950s, it was unable to exploit the inquiry process as the environmental lobby was able to do in the case of highway inquiries in the 1970s (see Chapter 6). Consequently, the NCIT was unable itself to shift Beeching’s policy ‘frame’ of reality. The government had also made highly significant changes to inquiry procedures as a result of Section 56 of the 1962 Transport Act. The regional Transport Users Consultative Committees now only had the responsibility of assessing the degree of hardship caused by a closure, and how this could be dealt with, i.e. the TUCCs now had no say on the actual principle of closures. The Central Transport Consultative Council was effectively bypassed, and the final decision on closure and hardship was vested in the Minister. This clause had clearly been introduced into the Act with the aim of speeding up the closures in the wake of the expected rush of proposals after publication of the Reshaping report. By placing responsibility for sometimes politically sensitive closures overtly in the hands of the Minister, however, there was a real risk that the ‘promiscuous’ ministerial style, sensitive to electoral considerations, might gain ascendancy over the more ruthlessly ‘celibate’ style of decision making. At least to some extent, this was to occur in the case of Marples. Marples himself was clearly concerned about how the new inquiry procedures would be received, particularly with regard to the amount of information made available. This was a sore point with groups such as the NCIT, as BR was reluctant to give detailed explanations for closures when only hardship was being judged officially. Consequently, Marples invited the accountant, Sir William Carrington, to examine whether accounts should be provided to the Consultative Committees. As with the Stedeford Committee, Marples was largely employing expertise for a political purpose, and Carrington duly endorsed the new methods. The onus was truly on the government to direct the pace of the closures programme. Ministers, however, had placed themselves in something of a cleft stick over Beeching. On the one hand, having hired him at great expense to solve the railway ‘problem’, they had little choice but to accept his ‘solution’ and take the ‘doctor’s medicine’. On the other hand, the timescale for such a course of action was politically wrong. By the time the Reshaping report was published, a general election was at most nineteen months away, and so a string of unpopular closures might be in the pipeline when the voters went to the polls. The Prime Minister exhibited this concern at the time of Marples’ statement to the Commons


giving the government’s reaction to the report. Macmillan, advised by the Cabinet Secretary, Burke Trend, insisted that Marples should insert into his speech references to the fact that the Beeching Plan was only a first step towards an integrated plan for transport as a whole, and that it was intended to supplement it by the end of the year with further studies on the improvement of the roads and road transport services (Lamb 1995:439). Macmillan was clearly sensitive to the electoral consequences of the closures, while it could be said that his emphasis on road building was the ‘missing link’ in the presentation of the Reshaping report. The closures programme had been in abeyance while Beeching prepared his report, but from June 1963 it began again in earnest. Some cracks would appear in the advocacy coalition, but Marples was prepared to back Beeching, at least where the less contentious closures were concerned. Unlike the preparation of the Reshaping report, implementing the closures was left largely in the hands of the Regional Managers. This is a good example of the narrow perspective of Beeching, who applied himself singlemindedly to providing a rational ‘solution’ to the railway ‘problem’ (and on its initial presentation), but was reluctant to become involved in the messy business of its implementation. Gourvish calculates that Marples accepted, or part-accepted, 141 closure proposals, and rejected seven, between June 1963 and October 1964, when he left office. During this period, 1,436 miles of track were closed, with an estimated saving of £5,265,294 (it is interesting to note, however, that under Marples’ Labour successor, Tom Fraser, 819 miles of track were closed between October 1964 and December 1965. Although to some extent this reflects an inevitable time lag in implementing closures, it does illustrate that, despite Labour’s differences with Beeching, they were by no means averse to accepting his ‘solution’ (Gourvish 1986:642)). By the election year, 1964, there was nevertheless some divergence between the ‘promiscuous’ style of the Minister, Marples, and the still ‘celibate’ style of BR Chairman Beeching. It was not just a matter of Marples turning down a few closure proposals, but of delaying a final verdict on a range of controversial cases. Beeching became increasingly irritated by these delays, and in July BR released a list of thirty outstanding cases, of which seventeen had been awaiting a decision for six months or more (Gourvish 1986:443). Marples was still active in approving a relatively large number of closures, but the electoral cycle ensured that the very heart of the advocacy coalition, the close Beeching-Marples relationship, was significantly weakened. At bottom, Marples had a somewhat different policy ‘frame’. Apart from his ministerial perspective, he was basically a roads advocate, who saw the severe rationalisation of the railways as the natural complement to his ambitious plans for expanding the motorway network. Beeching, on the other hand, was more committed to the long-term future of the railways, and saw his ‘solution’ as a painful but necessary step along the way to a viable and successful railway. In this context, it could be said that, even at the height of the Beeching-Marples axis, there were differences in at least some secondary values. They shared a commitment to the core principle of the


commercial railway, but had differing perspectives not only about the timing of its implementation, but also the importance of the railways in the transport network as a whole. There was also evidence within BR itself that, although Beeching’s ‘solution’ had gained a strong hold, it was not universally accepted. Complementing the Reshaping report, BR management prepared a study of The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes, published in 1965 (BRB 1965). As Gourvish points out, a change of emphasis can be detected from the Reshaping analysis, with more attention given to scaling down route costs to meet the traffic offered rather than opting for instant closures. This reflected the view of some senior BR managers that Beeching had placed too much emphasis on track costs (Gourvish 1986:424–5). Although it occurred just after the departure of Beeching from the railway scene, one BR man who publicly adopted a different ‘frame’ was Gerard Fiennes, General Manager of the Eastern Region. Fiennes’ actions illustrate that there were real limits to the extent Beeching was capable of building an advocacy coalition, even within the ranks of his own management. Here, the East Suffolk line was going through the closure procedures amidst much protest. Fiennes decided that, by adapting the line to basic railway standard, a loss could be turned into a profit. After lobbying by councillors and MPs, the Minister eventually agreed to reprieve the line (Fiennes 1967:144–7). Fiennes, therefore, was overtly challenging the policy ‘frame’ propounded by Beeching, and instead sought a more conciliatory approach. In doing so, at least at the local level, he was constructing a politically effective advocacy coalition very different to that envisaged by Beeching, where a wide range of interests had a real commitment to the long term survival of the line. In addition to Ministers and managers, another key factor in limiting Beeching’s personal influence was that his ‘frames’ to some extent ran against the grain of the political fashions and values of the time. Neither his advocacy of the market model, nor of public transport as the long-term ‘solution’ to the crisis in traffic congestion, held sway in the wider political agenda of the early 1960s. Although it would be too simplistic to say that the Reshaping report would have looked more in place in the Thatcherite 1980s (for example, neither Beeching nor Marples seriously contemplated denationalisation of the railways), Beeching’s faith in a commercial railway and the laws of the market was not a particularly fashionable view, even within the Conservative government of the early 1960s. For example, in 1962 Macmillan set up the National Economic Development Council (NEDC) designed to conduct joint planning of the economy between the government, the trade unions and the employers. The NEDC was seen as one means of halting Britain’s relative economic decline and, as Middlemas states, had its parentage in a mixture of memories of wartime tripartism and administration of the French Commissariat du Plan (see Middlemas 1983:1). In addition, the arch policy entrepreneur and opportunist Marples was himself not averse to seeking planned solutions generally sympathetic to the motor car


where the situation appeared to demand it. In 1961 he commissioned Colin Buchanan from the planning inspectorate to examine the long-term development of roads and traffic in urban areas and their influence on the urban environment. Buchanan’s report on Traffic in Towns (Buchanan 1963), published eight months after Beeching’s Reshaping report, also attracted great public interest. Reflecting the values of the time, Buchanan adopted the policy ‘frame’ of the need to adapt the urban environment to the growth of motor traffic, but his emphasis on planning and design instigated a phase of large-scale planning as the ‘solution’ to the urban traffic ‘problem’. Ironically, as we have seen, Beeching himself recommended a more public transport orientated ‘solution’ to urban transport ‘problems’. It could be said that only in the late 1990s was the political debate on the urban transport ‘problem’ being resolved in favour of the Beeching rather than the Buchanan ‘solution’ (see Chapter 8). A further factor weakening Beeching was that, particularly through his relationship with Marples, he had become politically identified with the Conservative government. This was not a comfortable position to be in when Labour triumphed in the general election of October 1964. The departure of Marples, despite their value differences, left Beeching politically isolated and vulnerable. Even before Marples’ departure, some degree of the uncoupling of Beeching from the political stream had taken place, but now that process became more politically visible. For example, there was the matter of the Labour government’s close links with the trade unions. Although, as we have seen, the rail unions did not systematically obstruct the Beeching strategy, they saw the change of government as an opportunity to remove the BR Chairman from the scene. In policy terms, however, the Labour government made no concerted attempt to change the Beeching ‘solution’. Marples’ successor as Transport Minister, Tom Fraser, did place some restrictions on closure procedures, such as an ‘early sift’ which required the Board to submit closure proposals for ministerial vetting before they were published, and also for all closures to be submitted to the newly created Regional Economic Planning Councils and Boards. As we noted earlier, however, closures continued at a lively rate during Fraser’s period at the MoT. It was highly ironic, therefore, that Beeching’s chief differences with the Labour government should occur over a matter which reflected his sympathies for rail as a long-term policy ‘solution’! In 1964 the BRB had given evidence to the Geddes Committee on carriers’ licensing which argued that road haulage was not paying the true costs of using roads, and that a fairer system should be devised for equalising the costs of road and rail. This illustrated again that, at least on freight matters, Beeching was more prepared to be pro-rail than is suggested by his popular image. The Labour government took up the theme of this evidence, and in November 1964 invited Beeching to conduct a study on the future direction of inland transport policy as a whole. The choice of Beeching, however, caused great controversy within the Labour party and the unions with the result that the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was compelled to insist that


Beeching should be assisted by advisers. Beeching was not prepared to accept this restriction, and withdrew. As Hardy comments, it was perhaps the final irony that the influential leaders of the road transport unions feared Beeching would be too pro-rail in his conclusions! (Hardy 1989:98). Beeching resigned as BRB Chairman at the end of May 1965, with a year still to run of his five year contract, and returned to ICI. In addition to his differences with Labour, his willingness to take on the inland transport study provides another explanation for his premature departure. As an individual, he was more temperamentally suited to devising policy ‘solutions’ rather than actually implementing them. He took little direct part in the closures programme and, despite his emphasis on the importance of presentation, lacked the everyday political skills to build a long-term power base for himself. Significantly, Hardy, a former BR manager, refers to Beeching as acting in a consultancy role for BR (see Hardy 1989:98). As BTC and BRB Chairman, Beeching was of course much more than a consultant, but it is true that the dominant impression is of a man who immersed himself totally in the rail ‘problem’ and devised what he saw as a rational plan for its ‘solution’, but who had only a limited capacity to touch the people who worked in the industry. The ‘hollow core’ and the Beeching legacy The departure of Beeching did not end ‘the inexorable march of problems’ for rail. In particular, the deficits did not go away. As Reid and Allen argue, the Reshaping report had been looked upon as a blueprint for salvation, but hindsight suggests that even the complete implementation of the report would still have left the railways in a difficult financial position (Reid and Allen 1970: 123). Consequently, the overall BR deficit of £134 million in 1963, by 1967 had risen to £153 million, with no prospect that the railways would be viable by Beeching’s target date of 1970. Ironically, therefore, although the Labour government had seen the departure of Beeching, Ministers could not afford to jettison his ‘solution’. Particularly on freight policy, there was a good deal of continuity from Beeching. For example, Barbara Castle, the energetic and resourceful Minister of Transport 1965–8, gave a great deal of time and energy to implementing the Liner Train concept which Beeching had placed such faith in (see Castle 1984:226–31). In addition, although Barbara Castle herself was sympathetic to the rail interest, ‘Beeching’ line closures continued, some of them controversial. Thus Gourvish calculates that 505 route miles were closed under Castle from December 1965–April 1968 (compared with 1,436 for Marples, June 1963– October 1964 and 819 for Fraser, October 1964–December 1965) (Gourvish 1986:642). Consequently, by 1967 some 72 per cent of stations specified for closure by Beeching had closed, and 84 per cent of passenger services identified were withdrawn (Wistrich 1983:34).


As we noted earlier, one further point of continuity was Beeching’s recommendation for greater coordination between BR and the local authorities in the largest urban areas, with at least the implicit assumption that a subsidy would be required. Castle adopted this proposal and set up Passenger Transport Authorities in four of the largest conurbations outside London. These were given the duty to provide a properly integrated and efficient system of public transport to meet the needs of that area. In the 1970s the PTAs were expanded to seven areas with, as Beeching suggested, BR acting as an agent for subsidised rail services operated by the PTAs. Consequently, Barbara Castle agreed to subsidise from public funds unremunerative rail services in both urban and rural areas which were considered to be socially necessary. As Thomson and Hunter comment, the services covered went well beyond the Reshaping report, amounting to virtually the whole passenger network outside the inter-city services, and not a few of the latter were also included. When combined with increased revenue, in 1969 BR reported an overall surplus for the first time since 1952 (Thomson and Hunter 1973:139). It could be said that, with these subsidies, a large element of political realism had been grafted on to the Beeching ‘solution’. Even a Labour Minister such as Barbara Castle had gone a long way down the line to implementing his closure proposals, but goodwill in the public arena could not be tested too far. The problem was that these subsidies tended to develop in an ad hoc manner, and acquired the ‘image’ of protecting rail from the more popular and efficient road transport. As Lamb perceptively observes, the issue of whether each family should have a measure of public transport available has never been resolved, and so the system of subsidies to bus and rail has developed in a haphazard manner (Lamb 1995:442). Beeching’s radical ideas occupied the ‘hollow core’ of rail policy, although he himself generally lacked the skills to construct networks and communities for their implementation. In this context, Beeching was an ideas entrepreneur rather than a policy entrepreneur. The ‘promiscuous’ Minister Marples was more skilful in creating the conditions in the political stream so that the Beeching ideas could be successfully transplanted, particularly through the institutional ‘punctuated equilibrium’ of abolishing the BTC and setting up the BRB. Ironically, however, once implementation of the report began, Beeching himself gradually became disillusioned and a rather politically isolated figure. Beeching the individual eventually departed the political stream, but his ideas continued to effectively occupy the ‘hollow core’. It could be said that the ideas survived because the sense of crisis surrounding rail, which had opened the ‘policy window’ in the first place, also persisted. A Labour government might not explicitly accept Beeching’s ideological concept of a commercial railway, but the ‘inexorable march of problems’ could be met with many of the ideas taken from the Beeching ‘solution’. The behaviour of Ministers such as Barbara Castle reminds us that the ‘promiscuous’ Minister does not have to share the core values of an advocacy coalition to adopt its policy ideas.


Consequently, although Beeching and his ideas were not loved, either in the political or public arenas, they could be presented as a necessary price to be paid to save the railways financially and to accommodate the apparently inexorable growth in vehicle ownership and the development of the roads network. In the 1960s, the generally inward looking rail industry was unable to challenge these sometimes implicit assumptions in a politically effective way. Road and rail generally existed in separate policy networks, and the latter interests could not influence the former. On the other hand, developments within the roads community which had consolidated itself since the mid-1950s, had profound, if indirect, effects on rail policy. Consequently, a pro-road policy entrepreneur such as Marples could set the organisational framework in place which would radically reduce the size of the rail network. Events in rail demonstrate, therefore, that the development of ideas and networks within one arena can have profound effects on events in a complementary arena, even when the direct overlap of interests is relatively small. The dynamics of change here depend instead on spillover effects between networks. Events in roads encouraged the occupation of the ‘hollow core’ in rail even though Beeching himself was not an agent of the road lobby. In this context, the ideas of Beeching did not couple themselves with the political stream by chance, but were a component in a wider process of change. Paradoxically, the ‘celibate’ policy-maker Beeching possessed the necessary potential political stature to promote himself as the ‘champion of the railway’. Instead, in the manner of ‘policy as its own cause’ (Wildavsky 1979:62–85), the Beeching ‘solution’ eventually became another rail ‘problem’. The reduction of the network encouraged the political ‘image’ of rail as an industry in secular decline, and of Beeching as the hatchet man in chief. This was an ‘image’ which to some extent persisted into the 1990s, and complemented that of roads as the policy ‘solution’. Ironically, however, it could also be said that the 1960s proved to represent the zenith of the road lobby’s power. From the early 1970s, the lobby was progressively undermined by the work of an emerging environmental advocacy coalition (although we will see that there was at least an indirect rail influence in this process). Change was discontinuous, but in the mid-1990s the systematic work of an organised environmental advocacy coalition succeeded to the extent that roads themselves became widely perceived as the policy ‘problem’.

4 Roadbuilding as a policy idea and a weak advocacy coalition 1900–54

There are votes in roads The more traffic increases and thus the more the complete inadequacy of our present road system is disclosed, the more this statement will become painfully apparent. No doubt my predecessors had all this in mind when they brought forward their road programmes. As far back as 1954 it was the view of the then Minister of Transport that a £60 million payments ceiling on the road programme was essential even without any motor roads. In the end this programme was cut to £40 million and some motor roads were put in. It thus became quite inadequate. Our present ceiling of expenditure without Scotland (which is not now my responsibility) is about £35 million. (Memorandum to the Cabinet by the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, 5 June 1957, CAB129/87) The making of a hegemonic policy community The above extract, written by Transport Minister Harold Watkinson in a confidential memorandum to the Cabinet, is an excellent illustration of policy at a watershed through a potent coupling of ideas, values and interests. Watkinson himself was a highly influential policy entrepreneur who, soon after arriving at the MoT in 1955, decided that roads and road traffic seemed to be the most urgent sector for his attention. For this Minister, the policy ‘solution’ was clear: Punch published a full-page cartoon about this time entitled ‘Road Race’, showing the Minister desperately unrolling the Macadam carpet in front of a bevy of snarling motor cars. This expressed my feelings with considerable accuracy. (Watkinson 1986:69) A national plan for road building had been set out by the Labour government immediately after the Second World War, but financial constraints, and lack of

ROADBUILDING AS A POLICY IDEA 67

political will, meant that a decade later almost nothing of this plan had been implemented. The idea of road building as a policy ‘solution’ existed, but it was an idea in waiting, whose time had not yet come. There were road interests but no effective advocacy coalition, let alone a policy community, to coalesce around the idea and shift it into the core policy arena. There is no doubt that the formation of an enormously powerful hegemonic roads policy community in the mid- to late 1950s can be at least partly attributed to the ‘inexorable march of problems’ (Kingdon 1995: 94–6) in the form of the growth of motor traffic. In 1945 the vehicles in use in Britain totalled 2.5 million, but by 1958 this number had more than trebled to almost 8 million (Plowden 1973:482). Ministers could not afford to ignore the evidence of increasing congestion and consequent discontent on the part of the motorist, with the inevitability that things could only get worse if nothing was done. At the same time, this powerful exogenous factor does not properly explain the rapid speed with which the roads programme gathered momentum in the late 1950s, and the equally rapid development of a dominant roads policy community. Road building could have proceeded in an incremental fashion, while other policy ‘solutions’, such as the development of public transport, or rationing of road space by price, also gained currency. Instead, the massive dominance of road building brings us to a crucial point in tracing the dynamics of the birth of a powerful policy community, i.e. although resource dependencies may be a sufficient condition for the formation and maintenance of a policy community, it does not explain its political hegemony. Consequently, resource dependencies may hold a community together, but it is the powerful policy idea, based on a common ‘frame’, which produces the hegemonic community. Communities need, therefore, to rest on a firm foundation of common ideas and values if true dominance within a sector is to be attained. Prior to the mid-1950s, the road lobby was fragmented, and consisted of epistemic communities of civil engineers, together with a variety of motoring and lobbying organisations. This fragmented structure highlights a key puzzle in that the various elements of the road lobby may have basically shared core values, but for many years it could not be said that they constituted an effective advocacy coalition, i.e. an aggregation of actors composed of people from various governmental and private organisations who share a set of normative and causal beliefs and who often act in concert (Sabatier 1993:18). Until the mid-1950s, the road lobby may have shared some normative and causal beliefs, but they did not bring about policy change. A key element in our analysis of the dynamics of policy change, therefore, is to understand how an advocacy coalition may become an operational reality, and how that advocacy coalition may in turn be transformed into a hegemonic policy community.


Ministers as policy and ideas entrepreneurs In the case of the road lobby, the principal agents of change appeared to be ‘promiscuous’ and ‘celibate’ Ministers acting as policy (and ideas) entrepreneurs. In fulfilling this role, it was not so much that successive Transport Ministers necessarily set out deliberately to act as unofficial leaders of advocacy coalitions (although they were not averse to occupying this position), but that they acted as a focus for ideas around which an advocacy coalition could form. Thus the image of Watkinson unrolling the macadam carpet expresses not only his executive function as the chief road builder, but also his symbolic position as the political embodiment of roads as the policy ‘solution’. In turn, the Minister was in a unique position to construct an organisational structure which could eventually form a powerful policy community. In this respect, it should be borne in mind that a hegemonic policy community may not be restricted to one central policy-making arena. In the case of roads, the community also included all the implementation arenas. Consequently, the MoT’s executive responsibility for building the trunk roads, (which it had actually held since 1936) meant that as the trunk roads programme achieved exponential growth, so this activity came to dominate the MoT organisationally. In the middle to late 1950s, successive Ministers took a personal interest in not only developing the knowledge and expertise of the epistemic community of highway engineers, but also in ensuring that road building became the dominant policy ‘frame’ within the MoT generally. The Minister therefore has the authority and means to transform a collection of lobbying groups into an effective advocacy coalition. Thus, Ministers can play a key role in forming alliances with a range of actors and groups in order to bring about policy change. On the other hand, Ministers are also free to participate in a range of alliances— #8212;hence our use of the term ‘ministerial promiscuity’. For example, John Boyd-Carpenter, Transport Minister, 1954–5, played a significant role in instigating the road building programme, but at the same time he refused to allow motor taxes to be hypothecated for roads expenditure, a cause long dear to the road lobby’s heart. Instead, he allied himself with the Treasury in maintaining the status quo that motor taxes should be made available for public expenditure generally. There is also the functional point that Ministers must give attention to a range of problems and policy areas, and cannot only focus their attention on one subject, such as roads (Dudley 1994). Consequently, a Transport Minister in the 1950s had also to give attention to a wide range of nationalised transport industries within the British Transport Commission, including the railways, road haulage and London Transport. Crucially, however, at a vital moment in the policy change process Ministers may become entirely ‘celibate’ for a period, isolating themselves from other actors in order to construct a radical policy ‘reframing’. As we will see in the next chapter, a particularly good example of this occurred when Watkinson


became impatient with the various lobby groups and also the officials within his Department, and withdrew in order to devise his own future strategy for roads. The outcome provided the trunk roads blueprint for the next decade. The mobility of Ministers (in the sense of being able to move between sets of actors or to ignore all of them) therefore provides a key potential explanation in the dynamics of major policy change. Notwithstanding the vital entrepreneurial role played by Ministers in bringing about radical policy change, however, it is important to bear in mind the conditions under which these essentially endogenous processes take place. In particular, the role of Ministers not only in forming advocacy coalitions, but also in coupling formerly separate policy streams is important. The essence of Kingdon’s policy streams model is that problems, policies and politics are coupled at crucial times to bring about policy change (Kingdon 1995:19). It is important to understand, however, that the process may also include a coupling and hence a ‘mutating’ of policy ideas themselves. For example, Sabatier lists a typology of values which holds an advocacy coalition together. These include basic deep core beliefs, such as the relative valuation of individual freedom versus social equality; second order policy core beliefs, which represent a coalition’s basic normative commitments, and are somewhat less rigid than deep core beliefs; and third order secondary aspects, which are more easily adjusted in the light of new data, experience, or changing strategic considerations (Sabatier 1998:103–4). In the formation of advocacy coalitions, it should not necessarily be assumed that policy core beliefs will be ‘nested’ in deep core beliefs. The two sets of ideas may be initially discontinuous, and coupled together by a politically skilful entrepreneur. It could be said that this was the case with roads, and that a key factor in understanding the rapid growth of a hegemonic roads policy occurred when the core belief of road building as the transport ‘solution’ per se was successfully coupled with the deep core belief in popular consumerism. Thus road building as a policy idea had existed for many years, but in order to achieve exponential growth it needed to be rooted (at least apparently) in a wider meta-policy idea. By the middle 1950s, Britain was emerging from the shortages and rationing of the immediate post-war world into a period of greater economic prosperity and a more plentiful supply of consumer goods. This culminated in the slogan popularly attributed to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at the 1959 general election (although never actually said by him in that form) of ‘you neverhad it so good’. To an opportunistic ‘promiscuous’ Transport Minister, implementation of the long-standing plans for a motorway network offered an ideal way of expressing this commitment to popular consumerism. For example, when Transport Minister John Boyd-Carpenter announced the government’s commitment to an expanded road building programme in 1955, the question of whether the new motorways might be tolled was left open. Boyd-Carpenter however, was determined that the motorways should be free at the point of use. In particular, he perceived that, politically, the motorways would act as potent


symbols of the Conservative government’s commitment to the modernisation of Britain. This image would be diluted if these roads were restricted to only those able to pay to use them. Instead, if the roads were free at the point of use to the ever expanding army of vehicle owners, then the correct message would be conveyed of a government prepared to service the needs of a consumer boom (interview 28 June 1995). Boyd-Carpenter’s successor as Transport Minister, Harold Watkinson, also understood the importance of building the motorways for the project of ‘you never had it so good’, and took a close executive interest in the construction of the first section of the M1 between London and Birmingham. The Transport Minister 1959–64, Ernest Marples, was even more of a zealot for the virtues of road building than his two predecessors. Combined with a great gift for publicity and self-promotion, Marples became personally identified with the rapid expansion of the motorway network and the consolidation of the hegemonic roads policy community. Ministers, therefore, were not only crucial agents in the formation of a roads advocacy coalition, and its transformation into a hegemonic policy community, but also in coupling policy core beliefs in transport to deep core beliefs in a wider political community. In doing so, they were assisted by the road lobby’s growing awareness, which mirrored that of Ministers such as Boyd-Carpenter, that the cause of road building had to be popularised if it was to successfully capture the public imagination. Here, one further important turning point was the formation of the Roads Campaign Council (RCC) in 1955. The RCC was specifically given the responsibility of carrying the campaign for roads into the new venue of the public arena, rather than just concentrating pressure on the central arenas of Whitehall and Westminster. It was therefore adopting the ‘empty chair’ principle of influencing Ministers through the indirect means of organising and harnessing popular opinion (Dudley 1994). Thus the RCC assisted in fulfilling the Ministers’ aim of projecting the policy image of road building as an instrument of popular consumerism. Chapter 5 will examine the dynamics via which road building became the overwhelmingly dominant policy idea within the MoT between 1955 and 1959, particularly in the context of the vital role played by successive Ministers in transplanting this idea and finding the means to sustain it. Prior to this, however, we will examine briefly the relative lack of success of the road building lobby during the first half of the twentieth century. In order to understand the rapid speed with which the hegemonic roads policy community was formed during the second half of the 1950s, it is important to appreciate the factors which led to the failure of the road lobby in the earlier years of the century. The road lobby and policy failure 1900–39 The plight of the road lobby until the mid-1950s was summed up well in 1949 by W.Rees Jeffreys, a life-long and fanatical roads lobbyist, whose single-minded


devotion to this cause brought him into frequent collision with the authorities (Plowden 1973:19). This devotion included, from 1901, being Secretary, and then Chairman, of the Roads Improvement Association (RIA), a leading lobbying group. Looking to the future, but also with a hint of despair about past events, Rees Jeffreys complained that: Scepticism exists as to how far finance will be provided for the new motorways. The last word is still with the Treasury. In the struggle for such capital funds as are available for transport, are the Railway Executive or the Road Authorities likely to prevail? Hitherto (1920–48) the Railways have won easily. Road programmes have been largely paper programmes, but the railways raised many millions of capital for railway development, while road interests cried out to the Treasury in vain. (Rees Jeffreys 1949:271) Rees Jeffreys’ lament sums up the road lobby’s frustration at what it perceived to be the government’s preferential treatment of the railways, and the refusal of the Treasury to release funds raised from motoring taxes for building roads. The deficit between aspiration and achievement had begun early in the century for the road lobby, with the total failure of an officially constituted Road Board. In 1905 the government, concerned about the safety problems presented by the growing number of motor vehicles, appointed a Royal Commission to investigate, amongst other things, whether motorists should in some way be required to pay for the alleged injury done to roads by motor vehicles and, if so, how the money raised should be applied. Acting on evidence from the Automobile Club, the Commission concluded in their 1906 report that dust from the roads was a great hazard, and that the only answer was dustless roads. Consequently they recommended that motor taxation revenue should be devoted to road improvement (Plowden 1973: 58–62). Echoing the conclusions which were to be drawn half a century later, therefore, road improvement had been identified as the principal policy ‘solution’ to the motoring ‘problem’. In particular, the Commission recommended that money raised from motor taxation should go to a central department, which should make grants to local authorities, not for mere repairs, but for improvements aimed at producing better and less dusty surfaces (Plowden 1973:62). The government did not act immediately on the Royal Commission’s conclusions, but in his 1909 budget Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George announced that all the proceeds of the new petrol tax and a graduated vehicle tax were to be spent on the roads. Following on from this decision, in 1910 a Road Board was set up not only to distribute road fund revenues to the local authorities for road maintenance and improvements (significantly central government had no direct control of roads) but also to build new roads itself. Ostensibly, the creation of the Road Fund and the Road Board represented a great political triumph for the road lobby. A consensus had emerged that road


improvement and construction represented the policy ‘solution’ to the motoring ‘problem’ and, against opposition from the Treasury, the key principle was established that the revenues from motoring taxation should be hypothecated directly to expenditure on roads. In the event, however, this was to prove a pyrrhic victory for the road lobby. Between 1909 and 1920, when the Road Board was wound up, the motoring community paid just over £23 million, only £7 million of which was actually spent on the roads. Improvements were made in reducing the dust problem, but only two important schemes of arterial road construction were initiated by the Board, neither of which were finished during the Board’s tenure of office. Crucially, the Board could not spend any money without Treasury approval, which was only grudgingly forthcoming. At the same time, the Board exhibited little political commitment to the cause of road building. Indeed, the Chairman was a prominent railway magnate! (Dyos and Aldcroft 1974:394–5). The road lobby might have persuaded the government to introduce an important policy change, but membership of an advocacy coalition did not extend deep into the official and ministerial ranks of government, and so policy implementation was frustrated. Rees Jeffreys was appointed Secretary of the Road Board in 1910, and in addition to lack of commitment from the membership and Treasury control, significantly he attributed the Road Board’s failure to its inability to instruct and interest the local authorities, road users, the press and the general public in its activities. In 1918, therefore, Rees Jeffreys resigned his post as Secretary in order to campaign for roads as a free agent (Rees Jeffreys 1949:76–82). When the Road Board was wound up in 1920, its powers were transferred to the newly created Ministry of Transport. The Minister of Transport could utilise the Road Fund for improving or constructing roads either directly or by way of grants to local authorities. During the 1920s a number of major schemes of trunk road improvements and reconstruction were instituted, but these largely came to a halt with the financial crises of the early 1930s (Dyos and Aldcroft 1974:395–6). The Ministry of Transport had been set up with the intention of improving coordination between road and rail. In particular, it was intended that the largely ailing railway companies would be nationalised. In the event, however, the railway companies were rationalised into four companies in 1923, but remained in the private sector. As the roads were still controlled by the local authorities, the infant Ministry was left without any significant strategic role and with little political status. (In 1928 the Roads Department disappeared and was integrated with the rest of the Ministry (Charlesworth 1984:5).) Its position was further undermined in 1926 when Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill raided the Road Fund for general expenditure, and repeated the exercise a year later (Hamer 1987:31). The most significant milestone for road interests in the pre-war years, however, was achieved as a result of the 1936 Trunk Roads Act. From 1937 the MoT took direct control over some 4,500 miles of the most important national


through routes, which were now legally defined as ‘Trunk Roads’. The MoT was reorganised in 1937 on ‘Divisional’ lines; and the old Roads Department was split into four Divisions of which one dealt exclusively with trunk roads (CPRE 1992:16). The MoT had now at last found a role for itself in taking executive responsibility for the trunk roads. Implicit in these responsibilities was also the inference that the MoT should assume responsibility for a national roads strategy. Consequently, by 1939 the MoT had published over 200 ‘line orders’ (indicating MoT approval for a route had been obtained) only to discover that the cost, at over £190 million, of the approval programme represented over fifty years’ expenditure at current levels (CPRE 1992:17). Once again, this disparity between aspiration and reality demonstrated the financial and political problems inherent in implementing the roads ‘solution’. These weaknesses were exacerbated when, from 1937, the Road Fund finally lost its independence. Henceforth, it would submit annual estimates, like any department, and would receive its income from annual votes (Plowden 1973:302). The principle of hypothecation, so crucial to the road lobby’s plans, had in effect been abolished, and roads expenditure would now be entirely dependent on the political will of government and the generosity of the Treasury. Notwithstanding its success in persuading the government to introduce the 1936 Trunk Roads Act, the road lobby generally continued to have a largely arm’s-length relationship with the MoT. This was illustrated in the case of the 1937 ‘German Roads Delegation’. This was organised by the British Road Federation (BRF) an umbrella group founded in 1932 to campaign for more road building and to provide a forum for the road lobby (Hamer 1987:9). The German Delegation consisted of some 225 MPs, County Surveyors and County Roads Chairmen who were treated by the BRF to an expenses-paid tour of the German autobahns. The BRF had hoped to include a number of Ministry staff too, but this was vetoed by the Minister (CPRE 1992:18). The road lobby may have lacked MoT support for this delegation, but the sight of the extensive system of autobahns opened the eyes of the epistemic community of highway engineers and surveyors, and galvanised them into action. This was an example, therefore, of how technical experts are susceptible to processes of transnational learning, with consequent political effects. After the visit, the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS) passed a resolution in favour of the construction of a motorway system instead of the Ministry’s plans to upgrade the existing trunk roads, and in May 1938 they published a plan for a 1,000 mile network which was destined to form the basis of the motorways later built (CPRE 1992:18). (In 1936 the Institution of Highway Engineers had devised a more ambitious plan for a network of 2,826 miles, but at this time the concept of a motorway network was totally rejected by the Minister of Transport, HoreBelisha (Charlesworth 1984:13).) Representatives from the German Roads Delegation did meet the Minister of Transport in 1938, to press their case for motorways. Officials, however, advised the Minister to keep an ‘open mind’ and warned of the danger of diverting traffic


from rail to road because if the railways lost money they would have to be subsidised. Nevertheless, after visiting Germany in 1938 the Minister, Leslie Burgin, did have some sympathy for the plan, and proposed to the Cabinet a scheme submitted by Lancashire County Council for a north—south motorway (as we will see, Lancashire continued to be strong motorway advocates into the 1950s). The political status of the motorways programme, however, was perhaps best summed up by the Surveyors’ plan being first published by the magazine Tit-Bits, a publication best known for the photographs of scantily clad females strewn across its pages (Hamer 1987:43–4). An idea in waiting 1945–54 Although the Second World War inevitably placed in abeyance any firm government commitment to a motorway network, the strains which the war effort placed on the transport system had the effect of opening up the minds of officials to the potential advantages of a motorway network. Thus an MoT official, in a 1942 memorandum, speculated that: The possibility of increasing the loading gauge of the railway to any material extent is all but impossible. The construction of systems of motorways would not be hindered by any limitations as to clearances and this would enable large loads to be moved from one part of the country to another with the minimum of trouble. A means of communication such as this during the present war would have been invaluable. (MT 39/657) This official suggested a network of about 735 miles, which could be built at a total cost of £58,800,000 (MT 39/657). The government was beginning to accept the need for motorways, but was still reluctant to identify itself politically with the road lobby. In 1943 a highly significant meeting took place at which the various factions of the road lobby united behind the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS) plan for a 1,000 mile motorway network. The meeting included representatives from the BRF, the CSS, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) (represented on this occasion by Rees Jeffreys who characteristically pressed for a commitment to a larger network), the Institution of Highway Engineers, the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers and the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hamer 1987:37). The new consensus between the various elements of the epistemic community of road builders and key lobbying groups suggested that the road lobby was sowing the seeds of a more united advocacy coalition. On the other hand, when the BRF held a ‘motorways for Great Britain’ exhibition in London in December 1943, the Minister was advised not to attend because of the lack of a definite Ministry view on the subject (CPRE 1992:19). In 1944, however, the Chief Engineer of the


Ministry of War Transport, A.J.Lyddon, recommended a national motorway plan, and survey work was begun on priority routes (Drake et al. 1969:43). With the end of the war, the new Labour government finally committed itself to a large-scale road construction plan. For Labour, building roads chimed in well with its larger strategy of industrial regeneration, particularly in the more depressed regions, and the County Surveyors’ plan offered a ready-made policy ‘solution’. (Building roads to assist regional development illustrated how the ideas underpinning road building were expanding, but in the 1940s this idea in itself was not sufficient to provide the impetus for policy implementation.) In May 1946, Transport Minister Alfred Barnes announced to the House of Commons a road plan which was intended to set the strategy for the following decade. The benefits listed by the Minister which this new system would bring included assisting the development areas, particularly better access to ports and markets; improved communications; the rehabilitation and improvements of town and countryside; the redevelopment of devastated areas; improved access from home to work; a reduction in traffic congestion; and to promote the efficiency of agriculture (H.C.Debates 6 May 1946, col. 590). A Times leader made the significant point that one omission by the Minister was for new roads to cater for the probable increase in pleasure traffic. By the mid-1950s, Ministers were much more aware of the political value of new roads in satisfying the needs of a consumer society, but in the austere early post-war days this connection was much less clear. Hence there was an important link missing in the mutation of effective policy ideas (The Times 7 May 1946). Barnes emphasised that the programme would be spread over ten years. In the first two years, there would be a concentration on arrears of maintenance. In years three to five, maintenance arrears would be completed together with activity in the elimination of ‘black spots’. During this period, new roads would include a limited number of motor roads (the then word for motorways) for the development areas. In the final five years, there would be a comprehensive reconstruction of the principal national routes. Many of these would be motor roads, and the Minister would exhibit the government’s plans for these roads in the members’ tea room. No estimates were given of the final cost of this ambitious plan, but in the first year it was intended that the expenditure would be anything up to £80 million (H.C.Debates 6 May 1946, cols. 591–3). The policy idea for a motorway network had graduated, therefore, from TitBits to the somewhat loftier heights of the Commons’ tea room. The tea room plan followed an ‘hour glass’-shaped network of motorways of roughly 800 miles in total length (Starkie 1982:2). This was somewhat shorter than the CSS plan, but retained its chief features. In the event, however, the government was compelled to abandon any plans for major road development. This was partly through exogenous circumstances. From 1947 the exhaustion of post-war credits led to an urgent need to increase exports substantially, and with skilled labour, coal, steel and other materials in short supply, capital investment was cut back. This was done selectively, so that


although many of the ‘new towns’ schemes continued, the roads element in the de facto national plan collapsed. Consequently, expenditure on new and improved roads, instead of outpacing that of the pre-war period, continued to languish at levels barely a quarter of those reached in the late 1930s (Starkie 1982:2–3). There were also more endogenous factors at work in the frustration of the road lobby’s hopes. Notwithstanding the MoT’s executive responsibility for trunk roads, other sectors held the chief attention of Ministers. In particular, the plans for an integrated British Transport Commission (BTC) involved the nationalisation of the railways together with sections of the bus and road haulage industries. The immense problems of the rail industry, as we saw in Chapter 2, remained matters of enormous political salience throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Eventually, the financial and commercial decline in the railway’s fortunes would assist in the process of the motorway plan becoming the policy ‘solution’ to the transport ‘problem’, but in the 1940s it was the massive (and eventually unworkable) BTC which held the hopes of Ministers. There was also the question of the Minister himself. In a government full of powerful personalities such as Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Ernest Bevin, Aneurin Bevan, Sir Stafford Cripps and Hugh Dalton, Alfred Barnes cut rather an anonymous figure as Transport Minister, and left little lasting impact as a figure of political substance. The fate of Barnes is a reminder that, regardless of whether a Minister adopts a ‘promiscuous’ or ‘celibate’ style, he or she needs also to have, or acquire, political authority and credibility within the government as a whole. In the case of traditionally less politically salient departments such as Transport, a flair for publicity and self-promotion can also be of considerable assistance. Barnes lacked these qualities, with the result that capital expenditure such as the roads programme represented a politically soft option for cuts. In addition to publication of the tea room plan, the road lobby did enjoy one other notable success in the 1940s in the form of the 1949 Special Roads Act. This allowed for motorways to be built by restricting their use to motor vehicles. The BRF was influential in lobbying the Minister in this instance (CPRE 1992: 19), but the lobby remained totally ineffective in weaning a financial commitment from the government to actually begin constructing new roads. Nevertheless, Rees Jeffreys took some heart at this time that the state itself, being the largest single owner of road transport, through nationalisation of sections of the road haulage and bus industries, would have a direct interest in securing road facilities for the economic working of that transport. He also believed that railway nationalisation would, paradoxically, reduce the influence of rail in Parliament, as the railway directors and shareholders would disappear (Rees Jeffreys 1949:272). The political status of the motorways in the 1940s can be gauged by the fate of the official put in charge of a new motorways section within the MoT after the announcement of the tea room plan. In 1947 he was moved to become the


Divisional Road Engineer in Wales (in the 1950s this same official, J.F.Baker, returned as Chief Engineer, and was a major actor in the early development of motorways) (Charlesworth 1984:25). The reluctance of the government to spend money on roads was an act of enormous frustration to the road lobby. The BRF in particular sought to influence the government and public opinion generally with a whole series of films, exhibitions and publications. By 1950 the BRF had 104 national trade organisations as members, but in policy terms it amounted to very little. The almost total failure of the road lobby to influence either public opinion or the government was acknowledged at this time by Gresham Cooke, Director of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders: The public have shown surprisingly little interest in these conditions, hardly being conscious that their own frustrations could be relieved by something that was man made. The British public seem to accept our system of roads as if it was an Act of God, immutable, unchangeable. By this time we might have had a system of motorways up and down the country besides the road system as a whole greatly improved. The lack of interest in this subject by the public allows the government this year to collect £230 million in taxation from motor users and to spend only £27 million on the roads, another £20 million being found by the ratepayers. (BRF Bulletin, September 1950) As Finer commented, writing in the late 1950s, organisations with a special interest in roads form a vast complex of great social and industrial importance. Yet, for all this, the sums spent on roads since 1945 had been by any standard quite negligible (Finer 1958:470). To illustrate his argument, Finer listed several prominent sections of the road lobby including the road haulage interests represented in particular by the Road Haulage Association (RHA); road passenger transport organisations representing the bus operators; motorists’ associations such as the Automobile Association (AA) and the Royal Automobile Club (RAC); and suppliers’ groups represented in particular by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and the Motor Agents’ Association (MAA) (Finer 1958:48–51). The road lobby may have united behind a plan for a 1,000 mile motorway network, but the ideas and values expressed by this apparently economically powerful advocacy coalition were not echoed at the centre of government. It was not only a matter of economic restrictions, but also that key Ministers and officials failed to see problems and their solutions through the same policy ‘frame’ as the road lobby. Thus in 1953 the Permanent Secretary at the MoT, Sir Gilmour Jenkins, told a Commons’ Select Committee that he personally was not in favour of a system of roads on the lines of the German Autobahnen although he did think that there was a considerable amount of major improvement work, such as building bypasses, the improvements of bridges and a new Severn bridge, which would improve the flow of traffic (quoted in Charlesworth 1984:34).


Even in 1953, therefore, seven years after the publication of the tea room plan, there was little indication that motorways as a policy ‘solution’ had penetrated into the core of the MoT. Right at the end of the year, however, there was at last some suggestion that road building was winning the key support of Transport Ministers, and that the momentous political journey from incomplete advocacy coalition to hegemonic policy community was finally beginning. In the next chapter we will describe and analyse the dynamics of this ‘third order’ policy change process.

5 Ministers and motorways The making of a hegemonic policy community 1954–9

Though Britain was late into the motorway age, the men from the Ministry pulled their fingers out when the M1 London to Leeds motorway was finally approved in 1956. Progress was as speedy as a Bentley Continental. A mile of concrete roadway was completed every eight days, a concrete bridge (to the design of the M1’s chief engineer, Sir Owen Williams of Wembley Stadium fame) every three. The M1 was completed on time and more or less on budget at a cost of £28.5 million. Two days before the official opening, Stirling Moss, the grand prix and Mille Miglia legend, led a va-vavroooooom parade up and down the new road as some of the 5,000 £17—and £19-a-week workers, who had cleared 20 million tonnes of earth and stone over the past 584 days, stood on the side and cheered in their £2.15s.9d donkey jackets. Ernest Marples was said to be appalled at the speed and noise. (Jonathan Glancey, the Guardian, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the first section of the M1, 19 October 1999) Completing the advocacy coalition 1954–5 Starkie argues that secular economic and social trends, which on the whole were of a fairly smooth nature, do not by themselves explain one important feature of post-war road and traffic policies, namely the tendency towards distinct, quite sudden but infrequent change. However, by combining the forces of circumstance with the role of pressure groups, we are able to explain more easily such marked changes in policy. In these circumstances, alteration to policies is unlikely to be brought about by gradual modification. On the contrary, the tendency is for a firm change of policy to take place only when a sufficient head of steam has been produced by lobbyists capitalising upon favourable pressures from economic, social and intellectual forces (Starkie 1982:152–3). This interpretation suggests an image of radical policy change being akin to a great weight of water bursting through a dam and flooding a valley. Thus the tea

80 MINISTERS AND MOTORWAYS

room plan had been around for many years, the road lobby had applied consistent pressure on government, and so, in the light of this pressure, and the ever-growing numbers of vehicles on the road, the government finally gave way and started building roads. This explanation, however, gives insufficient attention to the role of ideas, the authority of government (and in particular Ministers), and the endogenous processes within it. Rather than the image of a bursting dam, therefore, a more effective metaphor may be of Ministers harnessing the power of the river in order to bring about change. As we have suggested, the policy stream of road building (epitomised by the tea room plan) was coupled by Ministers to the mutated idea of road building as a tool of popular consumerism. The election of a Conservative government in 1951 did not of itself signify a major shift in policy. The BTC would remain in being until the early 1960s (although sections of the road haulage industry were returned to the private sector) and the deepening problems of the railways, as we saw in Chapter 2, ensured that this sector held the attention of Ministers. Nevertheless, the new government had less ideological commitment to an integrated transport structure than its predecessor. Ministers, using their initiative, could search for fresh policy solutions. In May 1952 Alan LennoxBoyd was appointed Minister of Transport. Although he was not to have the same impact as his successors at the MoT in the 1950s in terms of policy change, he did at least initiate a process that suggested a divergence from the views expressed in 1953 to the Select Committee by the Permanent Secretary (quoted earlier). Consequently, in December 1953 Lennox-Boyd announced to the Commons that the country could no longer afford to delay an extended programme of major road improvements without serious damage to the economy. Thus annual payments from the road fund should rise from £5 million a year in 1953–4 to between £14 million and £15 million in 1957–8, and should continue at that level for a number of years. Over the next three years, Exchequer expenditure of schemes totalling £50 million would be approved. Of particular political significance, these would include the Preston bypass at an estimated cost of £2 million (the Preston bypass proved to be the first section of motorway opened in Britain) (H.C. Debates 8 December 1953, cols. 1810–4). The road lobby was decidedly unimpressed by the Minister’s announcement. For example, the SMMT described it as ‘a feeble gesture’ (The Times 9 December 1953). For its part, a Times leader suggested that roads perhaps suffered through there being no central authority with commercial responsibility for building up plans for such roads, and able relentlessly to push them (The Times 10 December 1953). This echoed a BRF policy idea for a national highway authority, and indicated a lack of faith in the MoT’s commitment to building roads. Nevertheless, the roads advocates failed to pick up the political message that a Minister was committing himself much more firmly to promoting the benefits of roads expenditure. More ominously for the road lobby, in February 1954 the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, Hugh

WHY DOES POLICY CHANGE? 81

Molson, told the Commons that there were not the numbers of surveyors and engineers necessary to carry out a sudden expansion in new roads construction (H.C.Debates 15 February 1954, col. 1663). It was not only a matter of spending money, therefore, but also a question of building up the strength of the necessary epistemic communities. A key figure in preparing the MoT for its future priorities and in finally completing an effective roads advocacy coalition was John Boyd-Carpenter, Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation 1954–5. Although at the MoT for only approximately eighteen months, Boyd-Carpenter’s approach signified the new direction for the MoT where trunk road construction would become the dominant policy ‘frame’. Boyd-Carpenter also denoted a significant ideological break with the previous Transport Ministers. A decade after the end of the war, the long period of post-war austerity and rationing was being replaced by a greater sense of prosperity characterised by consumer choice. Boyd-Carpenter was politically astute enough to understand that if the Conservative government could harness and lead the new public mood, then the electoral dividends could be immense. In particular, the construction of motorways, or at least the commitment to finally implement the tea room plan, could project a modern image for the Tories while catering for the ever-growing army of motorists and assisting economic growth (interview 28 June 1995). The development of motorways could also act as a political antidote to the problems of the nationalised transport industries, and in particular the railways. By the mid-1950s, it had become clear that the BTC had failed to come to grips with severe problems of investment, rationalisation and industrial relations in the railways (Boyd-Carpenter’s tenure at the MoT included a damaging rail strike) and that there was no simple ‘solution’ to be found to the rail ‘problem’. In contrast, the tea room plan, although now nearly two decades old, offered the perfect ‘solution’ to the transport image ‘problem’. For an ambitious Minister, therefore, roads offered a much more politically upbeat ‘frame’ for policy success than the seemingly never ending and insoluble problems of rail. There was also the ‘empty chair’ factor in the Minister’s perception of the transport outlook. In addition to established sectoral networks, the Minister was aware of the expanding number of motoring voters (in 1955 there were nearly 6. 5 million vehicles in use, up from 2.5 million in 1945). Each new vehicle owner represented a potential convert to the road lobby, regardless of whether he or she was a member of a motoring organisation. The Minister, therefore, had an awareness of trends beyond the transport policy networks which were as significant, if not more so, than anything which occurred in Westminster and Whitehall. At the same time, Boyd-Carpenter emerged as a Minister more prepared to ally himself openly with the road lobby’s values and objectives. In real political terms, his advocacy of the roads ‘solution’ placed him in the position as an unofficial leader of the lobby. It was in this sense that the Minister and his ideas finally completed the crucial missing link in the roads advocacy coalition. Hamer


describes how, in the early 1950s, the road lobby became much more aware of the need to coordinate and encourage grassroots lobbying for new roads. For example, in 1949 James Drake, county surveyor of Lancashire, and a longstanding motorways advocate, drew up revised plans for a north-south motorway through Lancashire. In the early 1950s, the BRF helped to organise support for these roads within local authorities and organisations such as chambers of commerce, so that the MoT received an impression of wide local support for the new roads (Hamer 1987:47–8). The road lobby, after repeated failures, was therefore able to undergo a process of policy learning, and began to understand that a systematic multi-arena approach was necessary in order to bring about a paradigm shift within the MoT (a lesson ironically copied by the environmental lobby forty years later). It was also crucial, however, that the Minister himself led this shift in fundamental values. Grassroots campaigning could assist this process on the ‘empty chair’ principle, but it was also necessary for the Minister to make a policy decision in favour of building roads. As we have seen, Boyd-Carpenter was the first Minister of Transport to make the required commitment. Once the initial policy decision was made, the Minister could ally himself with the road lobby. Nevertheless, Boyd-Carpenter was also to disappoint the road lobby in some of its objectives. In the field of trunk roads, John Boyd-Carpenter could be described, in terms of Headey’s classification of ministerial types, as chiefly a Policy Initiator, who also exhibited the characteristics of an Ambassador and an Executive (Headey 1974:65–79). After serving as a Conservative Junior Minister in the Treasury for three years, Boyd-Carpenter was appointed Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation in July 1954. Prior to becoming head of a Department, therefore, he had gained useful inside knowledge about the mechanics of government (Dudley and Richardson 1996c: 15–16). The Policy Initiator role involved principally connecting the tea room plan to specific plans for its implementation; the Policy Ambassador role involved acting as an unofficial leader of the roads advocacy coalition; while the Policy Executive role involved chiefly preparing the MoT for its future road building tasks. In taking these personal initiatives, Boyd-Carpenter was assisted by divisions within the MoT which generally had the effect of allowing a resourceful Minister to shape his own agenda. Hence in 1953 the MoT had absorbed the Ministry of Civil Aviation, and when Boyd-Carpenter took over the amalgamated Ministry he found that the senior aviation officials resented their loss of independence and were unwilling to become integrated within the new Ministry. As we have seen, the Permanent Secretary, Sir Gilmour Jenkins, was no advocate of motorways, and Boyd-Carpenter found him to be an expert in merchant shipping who refused to interest himself in any of the other transport sectors (Boyd-Carpenter 1980:108). Boyd-Carpenter took advantage of this general official disunity and passivity by acting unilaterally to promote the road building profile of the MoT. As we


described earlier, it was acknowledged by Ministers that the MoT lacked the necessary expertise to undertake a major road construction programme, while Boyd-Carpenter himself considered that Britain had lagged well behind other European countries, such as Germany and Italy, in the construction of motorways, and was most anxious that the engineers should acquire the necessary knowledge (interview 28 June 1995). Consequently, he sent delegations of engineers to Germany, the United States, France and Italy and so provided leadership to what became a key epistemic community, whose expertise would be required if the roads construction programme was to be accelerated (Boyd-Carpenter 1980:110). In order to expand the trunk roads programme, Boyd-Carpenter was involved in some tough negotiations with the Treasury. An advantage for the Minister here, however, was that the initial move was to introduce authorisations for roads rather than to immediately commit expenditure. For the Treasury, therefore, the actual expenditure would come later rather than sooner. A further advantage for Boyd-Carpenter was that not only nationally, but also internationally, there was a trend in favour of constructing large-scale motorway networks. For example, in 1954–5 in the US, recommendations were made to Congress by President Eisenhower for the construction of a national system of interstate highways consisting of some 37,000 miles of controlled access highways to be built during the next ten years. It was argued that an adequate highway system was vital to the continued expansion of the economy and that projected figures for gross national product would not be realised if the highways were allowed to continue to deteriorate (Charlesworth 1984:34–5). In France, on the other hand, the government passed a law in 1955 to allow toll financing of autoroutes under special conditions. Public control was maintained by granting concessions only to local organisations in which public interests were upheld, while toll rates had to be approved by the Council of State after consultation with local authorities. The concessions could last for thirty-five years, at which time they would revert to the state (Gomez-Ibanez and Meyer 1993:109). Internationally, therefore, the mid-1950s was a fertile period for fresh policy ideas and solutions to the problem of expanding the roads programme. It could be said that the increasing political salience of roads was indicated by the manner in which the growth in the roads programme was first announced to the House of Commons. In the debate on the Queen’s Speech in November 1954 the Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, stressed that it was essential, if Great Britain was to compete effectively in world markets, that there should be an adequate road system. It was now far behind modern needs, but everyone accepted the need to have as large a programme of road works as the nation could contrive and afford. This would mean that when the programme was fully under way the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be paying out each year as much as two or three times the amount allowed under the present programme laid down last year (the December 1953 announcement) (H.C.Debates 30 November 1954). This endorsement of the expanded programme by a senior


Minister (and who would become Prime Minister only five months later) exemplified that, for the first time, Ministers were identifying themselves fundamentally with the values of the roads advocacy coalition. In February 1955 Boyd-Carpenter put flesh on the bones of Eden’s announcement when he told the Commons that the government proposed to authorise an ultimate Exchequer expenditure on roads of £147 million during the next four years. (The significance of the word ‘ultimate’ should be noted. Hence it was not proposed that the government would necessarily spend £147 million over the next four years, but that roads to this value would be authorised.) Included in this new programme would be the first section of a LondonYorkshire motor road (way), a motor road through Lancashire from Preston to Birmingham, and a crossing of the Firth of Forth. The Minister also announced that in order for them to proceed rapidly, the government was considering charging tolls in suitable cases (H.C.Debates 2 February 1955, cols. 1096–100). The political significance of Boyd-Carpenter’s announcement, there-fore, lay not so much in the sums of money stated, but rather that the government was finally committing itself politically to implementing the tea room plan. There was also a public relations aspect. Boyd-Carpenter realised that a general election lay not too far in the future, and some definite news about building the motorways could please the growing army of motoring voters. In the event, the election took place in May 1955, and the Conservative Campaign Guide (1955) could announce that ‘the rebuilding of Britain goes on apace, including a farsighted programme for the construction of new and safer roads’ (p. vi). Under the new Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, the Conservatives won a convincing victory, which at least suggested that the ‘rebuilding Britain’ slogan had popular support. The inclusion of road building as a key element in ‘rebuilding Britain’ had taken place, however, almost despite the activity of the road lobby rather than because of it. For Ministers such as Boyd-Carpenter, it was the coupling of policy ideas, or the image of road building nesting in the larger image of industrial prosperity, modernisation and popular consumerism, which hammered home the message that ‘there are votes in roads’. The road lobbying groups such as the BRF had battled to influence government since the publication of the tea room plan, with almost no success, but now the tide had turned. Ironically, on the day that Boyd-Carpenter made his Commons’ announcement of an expanded roads programme in February 1955, the road lobby set up an organisation which not only consolidated the advocacy coalition, but also crucially carried the lobby into the arena of public opinion, which it had previously almost ignored. The means for achieving these objectives was the Roads Campaign Council, an organisation consisting of twelve members which included the BRF, the SMMT, the AA, the RAC, the Motor Agents’ Association and road passenger transport groups. At its launch the Chairman, Wilfrid Andrews, also Chairman of the RAC, declared that this was the first time these organisations had come together to speak with one voice on a matter of vital


national importance (The Times 3 February 1955). As Hamer describes, the RCC was set up largely at the initiative of the SMMT, which was keen to involve the AA and RAC more closely, neither of which was then a member of the BRF (Hamer 1987:18). Of greater long-term significance, however, was the role of the RCC in helping to turn road building as the principal transport policy ‘solution’ into a hegemonic policy community. In his perceptive study of the dynamics of the road lobby in the 1950s, Finer describes the operational strategy of the RCC. Up to this time, the road lobby (including the BRF) had generally focused its lobbying on the people or groups it deemed influential, such as Ministers and MPs, rather than on the general public. In future, the BRF would continue its work lobbying Parliament and the ‘selected’ public, but to this was added the ingredient of a mass public campaign. For this purpose, the RCC hired a right-wing professional agency, Aims of Industry, which since the 1940s had organised a number of high profile antinationalisation campaigns (Finer 1958:52–4). Thus: As the RCC sees it, to make MPs build more roads their constituents must be made to tell the MPs that this is what they want. The task is to put votes into roads. (p. 54) As its principal propaganda weapon, in 1956 Aims of Industry organised ‘The Roads Crusade’. Twenty-four towns were visited, one town each week. The ‘crusade’ was announced by a stage-coach (to symbolise the lack of road building since their heyday), and in the centre of town exhibitions and cinema shows were set up. Thousands of pamphlets were disseminated, and everywhere signatures were canvassed for petitions to Parliament. By September 1956, hundreds of thousands of people had seen the shows and the exhibitions, and half-a-million people had signed the petition (Finer 1958:55). Finer summed up the problem for the road lobby in seeking to influence government as being rather like trying to cut a cushion with a fish-knife (Finer 1958:56). Yet, as we have seen, Ministers were being persuaded by the roads policy ‘solution’, and the ‘Roads Crusade’ operated on the vulnerability of Ministers through the ‘empty chair’ principle. Finer, how-ever, also emphasises the importance of the more orthodox National Production Advisory Council (NPAC), which included representatives from the Trades Union Congress, the peak employers’ associations and the nationalised industries, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer as Chairman. This body repeatedly pressed for an expanded road construction programme throughout the 1950s. Finer concluded that, added together, the RCC and NPAC pressures meant that every substantial organised group interested in roads was exercising some kind of pressure, which was consequently operating at all levels simultaneously—ministerial, parliamentary, and public (Finer 1958:58).


By the late 1950s, therefore, the road lobby had developed a highly efficient multi-arena lobbying machine, which recognised the importance of influencing ‘outsiders’ as well as ‘insiders’. It is important to stress again, however, that this lobbying in itself would not have been sufficient to bring about third order change and create a hegemonic policy community. For this to occur, Ministers themselves had to become convinced personally of the value of the roads policy ‘frame’ and make the ideas a hegemonic policy ‘solution’. Yet, simultaneously with this commitment, there lies also the enigma of the mobile and ‘promiscuous’ Minister. Here, Boyd-Carpenter fits particularly well as someone who at one moment acted as one of the primary members of the roads advocacy coalition, yet at other moments could cast off that role and become a policy broker, with outcomes not welcomed by the road lobby. In the former role, Boyd-Carpenter welcomed the formation of the RCC, and was a keen supporter of its activities (interview 28 June 1995). The Minister made his commitment to road building still more manifest in July 1955 when he called a special press conference to announce that motorways, 345 miles in total length, would be built by the government in ‘five years but certainly less than ten’ at a total estimated cost of £85 million. For example, the first 53 miles of London-Yorkshire motorway would probably be ready in 1959 (a prediction which proved to be correct). In addition, it was hoped that during this period work would commence on another length of motorway from north of Birmingham to the Preston bypass, a total of about 94 miles. (The Times 6 July 1955). On the other hand, Boyd-Carpenter was not so pliable on the question of two of the RCC’s chief policy proposals—those of setting up a national highways authority and the raising of a £750 million loan, to be repaid over thirty years. (The Times 11 March 1955). The Minister firmly resisted these demands, for here he had another coalition which had to be taken into account. He realised he owed a political debt to the Treasury for allowing authorisation of the new roads, and so supported the latter’s insistence that the government should retain direct control over highways expenditure (interview 28 June 1995). Boyd-Carpenter’s period at the MoT also saw officially the demise of the Road Fund. Although it had been moribund since the 1930s, its final abolition was of symbolic importance in rejecting the road lobby’s long-standing demand that motor taxes should be hypothecated for roads expenditure. In addition, as we noted earlier, and despite the hints in his February 1955 announcement, Boyd-Carpenter rejected the idea of road tolls chiefly on the political calculation that the motorways should be free at the point of use to all who owned a vehicle. Henceforth, therefore, the massive cost and administrative resources required to implement the tea room plan would be carried entirely by central government. When Boyd-Carpenter left the MoT in December 1955, a sea change was taking place within government from a largely symbolic and generally lukewarm commitment to building motorways, as exemplified by the Permanent Secretary’s 1953 statement, to an almost evangelic faith in the political and


economic value of the tea room plan. Boyd-Carpenter’s successor now took on the responsibility of laying the foundations for a hegemonic policy community. Harold Watkinson: Transport Minister and ‘roads doctor’ In June 1957, the annual conference of the Institution of Municipal Engineers debated the state of Britain’s roads. They were addressed by James Drake, Lancashire County Surveyor and, as we have seen, one of the principal advocates since the late 1940s of the benefits to be gained from building motorways. Drake, although declaring himself to be a long-time critic of government roads policy, congratulated the government on sticking to the national motorways plan designed ten years earlier, and received an enthusiastic response when he appealed to all the engineers to pull together to get things done. With regard to building the motorways, he called Harold Watkinson, the Minister of Transport: ‘the doctor who can pull the patients round’. The Times noted that the response to Drake’s remarks indicated that Mr Watkinson’s stock as an exponent of road improvements was high among the ranks of the municipal engineers (The Times 21 June 1957). The image of Watkinson as the ‘roads doctor’ is a highly appropriate one, for it was he who assumed unofficial leadership of the roads advocacy coalition, and took a direct interest in nursing the first motorways to their birth. In addition, he worked tirelessly and successfully to persuade the Treasury to release greater funds for the trunk roads construction programme. His relatively long tenure at the MoT (December 1955– #8211;October 1959) enabled him not only to employ skills as a policy entrepreneur in constructing the necessary networks of epistemic communities required to implement the future huge expansion in the trunk roads construction programme, but also to build up his own personal expertise in quite detailed aspects of road construction. Such was his success that, around the time of his retirement from the MoT in 1959, the Permanent Secretary, Sir Gilmour Jenkins, could state: There is today more sustained interest in highways than in any other of the Department’s activities. Thus the amount of money devoted by the government to road improvements and the choice of individual schemes on which to start work, together with the wastefulness of traffic congestion and the problems of road safety evoke the liveliest criticism and comment in Parliament and elsewhere. Yet only fifty years ago a Parliamentary Question on highways—except one in the most general terms—was not admitted. (Jenkins 1959:123) There is an obvious irony in Jenkins’ comments, given his own earlier opposition to building motorways, and indicating the speed with which roads had risen in political salience in barely more than half a decade. In stark financial terms,


roads expenditure by central government rose from £39.5 million in 1955 to £83. 9 million in 1959 (Plowden 1973:479). At the beginning of the previous chapter, we illustrated Watkinson’s anxiety to impress upon the Cabinet that ‘there are votes in roads’ and his enthusiasm for rolling out ‘the macadam carpet’. Politically, Watkinson gained from the post of Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation being upgraded to Cabinet status when Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister in January 1957. As Watkinson himself noted he now had the force of Cabinet membership behind any ministerial proposals that he made (Watkinson 1986:72). At the same time, correspondence from the period illustrates also that other influential Cabinet members were encouraging Watkinson to press for expansion of the trunk roads construction programme. For example, immediately after Watkinson’s appointment he received a letter of congratulations from Lord Salisbury, the Lord President of the Council and an influential figure in Conservative party circles. By an administrative quirk, Salisbury was in charge of the Road Research Laboratory, and he left the new Minister in no doubt as to his attitude to road building: I am one of those who feel that a really big road programme is an economic necessity for our country. It is, I know, very difficult to push such a programme ahead on the necessary scale in our present economic difficulties—but I should like to assure you that the services of my scientists will always be at the disposal of your Department, and also that you can look to me for support on the wider policy issues. (Letter 22 December 1955) In his reply, Watkinson told Salisbury that he would like to talk to him about roads before long (Letter 28 December 1955), and a meeting was arranged for early in January 1956. At this meeting, Lord Salisbury expressed his support for both road loans serviced from road taxes and also tolls for specific purposes, namely bridges and tunnels. As we have seen, although the concept of loans was supported by sections of the road lobby such as the BRF and RCC, it was totally opposed by the Treasury, and so was a political non-starter. More significantly, however, Salisbury also told Watkinson that he very much liked the idea of a national road plan looking ahead ten years. He thought this might very well help to bring into line some local authorities who he felt spent government money without always paying too much attention to the right kind of roads for the future (Record of conversation with Lord Salisbury 9 January 1956). Salisbury’s remarks indicate not only the degree to which this influential figure had become part of the roads advocacy coalition, but also that a mood shift was taking place within elite government circles for a more visionary long-term plan for roads. Significantly, a few days later when Watkinson wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan, asking for more money to be spent on smaller works of improvement, he also informed the Chancellor that he had put in hand a general study of a roads plan over the next ten years (Letter 17 January 1956).


Nevertheless, the early evidence of Watkinson’s tenure at the MoT suggests that his thinking was still heavily influenced by the long-held consensus for incremental change within the Ministry. Thus in February 1956 Watkinson issued a memorandum on roads policy which stated that the basis of his immediate policy for roads was to improve traffic flow including the elimination of bottlenecks and black spots. There would have to be a number of sizeable ‘set pieces’ but the main emphasis must be on better traffic flow generally by means of a greater number of more modest and related schemes likely to bring comparatively large and early dividends in reduced congestion and increased safety (Memorandum 14 February 1956). Such words were hardly calculated to give much encouragement to the long-held hopes of the road lobby for implementation of the tea room plan. By the Summer of 1956, however, real change was in the air. This new mood could be attributed to several sources. First, the systematic multiarena campaigning by the RCC was beginning to have an impact. The twenty-four town ‘Roads Crusade’ referred to earlier, had been launched in March, and was helping to occupy ‘the empty chair’ in the perceptions of the Minister. In June, the RCC organised a Parliamentary delegation to look at German and Dutch roads, and when they returned MPs passed on information to the Minister which Watkinson noted in a memorandum to his Chief Engineer: I understand from those who went on the Deputation that the Roads Campaign Council made no secret of the fact that they intend to maintain their campaign almost indefinitely and I think this does mean that we shall have to devote as much money as ever we can in next year’s programme to improvements of one kind and another. (Memorandum June 1956) Watkinson followed up these observations in a further key memorandum: It may interest you to know that the Roads Campaign Council are spending, I am told, £200,000 a year and are in a position to maintain this rate of expenditure for as long as is necessary. I also understand from Sir Thomas Dugdale [an MP], who had several talks with Mr Wilfrid Andrews while they were in Germany together, that the Roads Campaign Council would consider a satisfactory solution to be the underwriting of the Barnes [i.e. the tea room] Road Plan by the government and a guarantee of its implementation subject only to the overriding needs of any special economic situation. As you know, I don’t think myself that the Barnes Plan is necessarily the right basis for our new proposals but obviously motor roads will have to feature quite largely in them. (Memorandum June 1956)


Notwithstanding his doubts about the tea room plan, Watkinson went on to say that they would have to consider quite soon to what extent they wanted to guarantee the implementation of the original motor roads concept and how many years it would take. When priorities had been decided, then combined with maintenance and minor improvements, a fairly attractive ten year programme, which would absorb the present four year one (as proposed by Boyd-Carpenter), could be presented to the Cabinet (Memorandum June 1956). It could be argued that this crucial memorandum marked the moment of conception of a hegemonic policy community. An alliance had been forged between Transport Minister and road lobby which, with a few interruptions, was to survive for the next four decades. The key resource dependencies were that, while the government provided the finance to implement the tea room plan, road building provided Ministers with a popular (if costly) transport policy ‘solution’. It is also vitally important, however, to note the pragmatic tone of the Watkinson memorandums. The Minister might acknowledge the effective lobbying of the RCC, and the political benefits of building roads, but at this stage there is little to suggest an individual with an inherent commitment to the core values of the roads advocacy coalition. As the motorway construction programme gathered momentum, however, Watkinson would become much more ‘evangelical’ in his ministerial style. Nevertheless, an essential element in the hegemonic policy community had been formed, but one other factor was still missing. This was the wholehearted commitment of the MoT itself. One other event in June 1956 provided a clue as to how this gap would be filled. On 12 June, Hugh Molson, a Junior Minister at the MoT, inaugurated work on Britain’s first motorway, the Preston bypass. Although only eight miles long, the fact that a motorway was actually being constructed, a decade after the publication of the tea room plan, was of considerable symbolic significance politically. More practically, once the tea room plan was being implemented, then it would require massive engineering and administrative resources from the MoT itself, which held executive responsibility for this task. To a considerable extent, therefore, there was a process of feedback in the dynamics of motorway construction. The more motorways that were built, then the more that this activity came to dominate the affairs of the MoT, and so a powerful vested interest built up within the Ministry for even more motorways to be built. This represented a key difference between the Ministry and the Minister. As the roads programme grew, so the Ministry became an integral part of the advocacy coalition, and shared its basic values. On the other hand, a ‘promiscuous’ Minister could never be entirely relied on to share this vision, and, under certain circumstances, might break away. Watkinson himself remained firmly within the advocacy coalition throughout his tenure at the MoT. As we will see in later chapters, however, the mobile Minister persistently played a crucial role in processes of ‘third order’ change.


Having decided to make a large stride forward in implementing the tea room plan (despite his misgivings about some of its contents), Watkinson had not only to assess and decide upon priorities, but also to energise the MoT for its future tasks. He describes graphically the climate which greeted him when he arrived at the Ministry and called a conference of the Chief Engineer and the Divisional Road Engineers: We all sat round the long conference table in my office in Berkeley Square House and looked at one another. Nobody had any ideas. It was a miserable and totally unproductive conference. It was quite clear to me that they had given up all hope of ever having a really exciting job to do. Here, in their minds, was another Minister who was going to accept all the reasons why nothing major could be done beyond preparatory planning and paperwork…. To succeed we had to have an understandable and thus a sellable programme. (Watkinson 1986:70) Eventually, Watkinson decided on five major projects which he calculated could be built in a relatively short period of time and to give the trunk road building programme a sense of purpose and momentum. He makes it clear that, in this ‘great leap forward’ he did not consult others in the Ministry much, but chiefly trusted his own judgement (Watkinson 1986:70–1). The ‘promiscuous’ leader of the advocacy coalition there-fore became highly ‘celibate’ when it came to making this major policy decision. Thus he instinctively understood that the creation of a powerful policy community required at this time more than a process of consultation and bargaining—such a policy style might produce a policy out-come only too reminiscent of earlier experiences. Instead, something bolder and with greater political flair and imagination was required. In order to achieve this, the Minister needed, at least temporarily, to retreat into a ‘celibate’ state. Indicative of Watkinson’s anxiety about the politics of roads at this time is the contents of a letter he wrote to Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan in June 1956. It demonstrates not only how effective the ‘empty chair’ campaigning by the RCC had become, but also that the Transport Minister was rapidly losing patience with the long standing Treasury stranglehold on roads expenditure: Our present roads programme, though it is being driven on vigorously, is not satisfying our critics. The Roads Campaign Council, a pressure group subscribed to by petrol companies, the motor car industry and so on, are spending £200,000 a year on publicity which is becoming more and more aimed at the government and which is I think doing us quite a lot of harm politically. Within the limits which you have set and which I have willingly accepted I cannot do very much more than I am now doing. I have a number of ideas as to how I could meet this situation but in reducing them


to practical terms I do really need to have some idea how they might fit in to the general economic situation envisaged for the next year and the following years. This is of great importance to their timing and presentation. (Letter June 1956) Watkinson went on to ask for an informal talk with the Chancellor and other colleagues, as he considered it a matter of urgency that the government met the criticism that they were not doing enough (Letter June 1956). In devising his five projects plan, therefore, Watkinson not only had to take note of the ‘empty chair’ of public opinion, he also needed to take into consideration the internal politics of the government. A politically attractive programme might help to loosen the purse strings of the Treasury, and increase the political salience and credibility of the MoT. In the Autumn of 1956, the ‘celibate’ Transport Minister was very much on his own. He realised the political importance of both the content of his roads plan and also the manner of its presentation: Having found five projects, there had to be some way of presenting them to the public. The conventional announcement in the House of Commons was not possible. This was not fully digested and prepared Ministry policy. It was more a public relations exercise by the Minister, intended to act as a catalyst on thought and action within the Ministry as well as elsewhere. Most important, it was not approved by the Cabinet and therefore had no financial backing. No Minister can submit a proposal to the Cabinet that involves expenditure without first clearing it with the Treasury. The five projects were certainly not cleared with the Treasury and were not within the agreed road expenditure, so there was no hope of making any official announcement of my plans. (Watkinson 1986:71) Watkinson therefore chose to make his key announcement as part of a speech he was to give at a conference on urban motorways organised by the BRF. It could be said that there was irony and a high degree of political symbolism in the Minister’s choice of arena. After so many years of fruitless lobbying by the BRF, it was ironic that the Minister should now wish to use this group as a channel for his own purposes. It also symbolised, however, the developing strength of the new alliance between the Minister and the road lobby, and the degree to which Watkinson had become the unofficial leader of the roads advocacy coalition. Watkinson wrote his considered conference statement himself as there was no one within the MoT who could do it for him (Watkinson 1986:71). In it he emphasised that the Ministry had completely underestimated the growth of road traffic, and that they would go on planning a completely new road network. The five major projects selected were:


1 from London to Newcastle upon Tyne, built largely on the basis of the existing Great North Road; 2 from London to Birmingham and on to Preston and the North West coast; 3 from London to the South West, with a link across to South Wales; 4 from the Midlands to South Wales; and 5 from London to the Kent coast and the Channel ports of Dover and Folkestone. Watkinson was also politically shrewd enough to emphasise that he attached just as much importance to a large capital programme and expansion of the railways as a means of providing a proper balance of traffic (The Times 21 September 1956). Nevertheless, this personal initiative by the Minister represented another key step along the road to a hegemonic policy community. Having withdrawn into the ‘celibate’ state and taken a calculated political gamble, Watkinson now had to keep his nerve and turn what were still only policy ideas into political and financial reality. Constructing motorways and policy communities If 1956 was the year in which Watkinson acted chiefly as a ‘celibate’ Minister, then in 1957 and in succeeding years he had not only to act in a more ‘promiscuous’ fashion in order to win the necessary political and financial support for his plans, but also to act as an Executive Minister in the actual construction of the first section of the M1. Politically, this involved acting as a leader of the roads advocacy coalition and the epistemic communities of engineers, architects and construction companies. Watkinson proved to have a natural flair for these roles, which made him the ideal agent for major policy change and the foundation of a hegemonic policy community. If Boyd-Carpenter was a significant figure in giving a new political image to road building and initiating plans for an expanded construction programme, then it was Watkinson who carried this image forward into the ‘nuts and bolts’ of building the roads and ensuring a future momentum for change within the MoT. For example, 1956–8 saw the addition of four Trunk Road Divisions, including Highways General Planning, to draw up the ‘Master Plan’, and Highways Special Roads devoted specifically to the growing motorway programme (CPRE 1992:22). The approach adopted by the General Planning Division was to encourage the regional Road Engineering Divisions of the MoT to collect data on traffic flows and accident black spots. Consequently, the Divisions were able to build up a catalogue of schemes considered necessary to bring the trunk roads network up to a suitable standard for handling such flows. From these Divisional assessments, the Ministry was able to form a broad picture of priorities, in particular which main roads were overloaded and where the main industrial traffic was going (Starkie 1982:6). As Starkie comments, it was perhaps surprising that when the broad picture began to take shape it appeared to


confirm to a degree that what was proposed already (including Watkinson’s five projects and the tea room plan as a whole) was basically correct and appropriate (Starkie 1982:6). At the same time, given that the tea room plan was itself based on a pre-war plan produced by the County Surveyors Society, it could be said that a new generation of a particular epistemic community was confirming the work done by their predecessors! Politically, however, the existence and work of the General Planning Division added great credibility to the exponential growth of the trunk roads construction programme. Henceforth, motorway plans would not just represent the personal wish list of a particular Minister, but could apparently be justified on detailed statistical data. Over the next four decades, this marriage of professional expertise and political vision was to prove a highly potent engine in driving forward roads as the transport policy ‘solution’. Meanwhile, in 1957 Watkinson had to turn his attention to the more immediate problem of winning extra funds from the Treasury for his expanded trunk roads construction plans. He confessed that, as he had previously worked in the Ministry of Labour, which was not a great spending department like Transport, so he lacked experience of the interrelation between spending Ministries and the Treasury, and ultimately the Cabinet and Prime Minister (Watkinson 1986:74). Initially, Watkinson sought extra funds in personal negotiations with the Chancellor, but to no avail (p. 75). Consequently, this led the Transport Minister to take his case to Cabinet, and resulted in the memorandum of July 1957 which was quoted at the beginning of the previous chapter. In essence, Watkinson was seeking a payments ceiling of £60 million a year for the next four years’ trunk roads programme after the existing programme came to an end in 1958–9. For his part the Chancellor was offering £50 million. In the Cabinet memorandum, Watkinson claimed that the £60 million ceiling was necessary if he was to bring forward certain major schemes, and make a real start on the motor roads programme i.e. the five major projects (CAB 129/87). In his autobiography, Watkinson states that the Cabinet agreed to just enough funds to go on with the road programme, although he was reproved by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that it was unusual for colleagues to address demands to the Cabinet in quite such peremptory tones. (Watkinson 1986:76). A memorandum from Watkinson to the Chancellor in July 1957, however, suggests that the decision was not quite so definite. In the memorandum, Watkinson noted that so far the Chancellor had been reluctant to accept the £60 million, and pointed out that this figure would only be approached in the latter years of the programme (Memorandum July 1957). Perhaps of greater political significance than these detailed negotiations, however, was that there was now a Transport Minister who was prepared to argue forcefully in full Cabinet about the need for an expanded trunk roads construction programme, and to seek the finance necessary to bring this about.


There were also other endogenous factors within the government which helped to bring about this change in the political climate towards road building. As Hamer notes, Chancellor Peter Thorneycroft had been known as a noted spokesman for motoring interests, and in the 1940s had proposed a clause in the Special Roads Bill to make government consultation with the BRF compulsory (Hamer 1987: 47). This suggests that, despite his haggling with Watkinson, Thorneycroft was likely to provide basic support for the roads programme. This was confirmed in October 1957 when, amidst a public expenditure crisis caused by a drain on the reserves, cuts were imposed on local government, power and construction, but the roads programme remained untouched. In contrast, there was to be a slowdown in investment by the British Transport Commission, implying a restriction on the modernisation of the railways (H.C.Debates 29 October 1957, cols. 46–59). For the first time since the war, road building had been ‘ring fenced’, and thus demonstrated the drastic change in its policy image. Perhaps of even greater political significance, however, was the replacement of Sir Anthony Eden as Prime Minister by Harold Macmillan in January 1957. As we noted earlier in this chapter, Macmillan was shrewdly aware of the electoral benefits to be gained in the new climate of popular consumerism, and so the wording of Watkinson’s memorandum that: ‘There are votes in roads’ was highly appropriate. Significantly, Watkinson had supported Macmillan rather than Rab Butler in the battle to succeed Eden, and had been rewarded with a seat in the Cabinet (Watkinson 1986: 65–6). It could be said, therefore, that the ‘five project’ plan not only chimed in well with Macmillan’s general political strategy, but could also act as a reward for the Transport Minister’s support earlier in the year. Notwithstanding Watkinson’s difficulties with the Treasury, therefore, in July 1957 he was able to announce to the House of Commons that work was expected to begin on all the five major projects within the four years of the next plan, and that the annual expenditure would indeed be £60 million (H.C.Debates 22 July 1957, col. 55). As Starkie notes, these schemes added up to a sizeable chunk of the tea room plan. The only exception being the Ross Spur motorway between England and South Wales. It was likely that this road was placed into the programme to appease Welsh interests disappointed at the lack of commitment to a Severn road bridge, although the Secretary of State for Scotland had made a top priority a bridge over the Firth of Forth (Starkie 1982:5). Meanwhile, road interests continued their lobbying with mixed results. The RCC reinforced its multi-arena campaign when in May 1957 it led a delegation of twenty-five MPs to study road modernisation in Paris and Brussels. Predictably, on their return these MPs complained that Britain was lagging far behind France and Belgium in the modernisation of its roads, and that British expenditure was totally inadequate (The Times 28 May 1957). In more concrete terms, the RCC’s campaigning bore fruit during 1957 when its contacts with MPs were institutionalised in the shape of the All Party Roads Study Group (APRSG). Conservative and Labour MPs already had their own transport groups, but the


APRSG, inevitably serviced by the RCC, created a powerful cross-party forum (Plowden 1971: 72). This was another landmark in shifting the roads ‘image’. Thus road building could be presented as something which transcended party differences, and instead served the general national interest. On the other hand, lobbying by the BRF was rather less effective. For example, in May 1957 representatives from the BRF met Financial Secretary to the Treasury Enoch Powell and put the well tried case for raising loans to build roads (The Times 29 May 1957). By now, however, this particular case had a rather dated look. Even in 1956, a publication by the Conservative Political Centre, Roads and Means, had rejected the case for loans on the grounds that it would saddle the roads with heavy charges. It had also rejected the case for another long standing BRF campaign for an independent National Road Authority as questions of roads expenditure involved inherently political decisions (Conservative Political Centre 1956). In fact, the BRF had yet to realise the enormity of the change in thinking taking place on roads policy. Watkinson was at the head of a movement which was winning commitments from Ministers to a massive expansion in road building financed by the Treasury. In September 1957 events gained a new impetus when the MoT announced that it was inviting tenders for the first big motorway project—the Southern section of the London-Yorkshire motorway, with a spur to Birmingham. The 53 mile section would run from south of Luton to Dunchurch near Rugby. Tenders were also invited for the St Albans bypass, which would link the southern end of the motorway with improved approaches to London. This would also be built to motorway standard. In an era long before the environmental lobby gained any political weight, the Minister appointed a landscape advisory committee under the Chairmanship of David Bowes-Lyon to advise him on such matters as a scheme of planting appropriate to the surroundings (The Times 19 September 1957). Henceforth, the government could not only promote the image of road building through the publication of plans for expansion of the construction programme, but also through work on the construction sites themselves. This new venue offered the ideal arena to sell the political message of a Tory government modernising Britain and provide a consumer-minded public with the public investment to meet their private needs. In addition, the motorways also supported an image of industrial reconstruction, and acted on the assumption that new roads increased industrial efficiency and opened up depressed areas to. investment. There was the added bonus that the new motorways themselves were naturally newsworthy, and attracted considerable media attention. The great political salience of the motorway programme could there-fore be well exploited by a skilful Minister. Typically, Watkinson was quick to exploit this opportunity. For example, in February 1958 he wrote to Dr Charles Hill, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and a skilled public communicator (he had previously broadcast on the BBC as ‘the Radio Doctor’). Watkinson sought Hill’s advice on what steps they could take to see that ‘the government’ (as he


put it) got the maximum advantage out of some of the very large works which the Transport Minister was going to inaugurate in the next few months. These inaugurations included the Ross Spur motorway; the London-Birmingham motorway together with the St Albans bypass; and the first stage of the Maidstone bypass: I think you can rely on me and my Department to secure a good deal of publicity for the actual ceremonies themselves but this does not necessarily mean that the government gets all the credit which is due to it…. These are all schemes which have been initiated by Conservative Ministers. They will all make a very great contribution to better transport and will touch the lives of most people in this country. I will only be too pleased to come and have a chat with you some time if this would help because I do want to feel that the Government gets as much credit as we can achieve, as well as my own Ministry. (Letter February 1958) Around this time, Watkinson nevertheless was compelled to make some concessions to the Treasury on roads expenditure. As we have seen, the major construction programmes remained intact, but now the Prime Minister himself was applying pressure. In a memorandum to Macmillan, Watkinson protested: In answer to your Minutes with regard to my civil estimates, I am of course most anxious to meet your request and indeed if this were not so I should not have volunteered to cut work on road maintenance in the next financial year by 5 per cent though this is hardly in keeping with pledges which you yourself have given and I have repeated on the maintenance of the road programme…. I want to play my full part in helping the Chancellor [but] I must make it plain that the sums of money which I am now asked to reduce are for work which returns an immense economic benefit to this country as soon as it is completed. To postpone necessary maintenance and minor improvement of our roads means not only that we shall meet a great deal of political criticism but also that we shall inevitably pay a very high price for it in reduced efficiency and greater cost later on. (Memorandum January 1958) The note of ill concealed irritation and frustration in this memorandum, even in addressing the Prime Minister himself, indicates Watkinson’s acute anxiety to press home the political message, that ‘there are votes in roads’. By the end of 1958, it appeared that this message was having an effect on the government as a whole. Work on the first stretch of British motorway may have been inaugurated by a Junior Minister at the MoT in June 1956, but when the road was opened, in December 1958, it was the Prime Minister himself who did the job. As Starkie notes, the achievement was a very modest one, a mere 8 miles


of bypass which was later to become an integral part of the M6 motorway linking England with Scotland. The Prime Minister commented that the motorway was a sign that Britain was determined under the Conservatives to adopt the most advanced of ideas. With an election not far ahead, Macmillan, of course, was not slow to convey the impression that motorways were the Conservatives’ peculiar contribution to a modernised affluent Britain (Starkie 1982:1). Macmillan clearly recognised that it was the symbolic importance of the first stretch of motorway, and its key role in fulfilling a political purpose, which gave the Preston bypass a significance way beyond its value as a road. The construction of the Preston bypass also usefully satisfied another condition in the creation of a hegemonic roads policy community. It was no coincidence that the first motorway was built in Lancashire for, as we noted earlier, the county had a tradition for supporting such schemes. In particular, the County Surveyor, James Drake, had been one of the principal advocates for motorways since the 1940s. As Drake himself emphasised, when he was appointed Lancashire Surveyor in 1945 he soon set about furthering the case for the proposed north-south route through Lancashire being constructed as a motorway, little realising that it would be another thirteen years before the first section was completed (Drake et al. 1969:17). Nevertheless, individuals such as Drake were important for the motorway programme not only as lobbyists, but also in consolidating and integrating epistemic communities of highway construction professionals into the hegemonic policy community. The booklet produced by the MoT for the opening of the Preston bypass made clear how this process operated: The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation has quite recently described the bypass as a guinea pig—in other words as an experiment for all other British motorways. That it has been regarded as such throughout its construction is evinced by the very large number of visits of inspection which have been made by Engineering Institutions and Associations; in fact these visits became so numerous that the County Council appointed a panel of retired engineers to act as guides. (MoT 1958) A process had begun, therefore, whereby civil engineers acquired the expertise necessary to implement Watkinson’s large-scale plans. Once absorbed, these epistemic communities themselves provided a natural momentum to the programme which even a government not wedded to the concept of roads as the principal policy ‘solution’ would find difficult to resist. Notwithstanding the important symbolism of the Preston bypass, however, it was the first stretch of the London-Birmingham motorway (what was to become the M1) which offered the greater political dividends for a shrewd Minister such as Watkinson. From the outset, the Transport Minister took the keenest possible interest in every facet of this project, and adopted the ‘hands on’ approach with a


vengeance. Watkinson had a business background, and significantly regarded himself as a businessman who had turned to politics (Watkinson 1986:47). This gave him a self-image as someone who was at home in the ‘nuts and bolts’ of industrial organisation, and encouraged him to intervene directly in the construction of the M1. A key early decision was the length of the contract. The original estimate was that construction of this 70 mile stretch would take thirty-one months, but Watkinson took the calculated gamble of reducing this time to nineteen months (i.e. March 1958–October 1959). He acknowledged the risks he was taking: In the Ministry we had allocated £16 million of our scarce road funds to the project. If it failed all our plans would be set back and the chances of getting any more money for the Ministry much diminished. One had to place one’s confidence in the able team of men in the Ministry, in the civil engineers and in the contractors. (Watkinson 1986:82) It could also be said that telescoping the length of the contract adhered to the principle of ‘there are votes in roads’. With a general election likely some time in 1959, the promise of the imminent opening of the first long stretch of motorway justified the risk of possible embarrassment if the deadline was breached. In the event, it could be said that it was a happy coincidence that the road was completed in October 1959, the very month of the election! Having committed the government to an accelerated construction of the first section of the M1, however, Watkinson had to square the increased expenditure with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Derek Heathcoat Amory, who by this time had replaced Thorneycroft. A letter of September 1958 illustrates Watkinson’s technique of gentle persuasion mixed with a more ominous political tone. Having thanked the Chancellor for the sympathetic approach he had always shown to the road programme, and how the MoT would always do its best to keep expenditure down, the Transport Minister raised the delicate problem of the M1 contract being reduced from thirty-one to nineteen months, which necessitated an extra trunk roads expenditure of £8 million in the next financial year. Here, Watkinson employed a technique which was to serve the roads community well for decades to come—implying that the increased expenditure was in fact already committed, and that any slackening in the financial commitment would constitute a breach of faith: It is not I am afraid practicable to offset the increased rate of expenditure on motorways by reducing the expenditure which has already been planned on other works. Expenditure on roads is a long-term matter and for solid and practical reasons cannot be turned on and off at will. Once a government has committed itself to a road programme it really is not possible to make major changes unless about two years’ notice is given,


since expenditure in any financial year is, to a large extent, made up of payments for work already completed a substantial time before. Moreover, it takes about three years’ hard work by local authorities in civil engineering offices and in my Department before a major scheme reaches contract-letting stage. (Letter September 1958) The implication of Watkinson’s words was, therefore, that the trunk roads programme now had an in-built momentum which would cause great financial embarrassment to the government if it were stopped. The Minister then concluded his letter by ramming home the political message: Everyone knows that this work is going on. Everyone knows when the road is ready to be built. Any slowing up of tempo will be noticed at once. It is not only the reactions of the man-in-the-street, important though they are, that we must consider. At last we are showing local authorities, road engineers and all concerned that we really mean business and that our road programme is not, as so many have been in the past, merely an empty promise. Any falling off now would, in my opinion, so shatter confidence in the future and in the government’s good faith that I should not like to face the consequences. (Letter September 1958) That Watkinson felt confident enough to address the Chancellor in such a bold manner indicates a new self-confidence in the political importance of what he was doing. This self-confidence was another important factor in cementing the hegemonic policy community—it had the effect of identifying road building with the national interest and simultaneously branding those who might oppose the programme with the image of being misguided and politically naïve. A similar philosophy and rising self confidence is detectable in a 1959 memorandum written by an MoT official in the Highways General Planning Division: Mr Banister spoke with me about our forward planning on motorways. He is most anxious that our studies on this should press forward and that we should be ready to feed schemes into any expanded road programme that may become possible. Indeed, our studies may indicate grounds for making a good case for more monies. (Memorandum 6 July 1959, MT 39/657) In the run-up to the 1959 general election, Watkinson seized every opportunity to instil into his fellow Ministers the electoral value of an expanding road construction programme. For example, in May he wrote to the Home Secretary, R.A.Butler, saying that the Conservative Party Chairman Lord Hailsham had


passed on a letter from the Chairman of the BRF asking that the government should commit itself in the manifesto to a steady build-up in the road programme, particularly in the urban areas. He went on: Today there are a great many votes in roads. Nearly everyone is, or hopes to be, a motorist in some sense or another, and few things would be more attractive in the manifesto than a forward looking plan for roads and road construction, I have not been asked to produce anything of this nature. Would you like me to do so? (Letter 7 May 1959) Butler replied that he entirely agreed about the importance of pressing on with a really effective plan for new road construction, and he was sure the Prime Minister would give Watkinson the opportunity to produce his forward plan (Letter 11 May 1959). Perhaps surprisingly, although he supported Watkinson’s idea of producing a roads plan, Macmillan threw something of a spanner into the works in a Minute to Watkinson by suggesting that perhaps the government should consider tolls in certain cases (Prime Minister’s personal Minute 24 May 1959). The Transport Minister was having none of this, and in his reply to the Prime Minister stated abruptly: ‘As to tolls, we already have agreement to charge these on bridges and tunnels; I do not think they would be appropriate for roads’ (Minute 2 June 1959). That Watkinson felt confident enough to reply to Macmillan in this direct manner indicates his increasing self-assurance as a Minister and also his determination to avoid the political costs of charging for roads. Nevertheless, although Macmillan supported an expanded roads programme, his tentative mention of tolls suggests that he was concerned about the likely cost to the Exchequer. Watkinson harboured no such doubts. When he produced his long-term transport plan, he emphasised that the top political priority for the MoT must continue to be the development of a modern road system (the railways were listed as the second priority). In addition to completion of the ‘five main projects’, which was likely to take another four to five years, he would wish to parallel it with a second programme of large-scale improvements in the existing road network. Not only this, the second phase of the programme would include an urgently needed programme of urban motorways to be linked with the five main projects. Turning to the nub of the problem, the Transport Minister made it clear that it would not be possible to complete even the bare minimum of works necessary under this scheme within present ceilings of expenditure, and he would envisage road expenditure rising steadily each year to a ceiling of about £90 million (i.e. 50 per cent above the £60 million he had won from a reluctant Chancellor in 1957). ‘Even more, I am convinced that we should change the method of financing our road works. These are long-term capital projects and should I think


be financed below the line in the Budget; at least so far as new major construction is concerned. Minor construction and maintenance should remain an above the line item’ (Memorandum 1959), i.e. motorway construction should be regarded as basic government expenditure to be financed by taxes, and not be subject to variations in government borrowing. Such was Watkinson’s political self-confidence by 1959, and his faith in the value of road building and the expertise of the road builders, that he was able to rise above two political embarrassments during the year. The first of these occurred when the newly opened Preston bypass became subject to ‘frost heave’ which caused potholes to occur in the road. When the entire bypass was closed for repairs, the Transport Minister not surprisingly came under heavy political attack. Watkinson placed his faith, however, in James Drake’s Department within Lancashire County Council (Watkinson 1986:84). Such an incident illustrates that a political crisis can act as a binding agent in the construction of a hegemonic policy community. Watkinson had invested his own political credibility in the motorway construction programme, and so had little choice but to back the epistemic communities of road builders. For their part, motorway advocates such as Drake relied on the Transport Minister to provide the political reasoning and the finance to enable the construction programme to gather momentum. Consequently, Watkinson and the road builders had to ‘hang together or they would hang separately’. The second embarrassment concerned a report on trunk roads by the Select Committee on Estimates. The Committee was critical of the MoT and the Road Research Laboratory, and considered that the expanded construction programme had not been adequately prepared. The Minister also needed more information about the behaviour of the nation’s traffic in assessing priorities between interurban and urban motorways (Select Committee on Estimates 1959). It could be said that, given the speed with which the programme was accelerating from virtually nothing only five years earlier, it was perhaps not surprising that both planning and execution had not been thoroughly thought out. Watkinson, however, strongly rebutted the Select Committee’s criticisms, which brought even more controversy on his head (Watkinson 1986:87). It is interesting to note, however, that among the letters of support received by Watkinson was one from Wilfrid Andrews, Chairman of the RAC and founder of the RCC. Andrews observed that, ‘Platitudes and even Select Committees’ reports will not overcome the present difficulties. Only a dynamic approach together with money and work will provide an answer’ (Letter 22 July 1959). In a similar manner to the epistemic communities, therefore, crisis caused key leaders of the road lobby to close ranks with the Minister who had become the unofficial leader of an advocacy coalition which was now on the brink of becoming a hegemonic policy community. As the decade which had produced this massive shift in the dominant transport paradigm came to an end, Watkinson’s tireless efforts in this direction were finally beginning to show results which would be perceived by the ‘empty chair’


of public perceptions and opinion. Symbolic of this progress was the 1959 Highways Act, which consolidated the main legislation on highways including the Trunk Roads Acts of 1936 and 1946 and the Special Roads Act 1949 (Charlesworth 1984:43). This 1959 Act, therefore, not only set out the laws regarding the use of motorways, it also stipulated the process of consultation and negotiation which was required in building a trunk road. In later decades, as we will see in Chapters 6 to 8, this process would become a topic of great political salience and controversy. In the 1950s, however, there was almost no dispute over the need for a road such as the M1, and the planning process attracted little general public interest. This low political salience did not mean that Ministers and road builders did not express concern about the planning process and the difficulties in implementing it, but that these procedures were considered to be an awkward obstacle to be negotiated as quickly and efficiently as possible. This approach is perfectly illustrated by Watkinson’s distinctive approach to buying up the land necessary to build the first section of the M1: Things happened so quickly that one crisis mitigated another and proved the desirability of pressing on with what there was to do with all speed. For example, we decided to endeavour to buy all the land on the line of the London-Birmingham section of M1 without getting involved in compulsory purchase procedures—which would inevitably delay acquisition. It was only discovered some time afterwards that we had breached a number of Treasury legal regulations, but the important point was that we got the job done in record time. (Watkinson 1986:85) In those more innocent days for the construction of motorways, the personal touch could pay rich dividends. For example, Owen Tudor Williams, of Sir Owen Williams and Partners, the consultant civil engineers for the first section of the M1, personally visited every landowner affected by the route and patiently argued the case for a motorways system. As a result there was not a single objection to the construction of the M1 (Guardian 24 July 1996). There is an incredible contrast here with events a decade and a half later, when highway inquiries were regularly the arena for massive disruption and acts of civil disobedience, but in the late 1950s policy-makers were very much working ‘with the grain’ of public opinion, and even those members of a community who would be most affected by the line of a proposed new road could be persuaded that there was a need for it to be built. The political priority of completing the M1 in the nineteen months of the contract caused Watkinson to take on the role of an Executive Minister. Particularly after the experience with the Preston bypass, nothing could be left to chance in ensuring that the M1 was a political triumph for the government. The Minister therefore involved himself in all aspects of the project. John Laing won


the four contracts to construct the road, which Watkinson observed involved nearly 70 miles of road to be built at one mile every ten days (Watkinson 1986: 81). Watkinson himself made the decision that the road should be built in the socalled flexible construction, using lean concrete with a tarmacadam surface, as opposed to reinforced concrete, as there was less chance of any embarrassing full road closures under the pressure of traffic (Watkinson 1986:82–3). Ironically, when the actual opening ceremony took place for the first section of the M1 in November 1959, Watkinson had left the MoT to become Minister of Defence after the October general election. A letter to the former Transport Minister from Maurice Laing of the contractors John Laing which had constructed the motorway, however, reflected the by now warm relationship between the road builders and the Minister. Laing expressed his great regret at Watkinson’s departure from the MoT. He went on: It has been an immense pleasure to work for you on the LondonBirmingham motorway and to have your tremendous inspiration there …. We are looking forward very much to seeing you [at the opening ceremony] because by that time I am quite sure the public will at last begin to realise the tremendous achievement you have made possible in such a short space of time and the great advantage it will be to the country, and it will show to the country what can be done providing the will is there coupled with the necessary finance. (Letter 16 October 1959) This tribute summed up well the vital contribution and role of the ‘roads doctor’ during his four years at the MoT. After the initial push by Boyd-Carpenter, Watkinson had succeeded not only in marshalling the forces of the road builders, but he had also led the road lobby in shifting the image of road building from an activity of low political and economic salience, to one which apparently lay at the heart of the government’s programme of industrial regeneration and the promotion of popular consumerism. In doing so, he had also given the motorway construction programme a purpose and a momentum which would sustain it for many years to come. Determining the dynamics of a hegemonic policy community By a judicious and well timed mixture of ‘promiscuous’ and ‘celibate’ ministerial styles, Watkinson had acted as the ideal policy entrepreneur in taking road construction to the top of the MoT’s priorities and ensuring that the maximum political capital was gained from the construction of the first motorways. Henceforth, the task for a like minded Minister would be not so much to sell the message that ‘there are votes in roads’ for that battle had already been won, but to ensure that the momentum gained by Watkinson was sustained into a large-


scale and long-term trunk roads construction programme, which would have a self-sustaining political, economic and financial momentum. A key factor here was that, as road construction grew, so there was a natural process whereby the epistemic communities of road builders became a dominant force within the MoT. As the local authorities usually acted as agents for the MoT in the actual construction of the roads, then the power of these communities spread down to a multitude of arenas. Once the political importance of road building had been established, then a process of feedback could take place whereby a hegemonic policy community could amplify the roads message over time and across many policy arenas. In the mid-1950s, an MoT trunk roads official had shrewdly set out a strategy for developing and sustaining this momentum: What bothers us most is the apparent absence of an underlying philosophy and I think we should supply one. We are considering the position which will arise after the first group of motorways have been completed. Thereafter I think we should operate on an alternating basis. We should devote the next phase to providing links between the motorways we have already constructed. In the following phase it would be better for technical, economic and political reasons to move right away from what we have already built and lay down a new part of the framework. In the succeeding phase we can revert to the linking process and so on until the ultimate programme is complete. (MoT Memorandum MT39/657) This memorandum illustrates the type of political technique which would be employed by the MoT over succeeding decades in order to sustain the trunk roads construction programme. It also symbolises the manner in which the roads hegemonic policy community was generated and sustained by the internal dynamics of the MoT. A group such as the RCC was significant in the dynamics of policy change through its employment of the ‘empty chair’ principle and the consolidation of the Parliamentary arena through the creation of the All Party Roads Study Group, but it was the policy entrepreneurs Boyd-Carpenter and Watkinson, followed by the self-sustaining growth of the roads interest within the MoT, which were ultimately the key agents and instruments of policy change. Underlying even these factors, however, there was the shift in the dominant policy ‘frame’ epitomised by the slogan ‘there are votes in roads’. Only when road building as a policy was connected to the policy idea of popular consumerism did the programme really take off politically. The mutation of policy ideas was then finally transplanted successfully into the political arena by the ministerial policy entrepreneurs. Fundamental to the dynamics and consolidation of change, therefore, was the character of the advocacy coalition which shaped the policy community. The coupling of the policy streams here created a coalition which had the basic


values of not only personal mobility as an inherent good, but also the benefits to be gained from popular consumerism. It is vital to note, therefore, that the advocacy coalition produced as a result of the coupling of the policy streams was different in character from the one which preceded it. That earlier coalition shared the basic values of personal mobility, but not those of popular consumerism. It was the mutation of ideas which provided the ultimate energy in the creation of a hegemonic policy community. Hence Watkinson’s persistent hammering home to his ministerial colleagues of the message ‘There are votes in roads’. In turn, the crucial mistake made by the groups which constituted the road lobby was to assume that the hegemonic policy community was based on the character of the earlier advocacy coalition. For ‘promiscuous’ Ministers in particular, however, once the link between roads and popular consumerism was eventually broken, the survival of road building as the principal transport policy ‘solution’ could not be guaranteed, i.e. road building as an interest could not alone sustain the survival of the hegemonic policy community. In this case, the advocacy coalition was a dependent variable of the coupling of the policy ideas. In turn, it was the idea of popular consumerism which was the independent variable. In Chapter 6 we will chart how the roads hegemonic policy community was undermined (but not fatally wounded) when the environmental lobby began to make its presence felt in the 1970s.

6 Undermining a hegemonic policy community Trunk roads and the first wave of environmentalism 1973– 9

‘What is going to happen if he (the highway inquiry inspector) still won’t give way?’ I was asked by a leading barrister. ‘Have no fear,’ I answered. For preparations had been made. If the final concessions were not to be made this day, then Winchester was to take the gloves off. So far people had agreed to leave when requested by the police; they would agree no longer, but would require to be escorted or carried out. It would be an Aire Valley par excellence. Other plans had been laid, and together would have led to real trouble and difficulty. For as someone in authority remarked to me: ‘We can’t treat Winchester people like football hooligans’. At two minutes to ten a prayer was read by the wife of the Dean (John Tyme, Motorways Versus Democracy, p. 41) The early environmental advocacy coalition and policy change In the mid- to late 1970s, John Tyme, a zealous anti-motorways campaigner, made it his mission in life to undermine and eventually destroy the hegemonic roads policy community which had held sway since the late 1950s. There were no half measures for Tyme, who believed that the motorway/trunk road programme with all its ramifications posed a consummate evil, and constituted the greatest threat to the interests of the nation in all its history (Tyme 1978:1). Such remarks were a very long way indeed from those of Transport Minister Harold Watkinson two decades earlier, who gloried in ‘rolling out the tarmacadam carpet’, and acting as ‘the roads doctor’. The difference indicated not only the extent to which a rival environmental community had developed to challenge that for roads, but also that a novel process of policy change was taking place whereby the roads policy community was being undermined by indirect means. Notwithstanding his radical stance, Tyme proved himself to be an instinctively shrewd political campaigner who understood that by disrupting a number of highway inquiries he could alarm Ministers into initiating policy change. In so doing, the dominant political discourse underpinning roads as the


chief policy ‘solution’ could be shifted to one where roads became a policy ‘problem’. The extensive media coverage given to these disruptions raised the political salience of both the trunk roads programme and the public inquiry procedures to considerable heights. For the first time, broader issues and policy alternatives gained publicity. Even more significantly in terms of the dynamics of policy change, how-ever, it took place despite the continuing existence and stability of a core roads policy community. The key to understanding this policy change process is that the extent to which rival interests may have varying influence in different policymaking process arenas indicates the separate character and identity of each arena (see Weaver and Rockman 1993). Given the separate character of each arena, what might be termed the adversarial policy communities of the road and environmental lobbies have adopted a chameleon-like quality. The reward for an adversarial community in adopting the appropriate strategy within a particular arena can be domination of that arena, and also the ability to send influential messages to government and to the wider world beyond a given policy. In a similar manner, the image and venue model of Baumgartner and Jones, as we noted earlier, argues that the interaction between image and venue can result in a process of punctuated equilibria whereby a period of stability is replaced by one of rapid, dramatic and non-incremental change. Drawing on Schattschneider, they hypothesise that losers may turn into winners if they appeal to the correct group of potential participants, and if more and more people switch to what is now perceived to be a winning side (Baumgartner and Jones 1993:35–6). A further key element of roads policy change in the 1970s was that ‘promiscuous’ Ministers became increasingly affected by the ideas and values being transmitted by the environmental community and defected from the roads policy community. Just as the Roads Campaign Council in the 1950s applied the ‘empty chair’ principle and took its ‘Roads Crusade’ into the public arena, so policy entrepreneurs such as John Tyme similarly harnessed local opinion about particular road schemes to send the appropriate message to Whitehall and Westminster. A particularly important figure here was the Labour Secretary of State for Transport 1976–9, Bill Rodgers, who linked his own desire to see policy change on roads to a political judgement that concessions should be made to the environmental lobby so that a long term ‘peace treaty’ (Richardson 1993: 88) could be signed between the two adversarial communities. The outcome was a 1977 Transport White Paper which abandoned the concept of a strategic trunk roads network in favour of a more flexible and selective approach based on economic and environmental criteria (Cmnd. 6836, 1977, para. 248). The real significance of disruption of the hitherto smooth-working institutional modality for ‘consultation’ was, therefore, not the disruption itself, but the fact that the objectors had begun to shift the perception of roads policy from being a key element in the modernisation of Britain, to one which could promote the bitter opposition of even the most respected and conservative members of English society, such as the citizens of Winchester. Tyme

UNDERMINING A HEGEMONIC POLICY COMMUNITY 109

understood instinctively that the public inquiry was his arena, and that he would be weakened if he left it. Consequently, he displayed no interest in conventional direct lobbying of national government. Instead, coverage of inquiry disruptions via the mass media conveyed a clear message to policy-makers (Dudley and Richardson 1998:736–7). Ultimately, however, the environmental lobby in the 1970s failed to press home its advantage. ‘Third order’ change and the overthrow of a hegemonic policy community appears to require something more than a coupling of the policy streams and the relatively random conjunctions of the evolutionary model. In the 1980s, by which time Tyme had departed the scene and the environmental lobby generally paid less attention to trunk roads policy, the roads community was able to spring back and reclaim much of its lost ground and political credibility. Only in the 1990s did the environmentalists become a more purposeful, coordinated and persistent community, resulting in the overthrow of roads as the dominant policy ‘solution’. This 1990s multi-arena campaign, and the groups and individuals who shaped it, will be discussed in the next two chapters. Before describing the early dynamics of the environmental lobby and policy change in the 1970s, however, we will briefly examine how the roads policy community consolidated its position in the 1960s and early 1970s. Strengthening the hegemonic roads policy community 1960–72 If the road lobby had been fortunate in the choice of Transport Ministers in the 1950s, then its luck continued with Ernest Marples during the years 1959–64. As we saw in the previous chapters, Marples was a showman and powerful policy entrepreneur who possessed great self-confidence and had a shrewd eye and ear for exploiting the popular mood. If he lacked Watkinson’s mastery of detail and skills as an Executive Minister, he was if anything an even greater enthusiast to promote the policy image of roads. From the outset, he was determined to promote the political and economic advantages of road building, and to increase substantially the momentum of the construction programme. This strategy is evident in a Cabinet Memorandum he wrote in March 1960. His perception that ‘there are votes in roads’ is evident in the observation that: We ought not to allow cars to increase at present rates without building roads to match. We should build more roads or limit the number of cars. To do neither means traffic really will be chaotic in 1964—a most inconvenient year. (CAB 129/101)


As 1964 was the year by which the next general election had to be held, Marples was eloquently illustrating to his fellow Ministers the likely political costs of not expanding the trunk roads programme. Needless to say, Marples had the remedy: At the beginning of 1960 we had 8½ million vehicles. In 1975 there will be 16 million. The situation is critical now and is steadily getting worse…. We should outline a ten year programme and definitely fix the magnitude of the programme for the next five years. I believe nothing less than £550 million is needed for this five-year period. A programme of £630 million would be better [the actual sum contemplated at that time was £300 million]…. If we want roads by 1964 the decision to start must be made now. To wait for another year will be too late. This is because of the time taken to settle the line of a road, acquire the land and get the road built. (CAB 129/101) Marples was looking well beyond the five-year period, however, and the Cabinet Memorandum also contained what he called ‘The Master Plan’. This was a tenyear plan at a total estimated cost of the order of £1,500 million, and included 800 miles of motorway (CAB 129/101). (In 1962 Marples increased this Master Plan to 1,000 miles.) Not surprisingly, the Treasury had some qualms about the scale of Marples’ plans and the Cabinet Economic Policy Committee (EPC) was entrusted to examine the case. The EPC agreed with Marples that there should be as a general rule a five-year programme for road building, revised and projected annually. Although the EPC emphasised that spending on roads should be placed in the context of spending on other transport industries, particularly rail, and tried to restrict some roads expenditure to two rather than five years ahead, the agreement to the five-year rolling programme was a vital element in consolidating the hegemonic policy community (CAB 129/102). Henceforth, the trunk roads programme, and particularly that for motorways, would have an inbuilt momentum which would be extremely difficult to stop. Combined with the existence of Marples’ ten year Master Plan, the policy course was firmly set for the next decade. The roads community was also consolidated by the publication in 1960 of a report calculating the economic costs and benefits of the London-Birmingham motorway (Coburn et al. 1960). Carried out jointly by the Road Research Laboratory and the University of Birmingham, it appeared to predict a high rate of return for motorways as the 1960s progressed. As Starkie emphasises, in spite of the tentative nature of the results of the London-Birmingham motorway costbenefit analysis, it appeared to have a considerable impact on thinking both in and outside Whitehall. For the road lobby it was grist to the mill. For the Ministry it was a most convenient argument to put before the Treasury at a time when it was seeking support for its revised long-term strategy (Starkie 1982:7). A further important step in consolidating the community was to better integrate the epistemic community of highway engineers into the administrative


mainstream of the MoT. The engineers had the common British engineers’ chip on the shoulder, feeling regarded as second-class citizens by the administrative staff, and isolated from decision making; and the administrative staff had no informal access to engineering expertise. The Ministry had difficulties, in this time of economic growth, in recruiting good engineers, and therefore decided to reorganise the Highways side to bring together engineers and administrative staff in the same Divisions, with the particular aim of enhancing the engineers’ status. In 1965, there-fore, the Deputy Secretary in charge of the Highways side was given the title ‘Director-General Highways’, and further down the line there were several instances of engineers and administrators being made joint heads of Groups or Divisions (CPRE 1992:22–3). It could be said also that the very title ‘Director-General Highways’ symbolised the huge importance of road building to the identity of the MoT. Amidst this massive growth in the strength of the roads community, however, it is fascinating to note the existence of another advocacy coalition (albeit politically weak at that time) which would nevertheless refuse to go away over the next thirty years. As we saw in the 1950s, the government had considered the possibility of road tolls (even by Prime Minister Macmillan himself at one point), but rejected them largely on political grounds. Nevertheless, advocates of market mechanisms continued to give voice and in 1962 the MoT had set up a committee under the Chairmanship of Reuben Smeed to examine the economic and technical issues of road pricing. Starkie comments that the Smeed Committee was notable in that the Panel was neither appointed by nor reported to the Minister (Starkie 1982:43), but it could be said that, for a Minister such as Marples, as with Boyd-Carpenter and Watkinson, the political benefits of ‘rolling out the tarmacadam carpet’, and the identification of road building with popular consumerism, did not tie in with the likely political costs of introducing road tolls. Thus, although the 1964 Report of the Smeed Committee advocated direct pricing systems (Smeed 1964), Marples was decidedly non-committal about its findings (Starkie 1982:45). Road pricing was not can idea whose time has come’. As we will see in the next chapter, however, by the late 1990s the idea of road pricing was at last becoming more politically fashionable, and to some extent was being offered as the alternative to road building as the new policy ‘solution’. Superficially, it might have appeared that the return of a Labour Government in 1964 might undermine the hegemonic roads policy community. The new government was much more ideologically committed to an integrated transport policy, as illustrated by the 1966 White Paper on Transport Policy which argued that the urgent need for integration of road and rail services was now emerging from the practical experience of transport problems in different localities (Cmnd. 3057, 1966, para. 10). In reality, however, Labour Ministers had little inclination to fundamentally alter the momentum of the trunk roads construction programme. In this context, Painter notes that as the 1960s progressed justification of the road programme included repeated references to regional benefits, especially in


depressed areas. The roads men were able to increase their bargaining power for funds with such additional policy criteria, and in a climate where regional assistance was a popular policy this would help maintain the programme’s growth (Painter 1980a:175). The roads community could, therefore, expand its membership by widening the ideological base underpinning its existence. This process is well illustrated by the example of Transport Minister 1965–8 Barbara Castle. As we saw in Chapter 3, although Mrs Castle had a genuine commitment to an integrated transport policy and wished to help the cause of rail, to a significant extent she implemented the provisions of the Beeching Plan. Similarly, in the case of roads, the Minister ostensibly had a deep antipathy towards the road lobby. Thus her reaction in her Diaries to a lunch she had with senior officials of the BRF: Lord Chesham, the Chairman, was almost embarrassingly ingratiating, though I learned from the press later that he had spent the morning attacking our transport ideas. One of the most exhausting things in my job is responding to elaborate courtesies from people who, one knows, are totally out of sympathy. (Castle 1984:132) Despite her acerbic attitude towards the BRF, the Minister’s doubts about roads policy could be swept away when a particular scheme was placed in a different policy frame which engaged her interest, such as regional development. Consequently, the irony of her position on roads is perfectly illustrated by a train journey she took to the North-West of England to inspect motorway developments in the area with W.G.Harris, Director-General Highways at the MoT, and James Drake, now Head of the Road Construction Unit for the NorthWest but, as we saw in the previous chapter, since the 1940s one of the principal advocates for the benefits of motorways. The Minister was particularly impressed with Drake, whom she found to be obsessed with roads and a gogetter: He (Drake) and I united to brainwash Harris all the way to Preston about the need to do more in the North-West, and ended up by getting Harris to agree that the Bury Easterly by-pass ought to be in the next instalment of the preparation pool… Harris is now finding the ground cut from under him though to be fair, the present policy is very much dictated by the Treasury with its emphasis on economic return. (Castle 1984:309) Although the Minister had an antagonistic relationship with the BRF, on this occasion she was indicating a greater enthusiasm for road building than Harris— later described by her successor as Transport Minister, Richard Marsh, as being the ‘Chairman of British Roads plc’ (Marsh 1978: 128). Indeed, Mrs Castle


fought hard in Cabinet to resist any attempts to cut the MoT’s road building budget (see Castle 1984:352), and during her period at the Ministry expenditure by central government on roads rose from £209 million in 1965 to £273.4 million in 1968 (a rise of 30.5 per cent) (Plowden 1973:479). In fact, the Minister gave only spasmodic attention to roads during her period at the MoT (see Dudley 1994). Ultimately, despite her misgivings about the road lobby, she lacked the inclination or the political will to undermine the hegemonic roads policy community. Institutionally and administratively, Barbara Castle also strengthened the position of roads within the MoT with several major policy decisions. First, although the 1966 White Paper rejected the option of a Roads Board (a policy option long advocated by the BRF), the Minister did decide to incorporate the road construction function more fully into the structure of the MoT (Cmnd. 3057, 1966, para. 42). Consequently, in 1967 six regional Road Construction Units (RCUs) were set up as permanent bodies to oversee the trunk roads construction programme. Although some RCU staff were seconded from county councils, the new arrangements gave the programme a higher degree of central and unified MoT control (Dudley 1994:231). Second, in 1967 schemes in preparation were placed in two categories: a ‘preparation pool’ and a ‘firm programme’. The former was described as a reservoir of ‘well prepared works’ which it was hoped to complete in about the next ten years. Ministers would thus authorise regular additions to the goal, without formal commitments. On the other hand, entry into the ‘firm programme’ meant that work began on the necessary statutory procedures and a target year was set for commencement (Painter 1980a: 169–70). Thus the two tier system assisted the construction programme in achieving a natural momentum. Third, from 1963 the MoT had adopted selective tendering, and subsequently took to circulating to its trusted list of contractors quarterly lists of works likely to begin in the next couple of years. This process was strengthened as a result of the Lofthouse Committee Report of 1966. This report looked at a broad range of problems associated with the mobilisation of engineering and construction resources, and particular attention was paid to trying to minimise sources of delay and unpredictability. As a result, the MoT held regular meetings with industry representatives aimed at ‘more collaborative working’ (Painter 1980a: 170). Membership of the roads policy community was tightened and the network strengthened. Given these events, it was not surprising that, when the Labour government eventually came to set out its future trunk roads strategy, there was little change from the course set. A 1969 Green Paper, Roads for the Future (MoT 1969), was followed up with a 1970 White Paper (Cmnd. 4369, 1970). These documents emphasised that the initial commitment to 1,000 miles of motorway (as set out in Marples’ 1960 Master Plan and amended in 1962) would be met by the early 1970s. Henceforth the emphasis would be on strategic networks to be completed


over the next twenty years. The Green Paper had suggested a trunk roads programme costing about £2,250 million, but in the White Paper this programme had become inflated to one costing over £4,000 million within a 15–20 year period from 1970. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1970, a new threat to the roads community appeared to arise in the form of a radical institutional reorganisation. As Painter observes, management reforms were in the air, and economic techniques of policy analysis were thought to be capable of providing answers to important questions. The new Conservative government had just imported a mood of business-like optimism into the management of national affairs, espousing a management approach which stressed rationality and efficiency (Painter 1980b:135). As part of these reforms, a new Department of the Environment (DoE) was created which brought together under a Secretary of State the former Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Housing and Local Government and Ministry of Public Building and Works. The central idea behind the DoE was better policy coordination through departmental integration of closely related functional responsibilities (Painter 1980b:136). The responsibility for the location, design and planning of roads of the former Minister of Transport were initially regarded as being an integral part of land use planning, and to that extent were placed under the Minister of Local Government and Development. However, in 1972 responsibility for roads was transferred to the Minister for Transport Industries and that Minister’s role thus moved nearer to that of the former Minister of Transport (Charlesworth 1984:75). A new ideas stream espousing the virtues of rational and integrated planning had been coupled with the policy stream of government reorganisation. Transplanting these streams into the political stream, however, was not an easy task. In addition to the basic institutional problems, there was no fundamental change in the idea of roads as the preferred transport ‘solution’. The government might create a Department of the Environment, but that was a long way from saying that environmental ideas had entered the core of government policymaking. This was exemplified in 1971 when Environment Secretary Peter Walker endorsed the 1970 Labour White Paper on roads. He claimed that, as the total number of vehicles on the roads was expected to rise from 15 million in 1971 to 22 million by 1980, then the roads would have to be built to accommodate them. Consequently Walker announced that by 1980 the government would be well on the way to completing a primary network of about 3,500 miles of high quality strategic trunk routes, of which about 2,000 miles would be motorway (i.e. 1,000 miles of motorway would be added to the initial network of 1,000 miles which would be completed by 1972) (HC Written Answers 23 June 1971, cols. 288– 92). It is also possible to detect in Walker’s announcement an element of personal ‘celibate’ ministerial style. Throughout the 1970s he was notable for a number of decisions which promoted ‘the politics of optimism’ and included an


overambitious investment strategy for the British Steel Corporation (see Dudley and Richardson 1990:51–2). Difficulties in transplanting ideas about rational planning into the political stream were also illustrated by the example of the 1971 Highways Act. Despite (or perhaps because of) the success of the expanding trunk roads construction programme, there was concern within the MoT/DoE about the increasing length of delays experienced in completing individual schemes, or what the Ministry called ‘slippage’. As Painter observes, in 1957 it was estimated that schemes took four years or more to bring to fruition; in 1969 the figure mentioned was seven years; by 1973 it was said to be taking up to ten years; and by 1978 fifteen or more years. The new government decided that something must be done. The 1971 Highways Act widened the relevant powers of the Environment Secretary in a number of ways, most of them at the expense of the rights of objectors. In particular, the minimum period that he was obliged to allow for the lodging of objections to a draft order for a new road was reduced from three months to six weeks. In addition, more controls were placed on the rights of objectors, and the Secretary of State could now proceed with line, side road and compulsory purchase orders concurrently (Levin 1979:23). This apparently ‘rational’ attempt to speed up the implementation process, however, could be seen as a good example of Wildavsky’s dictum that policy is its own cause, and that today’s ‘solutions’ can become tomorrow’s ‘problems’ (Wildavsky, 1979). Ironically, prior to 1971, at least with regard to trunk roads, public inquiries were relatively low key affairs. From now on, however, this policy arena would become one of massive political salience, and the government’s attempts to reduce ‘slippage’ would only exacerbate the problem. Nevertheless, in 1972 the road lobby still appeared to be in the middle of a golden age. This happened despite the internal dynamics of the lobby by no means running smoothly during this period. In particular, in 1963 the Roads Campaign Council was split apart when the Automobile Association, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and the BRF itself all resigned. The reasons for this split are somewhat obscure, but involved both the RCC falling out with Transport Minister Ernest Marples (Hamer 1987:18–19) and personality clashes between officials of the AA and the Royal Automobile Club (interview 31 October 1995). The split was eventually healed in 1970, but the lobbying groups still did not find the going easy. As a leading official of the BRF at that time observed, money raising was always a problem, and officials had to devote a considerable percentage of their time to that activity rather than actual lobbying (interview 31 October 1995). To this end, in 1969 the SMMT, backed by the RAC, set up the British Industry Roads Campaign as a money raising fund for the BRF. This fund had an anticipated life of fourteen years, but contributions began to tail off as early as 1971, and the campaign was wound up halfway through its life span in 1976 (Hamer 1987:19). If the splits and financial problems of the road lobby groups do not suggest the image of a hegemonic policy community, then it could be said that, in the 1960s,


these groups did not need to be particularly efficient. The crucial fact was that road building as an idea had effectively infiltrated the policy core, led by a series of sympathetic Ministers and then adopted organisationally by the MoT as a whole. Provided the successful transplanting of that idea held firm, then the road lobby could rest easy. From 1973, however, exogenous and then endogenous factors combined to severely damage the dominant idea and policy image, and the golden age of trunk road building was at an end. Exploiting a policy window: 1973–5 In Chapter 3 we saw how the idea of popular consumerism successfully attached itself to the tea room plan and propelled trunk roads construction, and in particular the motorways programme, to the top of the political agenda. Nothing that occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s truly altered this situation with regard to these types of roads. This was despite the fact that during this period there was increasing public disquiet and protest about some particular road schemes. Rather than the inter-urban trunk roads, however, for which the MoT/DoE was directly responsible, the controversial plans tended to be for urban roads where individual local authorities were chiefly responsible. The report in 1963 by Sir Colin Buchanan and his team on Traffic in Towns (Buchanan 1963) became highly influential for town planners faced with the problems of accommodating motor vehicles in urban environments not basically suited to this development. Buchanan emphasised the importance of town design, where traffic could circulate around a number of ‘urban rooms’, and so service these latter areas (Starkie 1982:32). Despite the importance which Buchanan attached to environmental standards, his concepts tended to involve a radical redesigning of urban centres. In the 1960s, radical road ‘solutions’ for ancient cities such as Oxford and Bath aroused enormous local controversy, while in London the ‘motorway box’ plan, which involved the demolition of 20,000 houses, aroused intense and vociferous opposition, and was finally abandoned in 1973 (Starkie 1982:72–7; Hamer 1987: 57–62; Wistrich 1983:116–19). An indicator of the strength and insularity of the central hegemonic roads policy community is that, as we have described, little of these intense local battles was able to shift the perceptions of government that ‘there are votes in roads’, and hence alter the scale of the long-term trunk roads construction programme. The year 1973, however, proved to be a watershed for two particular reasons. First, it was in that year when an environmental advocacy coalition on transport policy began to make a real impact. Second, a succession of public expenditure crises led to severe cuts in the future capital expenditure on trunk roads. It could not be said that major policy change on trunk roads occurred during 1973–5— that only came about in the second half of the decade. Nevertheless, there was a marked change of political climate compared with events in the previous two decades.


There is no doubt that the public expenditure crises acted as a window of opportunity for the environmental advocacy coalition to exploit its new position of advantage. Apart from the real effects of expenditure cuts, the reductions in the trunk roads programme had the effect of damaging the popular image of road building as essential public investment undertaken in the national interest. Once it became evident that Ministers were prepared to postpone or even ditch elements of this programme, then it became somewhat easier for environmentalists to undermine the political credibility of roads. At the same time, it is important to stress that the environmentalists were beginning to make an impression on government even before the public expenditure crises struck. Thus, to a significant degree, there was a double window of opportunity where exogenous and endogenous factors reacted on each other (this could be contrasted with the 1990s where trunk roads policy change depended much more on persistent multi-arena pressure from the environmental advocacy coalition). As in a number of policy areas, environmental lobbying on a coordinated national basis began to make an impact on transport policy in the early 1970s. For example, Friends of the Earth (FoE), founded in the US in 1969, was always intended to be an international organisation, and a UK branch was started in 1971. In 1971, FoE in London had an annual income of £10,000 and 1,000 registered supporters. In 1994 it had an annual income of £5.3 million and 112, 000 supporters. (Jordan and Maloney 1997:37–9). FoE not only introduced fresh ideas and values through its multinational structure, it also brought a harder and more radical edge to lobbying, where basic values would be challenged though a variety of techniques including exploitation of the media and the harnessing of popular opinion locally. A group such as FoE, therefore, was content to remain a policy ‘outsider’, at least in the short term, in order to spread its message. In this respect, it had much in common with the RCC in the 1950s, including the exploitation of the ‘empty chair’ principle. FoE could be contrasted, therefore, with longer-established groups such as the Civic Trust, the Conservation Society and the National Trust, which might campaign on local issues but were more likely to observe orthodox lobbying techniques and play to ‘the rules of the game’. For the environmental advocacy coalition on transport policy, however, an event of even more long-term significance arrived in 1972 with the creation of the group Transport 2000. As we saw in the previous chapter, the ‘hollow core’ at the heart of rail policy was caused partly through the failure of the rail industry to form an effective central policy community to counter the political weight of the roads community. Although this largely remained the case in the 1970s, by a great irony Transport 2000 proved to be an effective means whereby rail interests could successfully infiltrate and undermine the roads policy sector on a long-term basis. As Hamer describes: in 1972 when a fresh round of rail cuts was leaked to the press, the rail unions sought support from the Trades Union Congress (TUC). The TUC would not support the rail unions, however, because of the opposition of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), the


majority of whose members worked in the road transport industries. Equally serious for rail, many of the local and national groups campaigning against cuts were poorly organised and financed. In this crisis, the rail unions found a solution by joining forces with a wide range of national environmental groups (including Friends of the Earth, the Council for the Protection of Rural England, the Civic Trust and the National Trust) to form Transport 2000, as a counterweight to the road lobby, and in particular the umbrella group the BRF (Hamer 1987:103). Almost inadvertently, therefore, the rail unions had performed a masterstroke. Although the majority of Transport 2000 finance would be provided by the rail unions and British Rail, the formal alliance with the environmental lobby created a new and more effective advocacy coalition. Just as the addition of popular consumerism as a basic value acted as a catalyst for the dynamic growth of a new roads advocacy coalition, so public transport (and in particular rail) policy ‘solutions’ could henceforth be coupled with ideas such as reducing pollution, saving energy and saving lives through fewer road accidents. This wider and deeper advocacy coalition was a much more effective adversary for the road lobby, although the path to ‘third order’ change would be a long one. As we will see in the next chapter, in the 1990s Transport 2000 acted as a crucial fulcrum which could balance the various wings of the environmental lobby and coordinate the systematic multi-arena campaign which would finally produce a paradigmatic shift on trunk roads policy. In the early 1970s, however, the chief strategy in attempting to undermine the hegemonic roads policy community consisted of harnessing local protest groups against a particular road scheme and giving these issues a national political salience. An early example of this occurred in 1973 when members of the Bromsgrove Action Committee challenged the public inquiry on a section of the proposed M40/M42 motorway on the question of discussing the actual need for the road. This was a crucial issue for the protest groups, as permission to challenge need could greatly widen the debate and potentially undermine the whole raison d’être of the trunk roads programme. Behind the Bromsgrove Group, however, lay the Transport Reform Group, an alliance of the Council for the Protection of Rural England and the Civic Trust formed in 1971 to campaign for a review of transport policy. One of its early initiatives was to create the Midland Motorway Action Committee to coordinate opposition to motorway proposals criss-crossing the Midland region, and it was this Committee which first raised, in the context of the M40/M42, the question of ‘need’ for particular motorway schemes (Starkie 1982:132). At first Ministers appeared to concede that the need for the road could be discussed at the public inquiry (Sunday Times 2 September 1973). Later, however, the government changed its line and said that the decision as to what evidence and submissions were relevant was entirely one for the inspector. In the event, the inspector refused to allow questions of need to be discussed (Levin 1979:24–5). Nevertheless, the fact that the government had at least initially seemed prepared to give way, and that the issue had become one


of national political salience, indicated that the environmental lobby had exposed a vulnerable point for the road lobby. Public inquiries as ‘arenas without rules’ Raising the question of need for a road also had the effect of highlighting the role of the public inquiry itself. Up to this time, highway inquiries, if they were held at all, had generally been formal and low key arenas where matters concerning national roads policy were never challenged (this section from Dudley and Richardson 1998). A paradox in characterising highway inquiries is that they have the image of a court of law, with evidence submitted by counsel for both sides, and witnesses cross-examined, before an impartial judge. In reality, how-ever, the ultimate judge of any road scheme is the Department which proposed it. The Minister’s powers and duties were set out in the 1959 Highways Act which, as we saw in Chapter 5, consolidated a considerable amount of earlier legislation. A detailed examination of the statutory framework for trunk roads policy lies beyond the scope of this study, but the fundamentals of the process have remained relatively unaltered. After the Minister is satisfied that a strong case exists for an improvement to an existing road, or for the construction of a new road, design work begins on the basis of the known traffic data, a provisional estimate of cost and an outline of possible solutions. Once practicable routes have been identified, a process of consultation takes place. Those consulted include not only statutory bodies such as local authorities, but also interest groups such as the National Farmers’ Union, the Country Landowners’ Association, and national and local amenity societies. Nowadays, there is usually an exhibition, where members of the public can study the line options. Once the chosen line is published as a draft scheme there is then an opportunity for people to make representations or objections. If the objections cannot be satisfied by a further consultative process, only then will the possibility arise of a public inquiry. Statutory objectors, such as local authorities, can insist on an inquiry being held. After the inquiry, the inspector writes a report and gives his or her recommendations to the relevant Ministers. The relevant Secretaries of State will then decide whether to accept the draft schemes, modify them, or abandon them altogether. If the proposals are extensively changed, then the inquiry may be reopened, or the draft schemes withdrawn and new ones published. Once the schemes are published, objectors then have the right to apply to the High Court for the consents to be quashed on such grounds as statutory powers being exceeded, or the requirements of the Act not being complied with. In recent years, objectors also have the option of making a complaint to an alternative policy-making arena in the form of the European Commission, on grounds such as the UK government’s failure to conduct a proper Environmental Impact Assessment as set out in an EC Directive of 1985 (Directive 85/337).


Highway inquiries, therefore, play a political consultative rather than a judicial role. This consultative purpose is the principal explanation for there being no statutory procedural rules. Instead, the inquiry inspector has considerable discretion, even though the inquiries are part of the total statutory framework supporting the building of trunk roads. In a sense, the inquiries themselves should be seen as part of the hegemony of the road lobby’s ‘framing’ in that they were there to facilitate the overall policy of building more trunk roads. History was to show that they could ‘work’ only when all of the interests who participated accepted certain behavioural norms and, more importantly, existing ‘framing’ and the broad objectives of policy. Although environmentalists eventually perceived the consultation processes enshrined in public inquiries as ‘sham consultation’ the very existence of the inquiry system is a reflection of the strong cultural tradition of consultation and participation. Though the policy area appeared to be dominated by a specific set of interests, leading to a hegemonic ‘framing’, governments nevertheless felt obliged to devise a consultative process. The so-called ‘affected interests’ had to be given the chance to participate, consistent with the British policy style. Indeed, even in the 1950s and 1960s, prior to the exploitation of public inquiries by a new breed of environmentalists, the administrative process for deciding to build a new trunk road was extremely drawn out, as it was (in contrast to France, for example) for all major infrastructure projects. Even without disruption of existing procedures, ‘planning’ in Britain was not easy. Thus, as Gregory noted in 1967: Any student of British government who claims to detect a disquieting trend towards administrative ruthlessness and arrogance in the interests of speed and efficiency and at the expense of the rights and property of the individual should draw comfort from an examination of the procedure through which the Ministry of Transport goes when planning the route of a motorway and acquiring the land necessary for its construction. (Gregory 1974:104) Gregory maintained his ironic tone when he noted that it came as no surprise to find that, while the actual construction of the M1 from London to Rugby took twenty months, the preparatory stages occupied eight years (Gregory 1974:106). Yet, of course, as we saw in the previous chapter, the motorway was built with the minimum of public controversy, i.e. the main lines of public policy were not overturned by this long and drawn out consultation process. Time consuming though the process was, the concessions were largely at the margins of policy. As Levin observes: During the 1960s the need for motorway and trunk road building was widely taken for granted. Such objections as were made were often disposed of without recourse to an inquiry…in 1967 only 11 per cent of


‘motorway miles’ and 16 per cent of ‘trunk road miles’ went to public inquiry. (Levin 1979:22) The politics of trunk road building was based on the nimby (not-in-mybackyard) principle rather than on any lofty notions of bringing about a new policy discourse and a shift on the ‘framing’ of policy problems. Moreover, the benefits of trunk roads policy were front-loaded. The disbenefits—such as the health risks caused by vehicle pollution and the risk of global warming—were largely unheard of at that time. The existing institutional modalities for consultation were, it seems, underpinned by a fairly strong ‘policy core’ (Sabatier 1993:35). While this policy core remained relatively unfractured, all was well and broader problems of governance presented by groups who would not play the game remained well hidden. Potential opponents could be ‘accommodated’ by gradual procedural reform, long drawn-out processes, and concessions at the margin of policy. The propitious shift in the general climate of opinion on environmental matters in the early 1970s, together with the window of opportunity presented by the need to curtail public expenditure, allowed a new breed of environmental activist to be more entrepreneurial in their tactics. In particular, a policy entrepreneur emerged in the shape of John Tyme who saw the potential of the existing highway inquiry system for opening up the market for policy ideas. In order to achieve this goal, Tyme adopted some highly unorthodox techniques. For example, from the early stages of his campaign he realised that, as a leader of a minority coalition (Mintrom and Vergari 1998), his distinctive style of civil disobedience could only work if he had large numbers of his supporters in the hall. This technique worked well at the Aire Valley inquiry in Yorkshire, where support was particularly large and enthusiastic, and two attempts to open the inquiry were abandoned by the inspector when objectors repeatedly interrupted proceedings (Tyme 1978:14–30; Levin 1979:21). Tyme was taking advantage of a situation where people affected by the line of a proposed road were deeply disillusioned by what they considered to be the government’s failure to take adequate notice of their views. In effect, the fact that Tyme and others could mobilise such wide support (and action) was a clear indicator that the traditional British institutional modalities, through which those affected by public policy were consulted, could no longer accommodate the range and number of new claimant stakeholders in this policy area. More importantly, perhaps, it illustrated the fact that trunk roads policy was no longer a relatively narrow technical issue. Thus, over time, issue expansion had occurred and this had implications for the way politics could be conducted. Tyme’s campaign achieved its peak of political salience during the M3 extension inquiry at Winchester in 1976. The ultimate significance of this proposed road cannot be overstated, for it was to play a key role in the dynamics of policy change in both the 1970s and (as we will see in the next two chapters) also the 1990s. The actual


line of the M3 bypass to the east of the ancient city of Winchester had already been approved at an inquiry in 1971 in a more quiescent phase (Kingdon 1995: 167) of the policy process. The 1976 inquiry concerned merely side roads and compulsory purchase orders. In the hands of Tyme, however, it was transformed into something of a test case for the government’s trunk roads policy itself. By this time, Tyme had discovered that there were no statutory rules attached to inquiries, and that the proceedings were largely left to the discretion of the inspector. In this context, March and Olsen propose that political structures are important because they create and sustain islands of imperfect and temporary organisation in potentially inchoate political worlds (March and Olsen 1989:16). One feature of these political structures is, of course, the existence of rules which constrain behaviour and secure a degree of predictability. In practice, March and Olsen define rules as: the routines, procedures, coventions, roles, strategies, organisational forms and technologies around which political activity is constructed. We also mean the beliefs, paradigms, codes, cultures and knowledge that surround, support, elaborate and contradict those roles and routines. (March and Olsen 1989:22) In our study, we turn this description on its head as it were. If ‘arenas with rules’ can provide stability, then equally it could be said that ‘arenas without rules’ can sometimes provide instability. If an arena lacks formalised procedures, conventions and cultures, then it is open for shrewd actors to exploit this situation and adapt the arena to their own objectives by transmitting new ideas to other arenas and actors. In the 1970s, the highway inquiry was a particularly effective instrument for this purpose. The relative lack of procedural rules allowed environmental activists to manipulate proceedings in order not only to disrupt the policy implementation process, but also to attempt to transmit their own ideas and values to policy-makers, to other policy actors, and, perhaps more importantly, via the mass media to the general public. Thus Tyme had found an ‘arena without rules’ and was quick to see its potential in terms of issue expansion. His tactics at the Aire Valley inquiry, and the associated media coverage, had attracted the attention of groups opposed to the Winchester bypass, and in the classic policy entrepreneur fashion, he was recruited to represent them at the inquiry. Within Winchester itself, the campaign against the road had attracted widespread support. In addition, there was no doubt that media interest was heightened by the image of Winchester as a citadel of the establishment, with its ancient cathedral and famous public school. Thus it was generally considered that mass protest here would indeed indicate that the government’s roads policy was in severe trouble. In the event, all of Tyme’s objectives were fulfilled. On the second day of the inquiry, he fought a successful battle to keep the television cameras in the hall,


so ensuring that events would achieve maximum public exposure and the image could be projected of an existing policy in disarray. Tyme’s strategy was to switch the attention of the inquiry to the actual need for the road, and so to undermine the government’s whole trunk roads policy. Thus, he was attempting to transform highway inquiries from an institutional site designed to facilitate and support the main thrust of policy at that time—building more trunk roads and motorways (albeit via a veneer of consultation)—into an institutional site where new interests could question the fundamentals of existing policy and introduce new knowledge and ideas which could facilitate a re-framing of the policy problem. Clearly, the government did not intend ‘consultation’ to mean that! After apparently showing initial sympathy for Tyme’s arguments, however, the inquiry inspector backtracked. Since the first day of the inquiry, proceedings had been interrupted and vociferous objectors led from the hall. Now, after a further altercation with the inspector, it was Tyme who was escorted out by the police. Tyme himself takes up the story: As I waited outside the vestibule under the watchful eyes of the police I received messages to the effect that the inspector was obdurate; momentum was being lost. It seemed clear that a reassertion of ‘popular power’ was required. So seizing a suitable moment when police attention wandered, I re-entered the theatre, raced down the aisle and faced the General (i.e. the inspector) eyeball to eyeball. The effect was dramatic. Two masses of people moved towards me at once: the men of Winchester and the police. The resulting mêlée, with scores of people, including the headmaster of Winchester College, escorted out, fully restored [sic] the collapsing situation. It was a reminder to the General of the power of the forces ranged against him. (Tyme 1978:40) As we suggested earlier, highway inquiries would ‘work’ only when the participants adhered to certain behavioural norms—both in terms of accepting the thrust of policy as sensible and by not exploiting the rather lax and flexible ‘rules’ instituted when, no doubt, gentlemen were gentlemen. The new activists demonstrated that lax institutional rules and the opportunity for issue expansion are closely related. The real significance of disruption of the hitherto smoothworking institutional modality for ‘consultation’ was, therefore, not the disruption itself, but the fact that the objectors had begun to shift the popular image of roads policy. Tyme understood instinctively that the Highway Inquiry was his arena, and that he would be weakened if he left it. Consequently, he was happy to operate as an ‘outsider’ rather than an ‘insider’ (Grant 1978), and displayed no interest in conventional direct lobbying of national government. The exploitation of the ‘arena without rules’ via the mass media conveyed a clear message to policy-makers, and key Ministers were to recognise the significance of this new ‘empty chair’, and defect from the hegemonic roads


policy community. Now, it could no longer be assumed that ‘there are votes in roads’. Cracks in the hegemonic roads policy community 1973–6 The Marples target of 1,000 miles of motorways in use was finally achieved during 1972, but by the mid-1970s the construction programme was beginning to slow down. In 1970, 352 miles of motorways were under construction, but by 1975 this figure had been reduced to 174 miles. As we have seen, from the late 1950s the trunk roads construction programme had an inexorable internal momentum which, to a significant extent, rested on the assumption that the commitments must be made for at least five years ahead. Politically, therefore, the ‘image’ of road building as an essential national investment underpinned the commitment to long-term planning and finance. In 1973, however, twin exogenous forces combined to blow this apparently inexorable programme off course. First, international conditions and the government’s policy response led to an overheating of the economy. In the early 1970s, the Conservative government led by Edward Heath became so concerned by the threat of rising unemployment that they embarked on a policy of reflation generally known as ‘the dash for growth’. Consequently, the economy became over-heated, and from May 1973 Chancellor Tony Barber imposed a series of public expenditure cuts (Dell 1997:394–6). Second, the Middle East War in the Autumn of 1973 led the oil producers’ cartel OPEC to quadruple the price. In 1974 Britain would be paying £2.5 billion more for 5 per cent less oil than had been imported in 1973 (Dell 1997:397). This latter crisis had clear politically real and symbolic implications for the trunk roads construction programme. Thus not only was it anticipated that the steep rise in oil prices would inevitably lead to a reduction in vehicle use and rate of growth, but it also highlighted the fact that the hegemonic policy community rested on insecure foundations. If relatively cheap petrol could no longer be relied upon, then perhaps other transport policy options should be explored rather than accepting road building as the preferred policy ‘solution’. After being relatively insulated from the vagaries of public expenditure cuts, the roads policy community suddenly appeared an exposed and vulnerable target for Ministers seeking immediate cuts. In 1973, therefore, there were four separate cuts to the roads programme, culminating in the mini-budget of December which announced a 20 per cent cut in all capital spending on new road construction. As an obviously worried BRF emphasised in its Annual Report, it was impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation. In effect, the government had pushed back, by two or three years to the mid-1980s, the target date for completion of the whole of the strategic trunk roads programme. In doing so, many urgent and long awaited trunk schemes would be postponed (BRF Annual Report 1973). In 1974 a Labour government returned to office, but this change offered no respite for the road lobby. Indeed, by 1976, the intervention of the International Monetary Fund in


the British economy led to even more severe cuts in the roads programme. Thus during 1976 there were three further separate cuts in the roads programme. Even more significantly in terms of political symbolism, however, the minibudget of December 1976 announced a six month moratorium to all new starts in trunk road building. This last blow led a demoralised BRF to lament that the timetable put forward for completion of the proposed trunk roads network by the mid-1980s was now a pipe-dream (BRF Annual Report 1976). As Painter comments, some of these expenditure cuts were in fact only exercises in postponing commitment of roads, and that inertia continued to play a part in the ongoing process (Painter 1980a:171). Nevertheless, more important was the fact that, politically, the invulnerability of the roads community had been breached, and the consequent change in the political climate had opened up the market for alternative policy ideas. The soil was therefore more fertile for environmental ideas to be successfully transplanted into the roads policy sector. On the other hand, it could also be said that, to the extent that policy change was perceived by government as expedient, then these ideas could not become deep rooted. Here, a vital contrast can be drawn with events in the 1990s. In this latter decade, policy change was less dependent on a ‘window of opportunity’ caused by public expenditure cuts, and more on an autonomous coupling of the policy streams as a result of a coordinated campaign by the environmental advocacy coalition. In the 1970s, notwithstanding the efforts of policy entrepreneurs such as John Tyme and a range of environmental groups, there was a significant element of unpredictable chance in the manner in which environmental ideas took root in the roads policy system. The year 1973 was also a turning point in that Ministers began to at least give more sympathetic consideration to other policy options and pressure from antiroads groups. As we noted earlier, the government appeared to allow the need for a road to be debated at a public inquiry in that year, even if this was later diluted to giving the inspector discretion in this matter. Also, in March 1973, the government issued a Consultation Paper which proposed earlier publication of alternative proposals and more local public meetings (DoE 1973). The fact that this document was published immediately prior to the succession of expenditure cuts suggests that the opposition to a number of controversial local schemes in the 1960s and the activity of such campaigners as the Transport Reform Group in the early 1970s were beginning to have an effect on Ministers. Once the full implications of the oil crisis and the failed ‘dash for growth’ began to bite, then these initially minor trends were amplified. Consequently, in November 1973 the Minister for Transport Industries, John Peyton, announced a switch mainly from urban road to rail and the Public Expenditure Survey Committee (PESC) White Paper of December 1973 referred to a slower rate of growth for trunk road spending with a major switch to support for public transport (Cmnd. 5519, 1973) (from Painter 1980a:180). Reflecting these changes, in July 1974 DoE regional directors, who had frequently been in conflict with RCUs on regional policy


matters, were given a greater role in supervising RCU work, particularly the political aspects (Painter 1980a:179). The institutional changes introduced by the Heath government in 1970 were therefore having some effect in curbing the independence of the roads community. Nevertheless, the Highways Directorate within the DoE resisted efforts to break up its command and retained its identity intact (Painter 1980b: 146). By the mid-1970s, however, as we have seen earlier in the case of John Tyme, the disruption of highway inquiries was beginning to make an impact. In February 1974 the National Motorways Action Committee had been set up, with a steering committee consisting of representatives from national and local organisations including FoE and Transport 2000. The first impact of this new group was felt at the public inquiry on the Epping Forest section of the M16 which opened in December 1974. Here, Dr John Adams, a lecturer in geography at University College, London and a director of FoE, presented a detailed critique of the DoE’s road traffic forecasts and the methods and assumptions employed (Levin 1979: 27). Alongside Tyme, Adams represented the other principal arm of the environmental advocacy coalition’s attack in the 1970s. Where Tyme specialised in the unorthodox and unpredictable disruption of highway inquiries, Adams sought to systematically undermine the basic data which underpinned the momentum of the trunk roads programme. In doing so, he was also seeking to widen the roads building issue to one which included the general environmental impact rather than as a straightforward policy ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of increasing levels of vehicle ownership and use (to a significant extent, this strategy mirrored the one adopted by the environmentalists in the 1990s when occupation of the construction sites was complemented by the further widening of the roads issue to include the implications for public health of vehicle emissions—the difference in the 1990s being the scale, intensity and systematic coordination of the campaign). By early 1976, the government was sufficiently disquieted by events in the ‘arena without rules’ that it announced that the Council on Tribunals would conduct a review of highway inquiry procedures. Also in 1976, revised Notes for the Guidance of Panel Inspectors apparently gave more concessions to objectors to a road scheme, although at the same time new procedural rules introduced the concept of the ‘statutory’ objector (i.e. the statutory bodies directly concerned with, and individuals with a direct property interest in, the proposals). Any other objecting person or group could appear only at the discretion of the inspector (Levin 1979:29–30). The government was clearly seeking to place a block on the activities of objectors such as Adams and Tyme, and make the inquiry a more rulebound institution. The principal policy event in 1976, however, was the publication by the government of a consultation document on Transport Policy (DoE 1976). To a significant extent, the launch of this policy review can be seen as the result of the expansion of the market for new ideas resulting from the oil and public


expenditure crises rather than a genuine conversion to more environmental ideas on the part of the Labour government. This interpretation of events tends to be confirmed by the political views of Tony Crosland, the Environment Secretary who instituted the review in 1975. From the 1950s, Crosland had advocated the merits of the ‘classless society’, whereby the masses would enjoy what previously had been solely the luxuries of the upper classes (Crosland 1956, see Wistrich 1983:3). This echoed the ideas about popular consumerism which had been the catalyst for the formation of the hegemonic roads policy community in the 1950s. Thus, in 1974 Crosland discounted the environmental movement as a middle class exercise (Crosland 1974, see Wistrich 1983:110). In general, Crosland’s perspective is mirrored in the contents of the Consultation Document. For example, it was emphasised that although there were social, environmental and resource grounds for intervention in the market, it was an essential objective, in transport as in other activities, to preserve as much freedom of choice as possible within the regulatory and fiscal framework (DoE 1976, para. 3.25). On trunk roads, although it was emphasised that capital expenditure by the end of the decade would be about 80 per cent of the average for the last five years, the commitment to completing the network as set out in the early 1970s remained a high priority, although the completion date was put back until the late 1980s (DoE 1976, paras. 9.4 and 9.6). At the same time, some concessions to environmental concerns were given in the acknowledgement that the present system of Cost Benefit Analysis (COBA) had been much criticised (in particular by John Adams) and so the government would seek an independent assessment of the Department’s appraisal of road schemes, including the traffic forecasts and the weights given to economic and environmental factors (DoE 1976, para. 9.22). In addition, the government would in future publish an annual Roads White Paper which would set down the government’s policy in clear terms (DoE 1976, para. 9.24). More generally, it was emphasised that roads must compete not only with other transport expenditure but also with public expenditure generally, for example, on housing, education and health (DoE 1976, para. 9.27). In fact, both Crosland and his Tory predecessor as Environment Secretary, Geoffrey Rippon, placed an emphasis on housing expenditure during the years 1973–6 (Wistrich 1983:54). As part of the DoE, despite the Highways Directorate retaining its autonomy, transport generally had suffered a loss in political status since 1970, particularly in terms of losing its own Cabinet Minister. In September 1976, however, this situation was to change when new Prime Minister James Callaghan restored Transport’s separate status as a Department, with a Minister in the Cabinet. Again we see the cycles of political fashion, as it was now considered that the virtues of policy coordination had been overvalued, and that, as sectors such as transport or housing politics each generated separate problems, different methods and techniques were required to solve them (Painter 1980b:152) (in 1997 the cycle was completed once more when the new Labour


government created a giant Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions). Superficially, it might have appeared that the creation of the new Department of Transport (DTp) would reassert the strength of the roads community. Instead, the arrival of Ministers much more inclined to ‘promiscuous’ behaviour than Crosland on trunk roads policy, and aided by key Departmental officials, took policy change to at least the brink of a paradigmatic shift. Bill Rodgers as Transport Secretary 1976–9: policy change and the moderates’ moderator By 1976, both the actual nature of the transport policy ‘problems’ and the way they were now being ‘framed’ had changed since the beginning of the decade. In addition to the exogenous factors of the oil crisis and the overstretched UK credit boom, there were the more endogenous factors of the disruption of the public inquiries by individuals such as John Tyme and his supporters, and the challenge to official expertise by authoritative members of the environmental advocacy coalition such as John Adams. Although the road lobby might argue that the disruption of inquiries was not playing to the ‘rules of the game’, there was no doubt that, in official circles, the trunk roads programme had suffered a serious blow to its political credibility. In a sense, this ‘mood shift’ had gradually overtaken the road lobby while it appeared to be in its most successful phase (adapted from Dudley and Richardson 1996c). Consequently, by the time Bill Rodgers was appointed Labour Transport Secretary in September 1976, the new roads ‘image’ could be summarised as being a large-scale but comparatively expendable capital expenditure programme, with a potentially high political cost to be paid in its implementation. Building roads was gradually being perceived as a ‘problem’ rather than a ‘solution’. Rodgers, therefore, was called upon by the Labour government to negotiate a process whereby official trunk roads policy matched the new image for the policy problem. Thus, where key 1950s Ministers such as BoydCarpenter and Watkinson had been enthusiastic proponents of a positive image for the motorways, Rodgers’ skills lay in managing a new political settlement for trunk roads which reflected the changed configuration of interests and values underlying the policy debate. This transitional period required Rodgers to act not only as a Policy Initiator, but also as an Executive and a Policy Broker (as we noted in Chapter 1, the term Policy Broker is an addition to the Headey categorisation, and refers to the Sabatier definition). In essence, it could be argued that where Boyd-Carpenter and Watkinson acted as Ambassadors for road building and unofficial leaders of the road lobby, Rodgers was an important carrier of new ideas and values, transforming them into negotiated policy change. The post of Transport Secretary was Rodgers’ first appointment to the Cabinet, although he had gained considerable experience as a Junior Minister by serving


as an Under-Secretary or Minister of State in five departments for a total of over eight years in the 1960s and 1970s (Theakston 1987:59). A priority for Rodgers at the new Department was to develop an effective institutional counter-culture to the epistemic community of highway engineers which had played such a key role in creating the hegemonic roads policy community in the late 1950s. It was significant, at least symbolically, therefore that, on an individual level, Rodgers directed that an official who he believed was too close to the road lobby should be removed from the Department (interview 10 May 1995). Lasting change demanded something more substantial, however, and the necessary institution had already been put in place just prior to Rodgers’ arrival at the DTp, in the form of a Transport Policy Review Unit (TPRU). Unlike Boyd-Carpenter and Watkinson, Rodgers was able to construct his own power base within the Ministry, (a sort of internal advocacy coalition) consisting of sympathetic officials, policy advisers and Junior Ministers. In this instance, Rodgers was working as an Executive Minister in order to change the balance of power within the DTp. The construction of this internal advocacy coalition within the DTp was augmented by members of the environmental advocacy coalition, such as Transport 2000 and Friends of the Earth, being brought into the Departmental consultative process for the first time. Consequently an influential new advocacy coalition was being constructed which united policy ‘insiders’ with relative ‘outsiders’. The emergence of this coalition owed much to the Minister’s power to develop relationships with actors not favoured by his predecessors. Instead of the commitment to completion of the long-term trunk roads plan which had been upheld in the Consultation Document, Rodgers and his advisers intended now to take the radical step of abandoning the plans for a strategic network in favour of a more flexible and selective approach, with some schemes given higher priority than others, and greater consideration given to environmental factors. In a sense, Rodgers carried with him a quite different set of intellectual baggage to that of Crosland, for example. This enabled him to ‘frame’ the transport problem differently. He had a long-standing interest in transport issues, dating back to his time as General Secretary of the Fabian Society from 1953–60. After being initially a supporter of the roads programme, he had become convinced that most of the major roads required were already in place, and so believed that resources should now be switched to public transport (interview 10 May 1995). As with so many of the agents of change on roads policy in the 1970s, such as the arrival on the scene of John Tyme, events within the DTp in the second half of the 1970s give a strong impression of a chance association of key individuals. There was pressure for change through expenditure cuts and the introduction of environmental ideas, but the 1976 Consultation Paper demonstrated that government was still resistant to major policy change. The arrival of Rodgers at the newly created DTp, however, presaged a fresh atmosphere much more receptive to change. Not only Rodgers himself, but other key Ministers and civil servants for the first time since the late 1950s challenged the authority of the


hegemonic roads policy community. In particular, the Junior Minister responsible for roads policy, John Horam, also had a long-standing interest in transport and definite ideas about how policy should proceed. In the 1960s, Horam had been transport correspondent of the Financial Times and reported on Barbara Castle’s work at the MoT. He had concluded that an integrated transport policy was not a realistic idea, but was concerned to create a level playing field which created choice. In this respect, he believed that the road engineers had gained far too firm a grip on transport policy as a whole (interview 22 August 1995). Rodgers therefore had a firm ministerial ally in challenging the roads community. The creation of the Transport Policy Review Unit (TPRU) was also an indication that key officials within the restructured DTp were dissatisfied with the existing culture. There was a sense that too many of the top people had an insular attitude, and that what was needed was a body to take more of an outside view of things, and find out what was really going on. Within the TPRU, David Holmes emerged as an important figure, and played a key role in preparing the White Paper. Holmes had served in the MoT since the 1950s, and was in an excellent position to not only provide an overview of policy, but to understand the politics of the changes which Rodgers and Horam were seeking to execute. Also within the DTp, the top official himself, Permanent Secretary Sir Peter Baldwin, strongly supported the work of the TPRU, and was personally sympathetic to the new approach adopted by the Ministers. For the first time, therefore, there was a powerful new advocacy coalition within government sympathetic to environmental ideas on transport policy, and anxious to inject a new culture into the DTp. Ranged against them, however, the roads community was not about to relinquish its hold on policy lightly. Here, the official leader of this community was the Director-General of Highways, John Jukes. Trained as an economist, Jukes was himself not a career roadsman, and for a period in the late 1960s had served in the MoT as Director-General of Research and Economic Planning. Appointed Director-General Highways in 1974, he accepted that there would have to be a levelling off in roads expenditure at some time (as indeed Rodgers believed), but that he saw his job as being to proceed with the programme as quickly as possible. In this context, he was pleased when he was able to push through expenditure on roads immediately prior to the six month moratorium on letting contracts in 1976. Fundamentally, he saw it as his job to fight the corner for roads within the DTp, as this was what he was paid to do (interview 19 July 1995). Jukes’ determination to fight for roads led to some intense meetings with Ministers and other officials. As Hamer describes, this culminated at a meeting at Sunningdale to discuss the forthcoming White Paper. Here, roads policy was not discussed at all, and when the draft of the chapter on roads arrived, John Horam took it home and changed it, which incensed Jukes and the roads community within the DTp (Hamer 1987:74).


In the event, the new advocacy coalition within the DTp was victorious. Crucially, the concept of the ‘strategic network’, which had guided trunk roads policy since Watkinson’s five major projects in the late 1950s, was now abandoned. Instead, the 1977 Transport White Paper announced: As a matter of national transport policy, the government intends to adopt a more flexible approach and to deal as urgently as possible with the most pressing needs in the ways most sensible for meeting them. This is a matter not of building to lines superimposed on maps and to rigid standards but of deciding on the right standard for each section of route and producing proposals for the most economical solution, taking into account environmental considerations…. There will be a more selective approach. This policy will mean improving roads in phases, dealing with the worst stretches first, and varying the standard of a road throughout its length to reflect the different degree of use. It may lead to less tidy solutions and demand more of the lorry driver and the motorist, but it is a necessary price to pay for putting resources where they are most needed. (Cmnd. 6836, 1977, paras. 248–9) These paragraphs of the White Paper represented the culmination of trunk roads policy change in the 1970s. It could be said to have taken policy to the borders of a paradigmatic shift, if not quite crossing the line. Thus the more selective approach signalled that roads would have to take their place in the queue for transport expenditure alongside other modes such as rail and bus. Indeed the White Paper explicitly stated that a primary outcome of the transport review would be more support for buses, and less for road construction (Cmnd. 6836, 1977, para. 293). In addition, the abandonment of the strategic network approach, long cherished by the roads community, broke the natural political and economic momentum of a programme which had basically continued undisturbed for two decades. At the same time, the White Paper did not explicitly abandon road building as a favoured policy ‘solution’. If the roads community had suffered a severe blow to its prestige and morale, then it might hope that, at some date in the future, it would re-establish its position. In stark economic, political and administrative terms, however, the late 1970s consolidated the gains made for environmental thinking in the 1977 White Paper. Consequently, in 1970–1 motorways and trunk roads accounted for 7.64 per cent of DoE expenditure, but this fell to 4.56 per cent in 1977–8 (although as Painter points out, this decline was also due to ‘slippage’ in the programme (Painter 1980a:180–1)). A symbolic blow was also struck with the abolition of the post of Director-General Highways in 1977, and proposals were put in motion which would eventually lead to the abolition of the Road Construction Units and a return to control by the local authorities in the early 1980s. It was significant also that the first Roads White Paper in 1978 was written by the members of the


TPRU who had been instrumental in preparing the 1977 White Paper, and not the roads community (interview 10 July 1995). This White Paper consolidated the decisions made in the Transport White Paper by envisaging a stable annual road budget of about £300 million for the next ten to twelve years, by which time the government expected that most of England’s road problems would be overcome (Cmnd. 7132, 1978). In abandoning the long-term plan for a strategic trunk roads network, Rodgers was acting as a ‘celibate’ Minister (in many ways mirroring Watkinson’s behaviour on the five main projects twenty years earlier). A new ‘peace treaty’ for roads, however, required the Secretary of State to act in a more ‘promiscuous’ fashion and utilise his skills as a Policy Broker. In this respect, the ‘moderates’ moderator’ of the Labour government had a natural aptitude for the task. Although the Minister was personally sympathetic to environmental arguments, he was also anxious to seek a rapprochement with the road lobby. As Sabatier holds, change is more likely to be made acceptable to competing interests if there exists some apolitical forum dominated by professional norms which legitimises policy change (Sabatier 1988:156). Rodgers followed this dictum when he appointed a committee in December 1976 to review the DTp’s method of appraising trunk road schemes and of traffic forecasting. The committee, under the Chairmanship of Sir George Leitch, Chairman of Short Brothers Ltd, was given the terms of reference of, first, commenting on, and recommending any changes in, the DTp’s method of appraising trunk road schemes, taking account of both economic and environmental factors, and comparisons with investment in alternative methods of transport. Second, the Leitch Committee was given the task of reviewing the DTp’s methods of traffic forecasting and how they were applied. In a long and detailed report, the Committee concluded that although it considered the current system of trunk road assessment, based on cost benefit analysis, was sound up to a point, a shift of emphasis was required away from valuations in money terms towards a comprehensive framework which would embrace all the factors and groups of people involved in a scheme assessment (DTp 1977, paras. 28.3.4). The clear implication here was that more intangible environmental factors should be a key element in trunk road assessment. The Committee was also critical of the DTp’s methods of traffic forecasting and in general recommended more openness and public visibility in the trunk roads planning systems. Like the Transport White Paper, the Leitch Committee made no fundamental challenge to roads as a policy ‘solution’. Perhaps its most important role, therefore, was in acting as a ‘lightning conductor’ politically which could run to earth many of the tensions and pressures which had been building up over the previous five years. Significantly, the Committee contained not only a representative from the Freight Transport Association (a group strongly associated with the road lobby), but also the Director of the Civic Trust, and a planner from British Rail. Perhaps even more significantly, four of the eight


members of the Committee had an academic background. Indeed, one of these, Dr Stephen Glaister of the London School of Economics, played a primary role in actually writing the report. Academics therefore played a key part here in not only legitimising policy change, but also in constructing a settlement which would accommodate the conflicting interests of the road and environmental communities. As Ian Hargreaves, transport correspondent of the Financial Times, commented: The Leitch Committee…already seems like a bench mark in a field of general disorder. Its 150,000 words of sober reasoning come at the end of a five year period in which public buildings have been stormed, equipment sabotaged, government inspectors abused at inquiries and protestors have even chained themselves to the inspectors’ tables [a reference here to one of John Tyme’s publicity stunts]. During the same period the Department of Transport’s response has often reflected a defensive inflexibility in the face of demand for change…. It is not primarily to Mr Tyme and those who have followed his example that Sir George Leitch’s committee has addressed itself. Composed half of academics itself, the committee has attempted to deal systematically with a range of complex criticisms about the use of computerised cost—benefit economic assessments of road schemes and the national traffic forecasts on which those assessments rely. (Financial Times 11 January 1978) In this context, it could be said that the Leitch Committee performed a highly effective job in providing a ‘peace treaty’ for Rodgers. For example, the BRF, placed severely on the defensive since 1973, concluded that the Leitch Report was a masterly review of the whole subject of road building procedures, and should be required reading because it clarified many issues previously obscure or unexplained (Commercial Motor 3 February 1978). Even more fundamentally for long-term policy change, the Leitch Committee was given permanent status as the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA). As we will see in Chapter 8, SACTRA was to have an important role in the 1990s in undermining roads as a policy ‘solution’. The final plank in Rodgers’ quest for a ‘peace treaty’ was provided by a 1978 White Paper which reported on a review of highway inquiry procedures, originally announced, like the Leitch Committee, in the 1976 Consultation Paper. The inquiries’ White Paper rejected one of the environmentalists’ chief demands that objectors at highway inquiries should have the right to challenge the fundamental need for the road, which would remain the responsibility of Ministers. On the other hand, the White Paper also made a number of concessions, including the inspectors being nominated by the Lord Chancellor rather than the DTp (in reality, the actual process of choosing inquiry inspectors continued much as before, making this a piece of political symbolism), and the


commitment to make more information public and at an earlier date in the planning system. Significantly, the White Paper also contained a new inbuilt element of a ‘peace treaty’ by a proposal to set up pre-inquiry procedural meetings. Thus it was hoped that deals could be done on controversial issues before official proceedings began (Cmnd. 7133, 1978). Weakening the hegemonic roads policy community: ideas and individuals When the 1970s began, the roads policy community was at the zenith of its power, but by the end of the decade its position had been severely undermined. Environmental ideas had entered the policy sector, with policy entrepreneurs such as John Tyme skilfully exploiting the ‘empty chair’ strategy employed by the RCC in the 1950s. Environmental ideas rode in on the back of exogenous factors such as public expenditure crises and the steep rise in oil prices, but from 1976 the dynamics of policy change took on a more endogenous character, chiefly through the activity of Bill Rodgers and his supporters within the DTp. As a Minister at times ‘promiscuous’ and at times ‘celibate’, Rodgers provides an excellent counterpoint to Harold Watkinson exactly twenty years earlier. Where Watkinson made a ‘celibate’ decision to go ahead with the five major projects and then become more ‘promiscuous’ as an unofficial leader of the ever strengthening roads policy community, so Rodgers made a ‘celibate’ decision to abandon the strategic network plan and then became more ‘promiscuous’ in constructing a ‘peace treaty’ which would take the sense of crisis out of the policy sector. In doing so, he damaged the long unchallenged invulnerability of the hegemonic roads community, but fell short of challenging road building as the principal transport policy ‘solution’. Both Watkinson and Rodgers were highly susceptible to the ‘empty chair’ style of lobbying, but Rodgers demonstrated to the roads community that they could not assume continuing ministerial support. Watkinson had placed popular consumerism at the heart of the ideas and values which underpinned road building, and hence the slogan ‘there are votes in roads’. For Rodgers, the protests at the public inquiries demonstrated that, even for a prosperous ‘Middle England’ this principle might no longer be true. Although there might well have been a significant element of nimbyism in many of the public inquiry protests, the fact that they were taking place at all signified a public disquiet about the benefits of new roads. In addition, the interventions of academic experts such as John Adams and Stephen Glaister challenged the authority of the expertise to be found within the DTp. For the moment, these new environmental ideas seemed to have gained the ascendancy over popular consumerism and the idea of roads as generators of economic prosperity. Rodgers’ ministerial career ended with the defeat of the Labour government in the 1979 general election, but his success in achieving his stated policy aims can be judged by the fact that, for the next ten years, the


policy area was one of low political salience. At the same time, the roads policy community was working quietly to reestablish its position, an objective which it had achieved by the end of the 1980s. This set the scene for a battle between the roads community and the environmentalists in the 1990s even more intense and acrimonious than that in the 1970s, but which would eventually see a fundamental undermining of the roads community, and the consequent arrival of third order change.

7 ‘Roads for prosperity’ versus ‘sustainable mobility’ New challenges and confrontations 1989–93

The past decade has seen a revolution in transport thinking in Britain — #8212;brought about by protests against road building on a scale unmatched anywhere else in Europe. In 1985, the Department of Transport felt confident that it could build a road wherever it wanted, whenever it wanted. In 1995, its road-building programme is in disarray. The once-mighty Department has been humbled by groups of local people around the country who have risen up in revolt against its destructive road schemes. A new Secretary of State for Transport has come into office promising a move away from roads as the basis of its transport policy. This is the biggest government rethink on transport issues since the dawn of mass car ownership four decades earlier. A transport revolution has begun. (Alarm UK, Roadblock, original emphasis) A more effective winning advocacy coalition At least superficially, events in the trunk roads sector in the 1990s carried many echoes of what had occurred in the 1970s. Initially, this gave the appearance of a policy cycle, with first one adversarial community and then the other holding the upper hand. Thus after environmental ideas had effectively transplanted themselves into the policy sector in the 1970s, in the 1980s road building once more became the primary transport policy ‘solution’. This culminated in the 1989 White Paper Roads for Prosperity, which effectively revived the concept of a strategic trunk roads plan, and envisaged a doubling of expenditure. In the early 1990s, therefore, the roads community had reasserted its hegemonic quality, and the task confronting the environmental community was as daunting as that faced by a previous generation two decades earlier. In fact, the challenge was to be even greater in that there were to be no extreme public expenditure or oil price crises of the type seen in the 1970s to provide a window of opportunity (see Doherty 1999). In response, however, the environmental community conducted an intense multi-arena campaign. There were echoes of the 1970s in that there were two chief facets to this activity. First, there were a series of direct action

‘ROADS FOR PROSPERITY’ VERSUS ‘SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY’ 137

protests which attracted a high degree of media attention (but this time with the construction sites rather than the public inquiries as an effective ‘arena without rules’). Second, alternative sources of expertise challenged the knowledge and authority of the roads community. This style of campaigning in itself, however, would have been unlikely to bring about ‘third order’ change, and a paradigmatic shift in transport policy. As the events in the 1970s and 1980s had proved, the environmentalists could build an effective advocacy coalition which could develop into a formidable adversarial policy community to oppose the roads community. In addition, environmental ideas could be effectively transplanted into the roads policy sector. At the same time, given the continued institutional strength of the roads community, something more was required to bring about a deeper and longer lasting change process. To pursue the transplanting metaphor further, the new plants might survive and even prosper for a time in the fresh environment, but a mutation process had to take place which would not only ensure that the plants would be more deeply rooted, but would also change the whole environment of the ‘garden’ (or policy sector) as a whole. In other words, it had to become an accepted truth within the core policy-making arena, almost as the air breathed by Ministers and officials, that road building was no longer the primary policy ‘solution’, and that alternative policy options must now be sought. As one senior official put it to us, in the case of trunk roads, he believed that if those within Whitehall seeking ‘third order’ change openly attacked DTp policy, then they would quickly lose credibility within the conventional policy network. Instead, he considered that a more effective technique was to resist policy initiatives from the DTp, while seeking to undermine and change the values of the roads advocates with relentless pressure from a wide range of alternative arenas. Thus, he believed that civil servants were adept at spotting ‘trends’, and that the Whitehall network would operate to bring about a change in the natural ‘flow’ of policy over time (interview 12 October 1995). Measuring these changes is, of course, difficult, especially as existing policies, like large oil tankers, may change direction imperceptibly at first (Dudley and Richardson 1998). Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s it had become clear that the Conservative government had finally rejected road building as a policy ‘solution’, to the extent that few major roads were being built at all or indeed were likely to be built in the foreseeable future. This paradigmatic shift was confirmed in a 1998 White Paper produced by the Labour government which had come to office in 1997. Thus the whole policy ‘environment’ had indeed been fundamentally changed, and the hegemonic roads policy community was in steep decline. It should be stressed here that ‘third order’ change was brought about without destroying the roads community institutionally. Instead, events in a number of arenas resulted in ideas being transmitted which undermined the roads community by infiltrating the policy core, and shifting the domi nant discourse. In this context, the concept of ‘sustainable development’, mutated into ‘sustainable


mobility’, imported from external arenas such as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, acted as a powerful unifying force around which the modern environmental advocacy coalition could form (see McManus 1996). The concept expressed basic values about the primacy of environmental concerns while also being general enough to encompass a wide range of core and secondary values. It proved to be a more than adequate adversary for the concept of ‘Roads for Prosperity’ (the title of the 1989 White Paper which effectively relaunched the hegemonic roads policy community). In the 1970s, groups such as the Transport Reform Group, FoE and Transport 2000, together with individuals such as John Tyme and John Adams, were successful to a certain degree in employing these methods to bring about policy change. In the 1990s, however, this distinctive approach was applied in a more coordinated, systematic and persistent style. This more thorough approach compared with two decades earlier was demonstrated in several ways: (i) The Department of the Environment acted to a much greater degree as a source of alternative policy ideas than in the 1970s. By the mid-1990s Environment Secretary John Gummer was quite interventionist and assertive on transport matters, although they were not directly his responsibility. Here, therefore, we have another type of ‘promiscuous’ Minister —#8212;one who goes beyond his official remit to influence policy change in another sector. When a Labour government returned to office in 1997, this more assertive role for the DoE was institutionalised through the creation of a giant Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions (DETR). This signalled a return to the departmental structure which was tried and failed in the early 1970s. Now, however, environmental ideas were more embedded in the ministerial culture. A further significant (but not decisive) institutional change was the hiving off of trunk roads to a Highways Agency in 1994. This was part of the Next Steps reform process involving a separation of policy-making and its execution which had continued across the whole of Whitehall during the 1990s. In the case of trunk roads, however, for the first time since the 1930s it robbed the DTp of direct responsibility for building the roads. Consequently the identity of the central policy-making core was no longer bound up with its ability to keep on building roads. (ii) Key policy entrepreneurs in groups such as FoE and Transport 2000 took advantage of the ‘policy windows’ opened by direct action on the construction sites to convey appropriate messages via the media to the policy core. Ironically, when the site occupations began, at Twyford Down in 1993, these established groups had abandoned the local groups and rejected a direct action strategy, a mistake which was to cause a great deal of suspicion and ill feeling between the direct action movement and groups such as FoE. If direct action developed into a type of social movement, however (e.g. Dobson 1991; Byrne 1997; Doherty 1998, 1999; Rootes 1999a, b; Wall 1999), then ‘third order’ policy change was actually brought about in a more systematic way. Much of what happened on the construction sites may have been relatively unorganised and had its own


unpredictable dynamics, but the manner in which events were presented to the world left little to chance as the direct action protests gathered momentum. This process culminated in the site clearance of the Newbury bypass early in 1996, when large-scale direct action was given massive media coverage, with FoE at the forefront of conveying the appropriate messages. In the 1970s, John Tyme may have utilised the media for his own purposes, but in the 1990s this process was employed on a much larger and more organised scale. (iii) As the preceding paragraph intimated, the environmental advocacy coalition, at least on the roads issue, was more coordinated and methodical than in earlier decades. This was illustrated particularly by the role of Transport 2000, and its Director Stephen Joseph, who was a key policy entrepreneur in the change process. For example, Joseph organised a Transport Round Table, which met monthly and contained within its membership not only the more orthodox and traditional members of the environmental advocacy coalition such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the National Trust, but also representatives from the more unorthodox and radical wing such as Alarm UK. Unofficially, the Transport Round Table also had some strong links with sympathetic officials and policy advisers in the DoE. Transport 2000 also organised a Transport and Health study group, which linked transport groups and the medical world to highlight the growing political salience of the dangers to public health of vehicle emissions. (iv) As the existence of the Transport and Health Study Group indicated, and expressed in concerns such as sustainable mobility, compared with the 1970s there was a widening and a deepening of the roads issue. In the 1990s, the suggestion of a link between vehicle emissions and the growing incidence of asthma, particularly in children; the suggestion that some diesel particulates may be carcinogenic; and the potential role of carbon dioxide, one of the gases found in vehicle emissions, as the primary so-called greenhouse gas which causes global warming, took the roads issue to a new level of political salience. This was evident particularly at the time of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, and in 1994 with the publication of a report on transport by the influential Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (Cm. 2674, 1994). In addition, the successor to the Leitch Committee, the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment, had an important role as an alternative source of expertise to that found in the DTp. This was particularly evident with its 1994 report which suggested that building new roads tended to have the effect of creating traffic rather than reducing it (SACTRA 1994). The large-scale publicity given to this important finding by SACTRA helped to underpin the political decision to drastically reduce the trunk roads programme. Key epistemic communities therefore gave concrete expression to the concept of ‘sustainable mobility’ and hence were extremely valuable recruits to the environmental advocacy coalition. (v) More detailed expert advice was given to the numerous local groups fighting particular road schemes. This task was undertaken particularly by Alarm UK, which basically issued ‘do it yourself kits to local groups on the most


effective strategy to adopt. Alarm UK had concluded that few local groups were likely to win via the public inquiry, and instead should concentrate their efforts on large-scale lobbying of key politicians and officials. This modern application of the ‘empty chair’ principle, previously adopted so successfully by the RCC and John Tyme, had a number of successes, and helped to shift the popular image of road building from a policy ‘solution’ to a policy ‘problem’. (vi) In the core policy-making arena itself, from the mid-1990s a succession of Ministers held office who were much more committed to policy change on transport issues. In addition to events at the DoE, referred to above, there was significant change in the DTp itself. A particular turning point here was the appointment of Brian Mawhinney as Transport Secretary in 1994. Mawhinney was much more sympathetic to environmental issues than any Transport Secretary since 1979, and had a particular concern about the adverse health effects of vehicle emissions. Consequently, he launched a ‘Great Debate’ on transport policy which, although inconclusive in many respects, did make it clear that the government had firmly moved away from roads as the policy ‘solution’. Mawhinney’s successor as Transport Secretary, Sir George Young, although not by nature as radical in his personal actions as Mawhinney, was notable for being a Transport Secretary who was also a member of FoE. This ministerial trend was continued with the election of a Labour government in 1997, and the appointment of Deputy Leader John Prescott as Secretary of State for the newly created DETR. Prescott invested a considerable amount of his personal political reputation and credibility in implementing an integrated transport strategy. Although by the late 1990s it had become clear that there were many political obstacles to fulfilling this objective, road building as the principal policy ‘solution’ in itself was firmly off the political agenda. (vii) The EU also acted as an alternative arena for opposition to road schemes. Although the EU has been less influential in transport than in other UK sectors, it does have at least some impact. For example, some groups opposing schemes have taken their case to the European Court (Bryant 1996), while the EU requirement to produce Environmental Impact Assessments has also created controversy on some schemes. On the other hand, the EU strategy to build Trans European Networks (TENs) in which roads play a prominent role, has also acted as a policy focus of hope for the roads community. By the late 1990s, therefore, the policy environment within the transport sector had generally become hostile to the roads community. Consequently, even the Highways Agency itself and a number of the largest construction companies had explicitly introduced environmental criteria to their conditions of operation. This remarkable shift from a decade earlier offers a notable example of how ‘third order’ policy change can fatally undermine a hegemonic policy community without directly attacking its structure. In this chapter we will describe how the roads community resurrected its fortunes in the 1980s and the gathering response to this challenge from the environmental advocacy coalition. Chapter 8 will describe and analyse the dynamics of the ultimate victory on the part of the


environmentalists and the almost total destruction of the ambitious Roads for Prosperity programme. Roads for Prosperity 1980–90 Given the slide away by government from building trunk roads in the 1970s, and the serious undermining of the hegemonic roads policy community, the degree to which this community revived itself in the 1980s was a remarkable turn in political fortunes. As we noted in the previous chapter, however, although the Labour government, and in particular Transport Secretary Bill Rodgers, took policy to the brink of ‘third order’ change, Ministers stopped short of a paradigmatic shift. Ultimately, this reflected Rodgers’ desireto form a ‘peace treaty’ between roads and environmental interests, and in this respect his policy was successful. Perhaps the most notable indicator of how matters stood at the beginning of the 1980s was provided by what became known as the Bushell case. This was the legal action referred to in the previous chapter brought by the Midlands Motorway Action Group and the M42 Action Group to prevent the construction of proposed motorways to be part of the M40 and M42 on the outskirts of Birmingham. This case ran like a thread through the 1970s debates on trunk roads policy, and its climax epitomised how the balance of power stood at the beginning of the 1980s. These groups were also significant in that they adopted an alternative strategy to that of John Tyme. Instead of disrupting public inquiries, they took the government to court, and sought redress through more orthodox, if costly, legal means. Thus in 1977 the protesters brought an action in the High Court to quash a decision by the Environment Secretary to refuse to reopen a public inquiry into the proposed sections of the M40 and M42. They argued that three years had elapsed between the 1973 public inquiry and the 1976 ministerial decision, during which time the arguments put forward at the inquiry had been invalidated by the energy crisis and other factors; and that objectors were not allowed to challenge traffic forecasts (The Times 25 October 1977). The High Court, however, ruled that strict rules of evidence did not apply to tribunals such as an inspector’s inquiry, and hearsay evidence was admissible provided the other side was given a fair opportunity to comment on it and contradict it (confirming the status of the inquiry as an ‘arena without rules’) (The Times, 20 December 1977). In 1979, however, in the Appeal Court, Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, with characteristic independence, recommended that the public inquiry into the schemes be reopened, as there had been a deplorable loss of confidence in public inquiries. In addition, he argued that traffic forecasts given at the inquiry could not be regarded as government policy— #8212;they were predictions by experts about the future, and objectors should be able to cross-examine and call evidence (Daily Telegraph 31 July 1979). This severe setback for the government was


redressed, however, by the House of Lords in 1980, which ruled by a four-to-one majority that Lord Denning was wrong, and decided instead that the decision to construct a national network of motorways was an administrative decision and government policy and so was not open to question at local public inquiries (The Times 12 February 1980). Bill Rodgers may have ditched the strategic trunk roads plan, and John Tyme may have, as Lord Denning argued, caused a public loss of confidence in public inquiries, but in the Bushell case the protesters had learned a hard lesson—not only that the government would only allow challenges to its authority to go so far, but also that fighting their case by orthodox means, Lord Denning notwithstanding, was unlikely to bring about a paradigmatic shift in policy. In the early to mid-1980s, the ‘peace treaty’ held well. Initially, the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, which came to power in 1979, was content largely to continue the policy devised by Rodgers and his team. Thus, although some major roads, such as the M40 and the M25 around London, continued to be completed, there was no return to the ‘Masterplans’ beloved of Watkinson, Marples and Walker, and indeed in 1981 the Road Construction Unit (RCU) headquarters lost their autonomy and became directly administered from the Regional Offices of the DoE, with the intention that they should be physically absorbed by 1986. Similarly, the sub-units had disappeared by the end of 1981. An indication of the lack of faith of the road lobby in government at that time was indicated by the suggestion from the construction company Tarmac in 1981 that an M42 extension in the Midlands could be built with private finance. Clearly Tarmac had concluded that government could no longer be relied upon to uphold the message that ‘there are votes in roads’, and that henceforth the company must learn to fend for itself (Dudley 1983: 117). Politically, however, there were significant changes in thinking taking place within the core policy-making arena. Once again, these core ideas were mutating in order to adapt themselves to the modern political environment. In fact, in the form of the Prime Minister, there was indeed to a great extent a return to the philosophy that ‘there are votes in roads’. Thus Mrs Thatcher declared her faith in ‘the great car economy’, and was hardly ever seen to travel by train. More fundamentally, within the DTp itself, a climate more sympathetic to roads was emerging as the 1980s progressed. For example, in 1982 Sir Peter Baldwin retired as Permanent Secretary, and was replaced by Sir Peter Lazarus. Members of the road lobby found Lazarus to be much more receptive to arguments about the link between building roads and economic growth, and also the problems of congestion caused by the ever-increasing numbers of vehicles (interview 31 October 1995). Ministerially, a major turning point was the arrival of Nicholas Ridley as Transport Secretary in 1983. An outspoken advocate of free markets, Ridley was a Minister with an independent mind who in a number of Departments adopted a highly ‘celibate’ style (see Ridley 1991; Richardson et al. 1992). Although


Ridley did not himself introduce any radical policy changes on roads (his chief preoccupation was the highly controversial deregulation of bus services), he was less sensitive to environmental arguments than his immediate predecessors. It could also be said that, as a civil engineer by profession, he naturally identified himself with the still large numbers of highway engineers working within the DTp. It could also be argued that, crucially, there was no longer a figure such as John Tyme to occupy the ‘empty chair’ and put indirect pressure on Ministers. Consequently, as the environmental lobby had largely diverted its attention away from roads policy, it was easier for Ministers to assume that a revival in road building would not arouse the degree of public controversy found in the 1970s. By 1987, therefore, the continued growth in traffic led the DTp to take a bold new initiative in order to set a fresh course for trunk roads policy. Consequently, the DTp offered the Treasury a deal. In the following year the Department would forgo an increase in roads expenditure if the Treasury would agree to a joint review of roads policy. John Major, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, agreed to their proposal, and the review went ahead (private information). Significantly, in 1989 John Major announced that plans by the Treasury to relax public spending rules limiting how private money could be used to improve what he called Britain’s congested road network were unlikely to result in a larger number of privately financed motorways and toll roads. Similarly, any plans to charge shadow tolls, where the public exchequer would pay for each car using a privately financed road, had also been ruled out, at least for the moment (see Cm. 693, 1989). Consequently, Major conceded that private finance would no longer be regarded as an alternative to public expenditure but as a way to increase overall spending on roads (Financial Times 6 May 1989). In other words, as in previous decades, the Treasury would have ultimate control of the size of the trunk roads programme, although the scrapping of the so-called Treasury Ryrie rules (named after the civil servant who devised them) allowed a more liberal policy to be implemented on privately financed roads. A key element in the process of policy change on roads was also the appointment of Paul Channon as Transport Secretary in 1987. Perhaps more than any Transport Minister since Ernest Marples in the early 1960s, Channon was prepared to act as an advocate of road building per se as the primary transport policy ‘solution’. He was particularly enthusiastic to see privately financed roads, but more fundamentally he believed that roads must be built to accommodate the ever-increasing growth in traffic. In particular, he and key DTp officials were deeply concerned by a National Road Traffic Forecast which predicted that total traffic would rise between 83 and 142 per cent by the year 2025, compared with traffic levels in 1988. The wide span of this forecast was accounted for by different rates of projected economic growth. The new raison d’être of trunk roads policy therefore rested less on popular consumerism or as an engine of regional economic growth, as found in the 1950s and 1960s, but more as a reflection of a perceived general economically


expansionist future. This was illustrated plainly by the title of the 1989 White Paper which set out the new trunk roads policy for England, Roads for Prosperity (Cm. 693, 1989). Thus in order to successfully transplant once more roads as the policy ‘solution’, the idea underlying it had mutated to the new politics of optimism, based on Thatcherite ideas of popular capitalism. The White Paper set out plainly the new policy: The government’s conclusion is that the main way in which to deal with growing and forecast inter-urban road congestion is by widening existing roads and building new roads in a greatly expanded road programme. The scale of the problem is such that it can be relieved only by a step change in both the size and the composition of the programme. (Cm. 693, 1989, para. 16) Just how large a ‘step change’ was envisaged was also made clear. Through assessment of the problems and opportunities on a route by route basis, an expanded programme of over £6 billion had been identified. When this was added to the existing programme the total trunk roads programme would be more than doubled (Cm. 693, 1989, paras. 28–9). Motorway widening schemes would dominate the early stages of the expanded programme, as it was in general faster and easier to widen existing roads than to build entirely new ones. Nevertheless, targets has been set for reducing by four years the average time taken to progress schemes from programme entry to opening for traffic (Cm. 693, 1989, paras. 47– 9). Financially, for the next three years, total Roads Vote provision would be 22 per cent higher in real terms than over the previous three years (Cm. 693, 1989, para. 18). Not surprisingly, the BRF could hardly contain its delight at this sudden policy change, with the Deputy Director declaring that at last the cash was available for the DTp to carry out its schemes. On the other hand, a worried FoE stated ominously that the White Paper skirted around the argument which said that motorways built to relieve congestion would quickly reach overcapacity themselves (Financial Times 19 May 1989). The hegemonic roads policy community had reasserted itself with a vengeance, and the environmental advocacy coalition faced a momentous task not only in shifting policy back to the previously negotiated ‘peace treaty’, but also in challenging the newly dominant policy image of Roads for Prosperity. As a Financial Times leader summarised the position: The new schemes…are not primarily intended to ease congestion for ordinary voting motorists. The policy has been sold to the Treasury, with the strong assistance of the Prime Minister, as a means of providing infrastructure for business. Some of this is to be exportoriented…. In this sense the new inter-urban roads strategy…is a statement of the


government’s confidence in the success of the enterprise economy and continued economic growth. It will certainly be trumpeted as such. (Financial Times 19 May 1989) Significantly, in evidence to the Select Committee of Public Accounts in 1989, the Permanent Secretary at the DTp, Sir Alan Bailey, claimed that most of the difference between forecast and actual traffic on the M25 could be explained by economic growth rather than ‘generated’ traffic (HC Committee of Public Accounts 1989, para. 717). Environmental ideas and the search for new arenas 1990–2 As the 1990s dawned, so the government made every effort to consolidate the new policy ‘frame’ set out in Roads for Prosperity (this ‘frame’ was basically supported by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee (HC Transport Committee 1990)). The chief symbol of this new outlook was a 1990 DTp report with the plain but significant title of Trunk Roads, England Into the 1990s (DTp 1990). Clearly the DTp wished to send a message that the 1990s would be a very different decade for road building from the 1970s and 1980s. Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson, who had replaced Paul Channon during 1989, shared his predecessor’s enthusiasm for a new era for trunk road construction (see Parkinson 1992:263–4), and the 1990 report strongly reflected this outlook. Although the report acknowledged there was concern about the effects of forecast traffic demand on emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas causing global warming, the answer was seen in terms of increased engine efficiency rather than reduced mobility (DTp 1990: paras. 1.9 and 1.10). Nevertheless, the reference to greenhouse gases illustrated immediately one important difference from the transport debate in the 1970s. The apocalyptic environmental implications of global warming, combined with increased awareness of the health hazards of vehicle emissions, widened and deepened the roads policy agenda considerably. In 1990 the government could still place these issues at the periphery of its policy ‘frame’ but as the decade progressed, even within government itself (and in particular the DoE), the effects of increased traffic on public health and the environment would move to the heart of the agenda-setting process. For the moment, however, the 1990 DTp report could declare that the government was committed to delivering the expanded programme announced in Roads for Prosperity as a matter of priority. Over the three year period to 1992–3 total expenditure of £4,007 million was planned, which was an increase of 50 per cent in real terms on the three year period to 1990 (DTp 1990: para. 2.3). To cope with this task, a new Road Programme Director (echoes of the DirectorGeneral Highways of the 1960s and 1970s) had been appointed, while a Motorway Widening Unit had also been set up (DTp 1990: para. 3.11). As in the era of Watkinson and Marples therefore, the epistemic community of highway


engineers required strengthening and reorganising if the massive new construction programme was to be successfully implemented. Amidst this apparently triumphant resurrection of the hegemonic roads policy community, it was a highly ironic twist of political fate which led to the issue of the M3 extension around Winchester, where in 1976 John Tyme had so effectively disrupted the public inquiry, to once more act as a nemesis for the roads advocates. The irony is even more intense because in the early 1990s it appeared that this controversial saga, which had continued for over twenty years, had finally been settled. After the uproar at the 1970s inquiry, the Inspector had recommended that the government should reconsider the proposed line of the M3 to the East of Winchester. In 1980 the Conservative government had accepted this recommendation, and appointed consultants to look again at the problem. In 1983 the consultants recommended a new route, further still to the East of the city, through Twyford Down. Initially, it appeared that the new line for the road would be acceptable to the ‘affected’ interests, as identified by the DTp. Gradually, however, there was a realisation locally that the new road would gouge a huge cutting through an area of great scenic beauty and of national archaeological importance. From small beginnings, the campaign to save Twyford Down gathered support from interests initially reluctant to disturb the existing ‘peace treaty’. For example, one of the opponents emphasises that she and other key objectors deliberately conducted a rational and measured campaign in order to avoid a repetition of the highly emotional scenes of the 1970s, and also because they were determined not to discredit a sound cause with inaccuracies (Bryant 1996:26). At the two highway inquiries in 1985 and 1987, therefore, opponents of the scheme adhered strictly to the ‘rules’. For example, unlike Tyme, they acknowledged the need for the road, and made no attempt to disrupt proceedings. In this respect, events had much more in common with the 1960s M4 case study described by Gregory, than with Tyme’s efforts to create his own distinctive ‘rules’. Unfortunately for the Twyford Down campaigners, their ‘model behaviour’ did not bring the desired results. They had played by the old fashioned rules reflecting the institutional modalities of consultation and, predictably perhaps, had got an old fashioned result. They had argued that the road should be put through a tunnel, and so avoid the damage and visual intrusion to the Down itself. Apparently, this plan did win favour with some key highways officials within the DTp, but was eventually vetoed by the Treasury on the grounds of cost. The inspectors themselves, after each inquiry, had recommended a cutting route rather than a tunnel. The inquiry had been offered the chance to create a new, and final, ‘peace treaty’ for the M3 but Ministers and officials failed to grasp the opportunity. The scene was now set for the environmentalists’ 1990s counterrevolution against the power of the road lobby. This time, however, there was to be increasing determination to bring about enduring ‘third order’ change and not to settle for the second order change achieved in the 1970s.


A landmark here was the publication in 1991 of the report, Transport: The New Realism (Goodwin et al. 1991). Ironically, the authors of this report, like the government, took as a starting point the 1989 National Road Traffic Forecasts for 2025, but came to very different conclusions than those to be found in Roads for Prosperity. Instead, they believed that a new realism was called for involving a policy mix which would include a substantial improvement in public transport, traffic calming, advanced traffic management systems and road pricing. In this new climate, road construction ‘to meet demand’ would no longer be the core of a transport strategy (Goodwin et al. 1991:165–6). The New Realism report was therefore a pathfinding signal of the momentous shift in the dominant policy discourse which would take place during the 1990s. A further irony for the government was that one of the earliest indications that all was not to run smoothly with implementing Roads for Prosperity came from the European Commission. Up to this time, the European Community had played little part in UK roads policy, but in October 1991 Environment Commissioner Carlo Ripa di Meana wrote to Transport Secretary Malcolm Rifkind warning him to block all work on a number of road projects, including Twyford Down and the East London River Crossing through the ancient Oxleas Wood and the M11 link in East London (all three of which were to become causes célèbres in the policy change process). As Environment Commissioner, the Italian Carlo Ripa di Meana was noted for his radical stance on a number of controversial issues, and now he accused the UK government of failing to draw up satisfactory Environmental Impact Assessments, under the 1985 Directive, which came into force in 1988. The Environment Commissioner could not place any immediate sanctions on Britain, but there was the threat of eventual cases at the European Court of Justice. New perspectives on environmental ideas were therefore seeping into Whitehall, even if the Commission in itself was unlikely to bring about radical policy change (Guardian 18 October 1991). The fact that the Commission had been extensively lobbied by a number of UK local anti-roads groups, also indicated how ‘empty chair’ activity in the supranational arena could have indirect effects on changing the climate of opinion in the national arena. Running parallel to the potential time bomb for the government of Twyford Down in the early 1990s was the development of the anti-roads group Alarm UK. In a development reminiscent of twenty years earlier, when local protests predated controversy over the trunk roads programme, Alarm UK was born out of the campaign against road developments in London. Thus in the early 1980s the DTp devised the London Road Assessment Studies as a way of easing the serious traffic congestion on the capital’s roads. Basically, the studies involved the construction of an ‘Inner M25’, mirroring the outer motorway circle already constructed. The publication of the early Assessment Studies in 1988 sparked off a large number of local protests, which eventually became coordinated by the Transport 2000 Director Stephen Joseph (who was to emerge as one of the key policy entrepreneurs and leaders of the advocacy coalition fighting Roads for


Prosperity). From an initial meeting, the umbrella group Alarm was born. Alarm set out to create its own framework of protest, bypassing official structures such as highway inquiries. Alarm did not so much lead the local groups as provide advice on the most effective way to campaign. With some financial assistance from FoE, Alarm planned some central events, and also set out to challenge the DTp’s dominant discourse on roads. Thus the DTp’s road ‘improvements’ became Alarm’s road ‘alterations’, and the ‘Western Environmental Improvement Route’ became the ‘Earls Court Bypass’ (Alarm UK 1995:10). As a result of this pressure, in 1990 (just as the full plans for Roads for Prosperity were being drawn up) Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson withdrew all the London Road Assessment Studies. From this success, in 1991 Alarm became Alarm UK, with the aim of challenging and eventually destroying Roads for Prosperity. The experience in London had already provided a blueprint for success, while another big advantage of the group’s strategy was that, rather than involving them in organising costly campaigns, it harnessed the latent power of local protest groups. By supplying them with ‘do-it-yourself’ protest packs, effective pressure could be imposed on the policy core by indirect means. By the mid-1990s, 300 publicity stunt devised by Alarm UK was to drive a bulldozer to the DTp local groups were affiliated to Alarm UK (Alarm UK 1995:16). One early to deliver a petition signed by 1,000 people opposed to the threat which the East London River Crossing posed to Oxleas Wood (Guardian 25 November 1991). This 1991 incident illustrates that, even in the very early 1990s, an antiroads advocacy coalition was forming to fight the resurrected hegemonic roads policy community. The political potency of sustainable development Although many of the new activists were young people who would not have been involved in the 1970s protests, it could be said that the gains made by John Tyme, John Adams and others had left an institutional residue which could not be erased by the roads community. For example, the existence of a body such as the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA), which had sprung from the Leitch Committee, offered an alternative source of expertise to that found within the DTp. Even more crucially, however, environmental ideas had been placed firmly on an institutional agenda internationally. The DTp in Britain might extol the virtues of road building, but the British government as a whole could not ignore these environmental ideas and hope that they would go away. Ministers were compelled to participate in international forums where agreements on subjects such as greenhouse gases and vehicle emissions would have to be bargained and then implemented. In these international arenas, therefore, environmental ideas had successfully mutated so that, to a much greater extent than in the 1970s, they could be transplanted into sectors such as transport. (However, as Smith points


out, there are difficulties in winning international agreements within transnational epistemic communities, see Smith 1993:38.) In this context, a major turning point was the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, which published a report, Our Common Future (Brundtland 1987). Crucially, this report put forward the politically potent concept of ‘sustainable development’, defined as: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations, to meet their own needs’. For both environmental groups and harassed politicians, therefore, the adoption of policies which encompassed ‘sustainable development’ apparently combined a responsible attitude towards environmental issues with the virtues to be gained from economic growth. A term such as ‘sustainable development’ can of course be given a multitude of interpretations, but politically it has the great asset of appealing to the widest possible constituency. It also allowed the environmental advocacy coalition to maximise the spectrum of interests under the umbrella of ‘sustainable development’. Thus a sustainable transport policy could bring together a ‘promiscuous’ Minister and a wide range of environmental groups. In the 1990s, therefore, it could be said that the discourse on ‘sustainable development’ at last gave the environmental coalition an effective counter to that of ‘there are votes in roads’ which had brought about the hegemonic roads policy community in the 1950s. In hard policy terms, the British government first set out its strategy for sustainable development in the 1990 White Paper, This Common Inheritance (Cm. 1200, 1990). In turn, this reflected the main themes of the EC Fifth Environmental Action Programme (Cm. (92) 23/11, 1992). The key 1990s arena in this context, however, was the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, popularly known as the Earth Summit (itself a term heavy with political symbolism). It could be said that the Rio Earth Summit was a punctuated equilibrium in that it shifted the image of environmental issues from being relatively peripheral politically to apparently requiring urgent action if life on earth as we know it was to survive. Thus the Earth Summit adopted Agenda 21, an action plan for the pursuit of sustainable development into the twenty-first century, and consequently the UN appointed a Commission on Sustainable Development to monitor the implementation of Agenda 21. For its part, the EC, in developing its Fifth Environmental Action Programme, translated the objective of a common transport policy into one of sustainable mobility. Sustainable mobility was also the key concept of the Commission’s 1992 White Paper on the future development of the common transport policy (COM (92) 494). This quest for sustainable mobility has particular relevance in the policy area of vehicle emissions, where the poisonous substances involved have been linked with problems such as learning difficulties in children, the increasing incidence of respiratory diseases such as asthma, and a potentially catastrophic warming of the earth’s atmosphere through the


production of so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (Dudley 1995a: 50). Even in the 1980s, these emission issues had achieved political salience when a number of studies suggested that the cumulative absorption of lead by children could inhibit brain development. Consequently, EC directives were issued which set limits for lead in air and in petrol, and the oil companies began providing unleaded petrol. In the 1990s, however, these emission issues had widened and became even more politically salient. A particularly vivid example occurred in London in December 1991, when for four days abnormally high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were recorded. There was strong evidence to suggest that vehicle emissions were the dominant source of the pollution, and the Department of Health reported that the death rate in London rose by 10 per cent during those four days. Alarming events such as these can be highly effective in coupling the policy streams, and during the 1990s the EU introduced progressively tighter directives not only on vehicle emissions (including, from 1993, the requirement that all new cars be fitted with three-way catalytic converters, which eliminate 90 per cent of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons), but also on Ambient Air Quality Assessment and Management. In addition, the EU nations signed at the Rio Earth Summit the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which included a commitment to take measures aimed at returning emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the year 2000. (At the Kyoto climate change conference in 1997 the UK made a legally binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emission to 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels by the period 2008 to 2012.) Notwithstanding Roads for Prosperity, in the 1990s new knowledge about the harmful effects of vehicle emissions was seriously undermining the values which underpinned roads as a policy ‘solution’. New ideas about sustainable mobility were becoming more widely accepted internationally, and the UK was inevitably caught up in this process. The chief manifestation domestically was the increasingly assertive line on transport issues taken by the Department of the Environment (DoE). As we noted in the previous chapter, the DoE might have been a creation of the 1970s, but in that decade environmental ideas did not penetrate to its political and administrative core. In the 1990s, however, ideas about sustainable development became much more pervasive within the DoE generally. One important turning point here was the arrival of Michael Heseltine as Environment Secretary in 1990. Heseltine had been out of government since resigning as Defence Secretary in 1986, and during that period had employed Tom Burke of the Green Alliance to write some of his speeches. In the 1970s, Burke had been Director of Friends of the Earth, and so had been one of the principal members of the environmental advocacy coalition during that period. Heseltine had been impressed with Burke’s ideas, and in 1991 brought him into the DoE as a Special Adviser. Burke made transport one of his priorities, and set about building up expertise on the subject within the Department, which up until then he considered had been poor. Consequently, he gave encouragement and


impetus to young and sympathetic officials such as Richard Wakeford and Matthew Quin (interview 12 October 1995). Burke realised that in order to challenge Roads for Prosperity the best strategy was not to confront the DTp, but to influence ideas and values within Whitehall as a whole, and so change the policy ‘flow’. In order to do this, it was particularly important to challenge the expertise which underpinned the DTp’s trunk roads strategy (interview 12 October 1995). From 1991, therefore, the environmental advocacy coalition had one of its most experienced and key members at the heart of government. There was also one other dimension to Burke’s presence as a Special Adviser which gave it a particular political importance. As one of a grouping of so-called ‘liberalenvironmentalists’, he was part of a reformist philosophy that sought to promote environmental concern without abandoning the holy grail of economic growth (i.e. sustainable development). Liberal-environmentalists would argue that market signals need to be changed. This would lead to the creation of a level playing field, allowing the positive aspects of the market to work efficiently without damaging the environment (Eves et al. 1995:476). The ideas of the liberal-environmentalists therefore fitted well with those of a Conservative government devoted to the market model. Politically, it was important to demonstrate that environmental ideas need not necessarily be associated with policies involving greater government management and intervention. Thus policies such as road tolls, which as we have seen had been debated within government since the 1950s, could become more politically fashionable as policy ‘solutions’. They combined the virtues of the market with the potential for the revenues to be spent on more sustainable concepts such as encouraging public transport and the development of more environmentally friendly vehicles. (There remained, however, the vexed question of making tolls politically acceptable to generations of motorists used to roads being free at the point of use. In this respect, if not in road building itself, the ideas inherent in popular consumerism were carried forward over the years.) Even as plans were being laid for implementing the Roads for Prosperity programme, therefore, counter ideas about sustainable mobility were becoming embedded within certain sections of government, particularly the DoE. It is an interesting hypothetical question to speculate on the extent to which these factors alone might have frustrated the ambitions of the DTp. In the event, however, this new knowledge about health and environmental issues, was to be given a vital ‘megaphone’ effect (Mazey and Richardson 1992) which would amplify issues concerning sustainable mobility to the top of the political agenda. (However, as Toke points out, environmental groups such as anti-roads protests may do more than this, such as shaping the social construction of an issue (Toke 1999:101).)


Twyford Down, Oxleas Wood and intimations of mortality for Roads for Prosperity 1992–3 In the 1970s, the exploitation of public inquiries as ‘arenas without rules’ effectively transmitted the ideas of the anti-roads movement to the heart of government. In the 1990s, the equivalent of this process was performed by direct action on the road construction sites. From small beginnings at Twyford Down in 1993, the direct action movement built to a climax with the large-scale occupation of the site of the Newbury bypass in 1996. The dynamics of what became a vital instrument in the process of ‘third order’ changes are complex, but in essence it could be said that what began as a desperate protest at Twyford Down by a relative handful of local residents and radical green activists, by the time of Newbury had become not only a much wider social movement, but had also been appropriated by the environmental establishment as a highly valuable vehicle for the promotion of policy change. Hence a totally comprehensive account of the dynamics of this direct action phenomenon are beyond the scope of this study (see Wall 1999). Here, however, we will attempt to trace how events on the construction sites were mirrored by crucial shifts in the policy ‘flow’ at the centre. As Tom Burke had shrewdly judged, if a multi-arena strategy could build an atmosphere of high crisis on trunk roads policy, then there was a good chance that within Whitehall generally roads would be abandoned as the policy ‘solution’, and the formerly hegemonic roads policy community would this time (unlike the 1970s) be fatally undermined. By the mid-1990s key environmental policy entrepreneurs such as Burke himself and Transport 2000 Director Stephen Joseph, had come to understand how effectively the policy streams could now be coupled, i.e. since the 1970s environmental ideas on roads had mutated (particularly with the addition of the health issue) and with direct action effective in shifting the dominant discourse the concept of sustainable mobility could be successfully transplanted into the policy core. Initially, however, there was a strong element of chance and the politics of the unexpected in the early life of the direct action movement at Twyford Down. Thus in February 1992 environmentalists and local people spent a weekend occupying two railway bridges due for demolition as part of the Twyford Down project. The protesters included supporters of Friends of the Earth and the Twyford Down Association, the leading residents’ group fighting the road. In addition, six protesters from the radical green group Earth First! were arrested (Independent 17 February 1992). Earth First! had been formed in 1991, and was the first evidence of the new counter-cultural direct action movement (Doherty 1998:371; Wall 1999:40–64). The group was derived from the radical United States group Earth First!, founded in 1980 to campaign on wilderness issues (although the group became split ideologically and broke up in 1990 (see Predelli 1994:123– 9)).


This February 1992 protest established the principle of direct action at Twyford Down, but in the event was to prove something of a false dawn. In the run-up to the 1992 general election, the Labour party had promised that if elected it would halt the Twyford Down project, and review it, particularly in the light of the EU Commission’s call for an Environmental Impact Assessment. When the Conservatives were returned to power, then all hope for halting the project appeared to have disappeared, and in June of that year a final march along the M3 route was organised by Friends of the Earth, while in July the European Commission announced that it would not be proceeding with the case against the UK government in respect of Twyford Down, and the Twyford Down Association admitted defeat (Bryant 1996:206–16). Neither could the anti-roads groups take much heart from the opinions and values of the Transport Secretary appointed in 1992, John MacGregor. Within government circles, MacGregor was known as a consolidator rather than an innovator, who generally followed the Party line. Thus a Financial Times interviewer in October 1992 found that the Transport Secretary’s views could be summed up in three words: roads, roads, roads (Financial Times 19 October 1992). MacGregor himself acknowledged that it would be nice to see more traffic switch from road to rail, but it was just not practical. As long as people kept buying more cars and using them, they were going to need more road space. In fact, he sometimes thought that the more extreme environmental lobbies didn’t recognise just how strong the pressure was from the public for bypasses (Financial Times 19 October 1992). MacGregor could therefore be placed firmly in the Watkinson and Marples school of roads advocates, and this seemed to make him ideally equipped to implement the Roads for Prosperity programme. In fact, however, in one respect MacGregor did emerge as something of an innovator. During his two years at the DTp (1992–4) he became highly enthusiastic about the possibilities of road tolls as a ‘solution’ for congestion and a means of raising money for transport investment, and initiated research and trials into the technology required for previous types of tolling systems. Under MacGregor it appeared that tolling was ‘an idea whose time had come’. As MacGregor himself acknowledged, although road pricing was likely to prove politically unpopular, the alternative would be even worse: ‘Is increasing congestion, and ultimately gridlock, a more attractive option?’ (Financial Times 19 November 1992). Within government, there was also a growing awareness of the financial implications of implementing Roads for Prosperity. Ministers were politically committed to a new age of road building, but as the 1990s progressed there was an increasing concern about how these roads would actually be paid for. Thus in November 1992, in Chancellor Norman Lamont’s Autumn Statement, it was announced that spending on roads would remain unchanged for the next three years at around £2 billion per year. It was anticipated that a reduction in contract prices would allow more starts to be made in future years, but nevertheless it was clear that more money would be needed to gain full momentum for the programme. Consequently, MacGregor announced that he hoped to see greater


involvement of the private sector in the design, financing, building and operating (DBFO) of new roads (Financial Times 13 December 1992). Unlike in the 1950s and 1960s, the government wanted the private sector to share the load in financing road building, and over the next four years DBFO would become more politically salient. Nevertheless, as 1993 dawned, there was nothing to suggest that the Roads for Prosperity programme was in any trouble. Indeed, in January the DTp produced a Good Roads Guide (DTp 1993) which the Transport Secretary hoped would be used by local action groups as well as designers and planners (Independent, 7 January 1993). Meanwhile, in February, a High Court judge turned down an appeal by protesters that the government had not acted unlawfully in issuing a compulsory purchase order for Oxleas Wood (Independent, 20 February 1993). At the same time, in the 1993 Budget Norman Lamont announced plans to increase road fuel duties by at least 3 per cent in real terms every year from 1994 as part of moves to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas. This announcement reflected not only the continuing tension within government between Roads for Prosperity and implementing the sustainable mobility agenda, but also the commitment to employing the price mechanism to bring about change. In the summer of 1993, however, there were the first stirrings of the momentum against road building which would lead to ‘third order’ change. By a peculiar irony, one of the initial breakthroughs for the environmental advocacy coalition came courtesy of the BRF. Although the European Commission had withdrawn its objections at Twyford Down, it continued to threaten the government with legal action over the lack of an Environmental Impact Assessment for the East London River Crossing at Oxleas Wood. Similarly, although the local protesters had been defeated in the High Court, they had decided to take their case to the Appeal Court, while on the site of the proposed road itself, the newly formed group People Against the River Crossing was holding a number of protest meetings and demonstrations. It could be said that People Against the River Crossing was something of a rainbow alliance, consisting as it did of local residents, environmental Establishment groups and radical green activists such as members of Dragon, a pagan group. Although there was no doubting the ideological commitment of the members active in People Against the River Crossing, the group also benefited from the experience of members of Alarm (now Alarm UK) who had enjoyed such success in the 1980s in defeating the London Assessment Studies. With a sharp eye for publicity and attracting wide media coverage, People Against the River Crossing was pioneering techniques which would prove highly effective in filling the ‘empty chair’ over the next few years. The rainbow composition of the group also indicated that, to a far greater extent than in the 1970s, the environmental advocacy coalition was uniting to form a formidable political force to shift the perceptions of the policy core against roads. Even as early as May 1993, all this


proved too much for the BRF, which proposed re-routeing the East London River Crossing away from Oxleas Wood (Guardian 21 May 1993). Even more than the practical consequences, this switching of sides by a prominent member of the hegemonic policy community had considerable symbolic significance, for it demonstrated publicly that the roads advocates were vulnerable. What might have been construed by the roads advocates as a piece of good public relations, was in fact a key indicator that the character of the policy debate on road building was shifting towards the ‘sustainable mobility’ discourse. Significantly, more than 3,000 people and organisations signed a pledge promising to use non-violent civil disobedience if the bulldozers moved into Oxleas Wood, and in July 1993 the government scrapped plans to build the road through this route. Despite two public inquiries, and £31 million being spent on preparation, a coordinated multi-arena campaign had left the government exposed and ready to submit to the protesters. Steven Norris, Minister for Transport in London, states that he argued hard to John MacGregor that the road should be taken out of the programme, freeing up the resources for better purposes, and at the same time ridding the government of an unpopular irritant. He argues that the protesters’ actions played little part in this decision, but the fact that he refers to the issue as an unpopular irritant suggests that the protests did have a significant effect (Norris 1996: 194–5). Meanwhile, running simultaneously with Oxleas Wood, events at Twyford Down were finally coming to a head. Just as the Twyford Down Association and national environmental groups such as FoE had admitted final defeat in 1992, so the apparently last ditch resistance was taken up by the Friends of Twyford Down, a group of local residents determined to fight on. Joining with members of the Donga tribe, who had encamped on the construction site during 1992, a succession of direct action protests took place on the trunk road construction site. For example, in May 1993, a protest took place in which fifty-two people were arrested (Independent 24 May 1993). At first, the protesters genuinely believed that they could halt construction of the road. When it became clear that this would be impossible, however, so the strategy became to draw public attention to what was happening at Twyford Down, and what would happen in many other places if the Roads for Prosperity plan were to be implemented. Deserted by the environmental establishment (in contrast to the more systematically organised campaign at Oxleas Wood), the direct action protesters had stumbled upon a highly effective way not only of acting as a ‘megaphone’ for the sustainable mobility discourse, but also acting as a rallying point for more radical environmental protest. On a more practical level, it also brought home to the government the likely huge security costs of building Roads for Prosperity. As with Oxleas Wood, the climax of events at Twyford Down arrived in July 1993, when a mass trespass took place on the construction site. Subsequently, seven of those arrested who had defied an earlier High Court order to stay away from the site were jailed for twenty-eight days for contempt. While in prison, they were visited by Carlo Ripa di Meana and also Chris Smith, Labour’s


Environment spokesman. As one of those imprisoned, Emma Must, commented, the fact that people were prepared to go to jail in fighting against roads was a symbolic turning point in that it demonstrated to government the likely future political and economic cost of its road plans. It was therefore probably no coincidence that the Oxleas Wood road plans were cancelled at about this time (interview 4 September 1995) (in fact, several of those imprisoned later sued successfully for wrongful arrest). Although the road was built, the Twyford Down protest had several significant long-term consequences. Emma Must herself became a prominent anti-roads campaigner working for Alarm UK and Transport 2000. In addition, Rebecca Lush, another of those imprisoned, was instrumental in the setting up of Road Alert!, a group which coordinated the often unorganised direct action protests on road construction sites. On the other hand, Twyford Down also caused great tension and suspicion to develop between the direct action protesters and established environmental groups, in particular FoE. The protesters who had fought alone early in 1993 considered that they had been betrayed by FoE, and these wounds were not to be easily healed. It could also be said that the M3 extension through Twyford Down itself played a part in shifting the popular image of road building towards the environmentalists. Pictures of the huge cutting through the chalkland seemed to symbolise the detrimental effects on the environment of the trunk roads programme. It was certainly highly ironic that the road, which had attracted such national political attention since John Tyme’s protests in the mid-1970s, should leave this one final legacy. Even more than those involved in the Twyford Down and Oxleas Wood protests could have realised at the time, July 1993 represented perhaps the turning point in the drive towards ‘third order’ change. Although superficially the Roads for Prosperity programme remained intact, after that date its political credibility, and that of the hegemonic roads community, would never be the same again.

8 The destruction of Roads for Prosperity From hegemony to ignominy 1993–9

The green organizations involved in the anti-roads campaign muster far more active members than all the political parties sitting in the House of Commons, and the disproportion is particularly large among younger voters. The main parties were all split on the roads question and rarely led the argument. The anti-roads movement used a wider variety of political protest, ranging from sabotage and mass civil disobedience on the one hand, to a subtle understanding of the Whitehall power-play and the use of research to sway opinion, which left most opposition politicians wallowing far behind…. Ministers rarely spoke publicly about the issues involved, and political leaders found themselves unable to make capital from them…. Here is a new politics confronting an Old Constitution. (Andrew Marr Ruling Britannia. The Failure and Future of British Democracy. 314–15) A new consolidated environmental advocacy coalition The contrasting character of the Oxleas Wood and Twyford Down campaigns reflected the alternative approaches of those seeking to destroy Roads for Prosperity and the inherent tensions between them. On the one hand, Oxleas Wood had a linear quality to it, with a wide membership and the benefit of the experience already gained by groups such as Alarm UK. On the other hand, there was a stark discontinuity about Twyford Down, with the direct action protesters fighting on when they had been abandoned by all the more orthodox and established groups. These differences had two chief effects. First, there developed an ongoing and persistent debate amongst the environmental groups about the relative merits of direct action and more orthodox lobbying techniques. There were those who had doubts about the extent to which direct action could be controlled, and whether its dynamics might ultimately be a distraction from achieving the objective of destroying Roads for Prosperity. Second, amongst the coordinators of the direct action, such as Road Alert!, there was considerable suspicion about the motives and commitment of the


environmental establishment. There was deep-seated ill-feeling about how it was considered they had been deserted in their hour of need at Twyford Down by groups such as FoE, and this wound would not be easily healed. Throughout the intense dramas of the national campaign in the mid1990s, therefore, there was a need to ensure that the two wings of the environmental advocacy coalition could be held together, and that at least a significant degree of methodical coordination could be applied to the multi-arena campaign. This was essentially what had been lacking in the 1970s, where such individuals as John Tyme and John Adams successfully undermined the roads community, but there was no deep-seated and coordinated network to consolidate the gains made. In the 1990s, Transport 2000 performed a key role in this respect. As we saw in the previous chapter, Transport 2000, although chiefly financed by rail interests, represented a politically sophisticated alliance of rail and environmental groups, which had the potential to ‘invade’ the roads sector. In the 1990s, under its enterprising Director, Stephen Joseph, Transport 2000 did just that, and took a more politically aggressive role than in earlier decades. Thus Joseph explicitly set out a strategy for the group to become a vital networking link which could hold the large-scale anti-roads campaign together. Although Transport 2000 had been on DTp consultation lists for many years, he did not believe that they were a true ‘insider’ group, particularly on key policy matters. Consequently an alternative approach was required (interview 15 June 1995). We noted earlier that Joseph played an important role in the setting up of Alarm UK. He saw this group as one which could penetrate new arenas and offer a fresh approach to anti-roads lobbying (interview 15 June 1995). Transport 2000 provided some financial assistance for Alarm UK, and liaised closely with its leaders. Another important (if little publicised) Transport 2000 initiative was the setting up of the Transport Round Table. This consisted of representatives from a wide range of groups, including those not necessarily associated previously with transport issues, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust, the Youth Hostels Association, and the Countryside Commission. Not only did the Round Table make these groups part of the anti-roads alliance, but it also allowed them to liaise informally with the more radical wings of the antiroads movement such as Alarm UK and Road Alert! For example, at a meeting in December 1993 there was a discussion on whether any national organisations would be able to help in the training of volunteers for nonviolent direct action (Minutes of Transport Round Table 17 December 1993). Although members of the environmental ‘Establishment’ might have been sensitive about being publicly associated with the direct action movement, for the purposes of the campaign it was vital that they be brought ‘on side’ in understanding what was at stake! Thus at the same meeting the potential for disrupting public inquiries was also discussed (Minutes of Transport Round Table 17 December 1993). The Transport Round Table could also act as a point of liaison with sympathetic ‘insiders’. For example, at a meeting in October 1994 a note was

THE DESTRUCTION OF ROADS FOR PROSPERITY 159

read out from Tom Burke (who, as we have seen, was a Special Adviser at the DoE) in which he expressed the view that MPs were not feeling coordinated pressure on transport, except on individual road schemes. Consequently, he suggested a new focus on a lobbying campaign of MPs, including not only speaking to core supporters, but also more coordinated chats with groups of MPs, including tea parties which could be sponsored by a particular MP. He also proposed the setting up of a new All Party Transport Policy Group (minutes of Transport Round Table 27 October 1994). This note illustrates not only a good example of Burke’s multi-arena strategy, in order to change the policy ‘flow’ within Whitehall, but also the degree of coordination with key government ‘insiders’ on the part of the 1990s environmental advocacy coalition. Following up Burke’s suggestion, in February 1994, Sir Geoffrey Pattie, a sympathetic Conservative MP who was prominent in opposing the proposed widening of the M25, hosted a meeting in Parliament on an influential report on transport policy by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (Cm. 2674, 1994). This meeting was closed to the press. Another significant example of ‘insider’—‘outsider’ coordination occurred in February 1995, when at a Round Table meeting it was suggested that more ‘respectable’ direct action was needed to get the Cabinet worried about the transport/environment crisis. In addition, not enough headway was being made on the roads and the economy issue to impress key Ministers (Minutes of Transport Round Table 7 February 1995). At a later meeting, it was noted that government sources were warning that the road lobby was seeking to discredit the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution report, and had made an impression on some sceptical Ministers. In particular, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, was not impressed by the evidence. Consequently, Ministers such as Clarke needed to hear environmental arguments from people they would trust, such as the Confederation of British Industry and Tory Constituency parties (Minutes of Transport Round Table 12 April 1995). One other initiative particularly encouraged by Joseph was informal dinner parties held by supporters of the cause, but also pillars of the Establishment. These included the Marchioness of Worcester and Sir Crispin Tickell, Warden of Green College, Oxford. Ministers were invited to these dinner parties, as were environmentalists, and it was seen as a particularly effective means of conveying the appropriate messages. There were, however, limits to the degree of collective action attained by the Transport Round Table. Thus in June 1994 Joseph tabled a paper setting out the case for a coordinated campaign on transport policy. At this meeting, there appeared to be broad support for the concept (Minutes of Transport Round Table 30 June 1994). By October, however, it was noted that few groups wanted to be part of an overarching campaign, and instead would like to buy into specific joint activities (Minutes of Transport Round Table 27 October 1994). For example, a letter from Charles Secrett, Executive Director of FoE, rejected the notion of a joint raising of funds and acting as almost one organisation. Instead,


he supported closer work on a small selected number of projects where an overt rather than tacitly assumed united front would pay tangible political dividends, and where different issue expertise would bring synergies, without becoming unwieldy, for example on major policy research (letter 29 September 1994). Similarly, Barbara Young, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, wrote that they would not be able to participate in any activities that went beyond Charity Commission guidelines on political activity, nor would they want to be associated with mass events that would be liable to disruption (letter 26 September 1994). Consequently, in January 1995 it was agreed not to try and develop a major joint campaign, but to use the Round Table as an information exchange and to develop shifting alliances of Round Table groups on specific campaigns, such as the Parliamentary campaign (Minutes of Transport Round Table 5 January 1995). It could be said that an ‘Establishment’ environmental group, such as the RSPB, was reluctant to be publicly associated with the direct action movement (even if it did so privately at the Transport Round Table), while FoE had its own transport organisation and agenda, and feared becoming subordinate to Transport 2000. Nevertheless, the failure of Joseph’s proposal illustrates that even in an advocacy coalition which shares basic values of ‘sustainable mobility’, collective action which publicly expressed those shared values cannot be guaranteed. Here, questions of organisational difference and perspective are even more important. Collective action on road building was one thing, but on an integrated transport policy it was another matter entirely. (A fact which the Labour government was to discover in the late 1990s.) In the specific objective of the destruction of Roads for Prosperity, however, the Transport Round Table was an important link in promoting the multi-arena campaign. One other significant Transport 2000 initiative here was the setting up of the Transport and Health Study Group. Transport 2000 provided the secretariat and organised meetings. Joseph envisaged the group more in terms of forging links with health people rather than a lobbying organisation (interview 15 June 1995), but again it represented a political awareness of the emerging agenda on sustainable mobility. The very existence of the group indicated how the transport agenda was widening, and hence undermining the hegemonic roads community. For example, at a meeting in 1992, the Transport and Health Study Group was notified of a forthcoming research project initiated by the Group to be undertaken by Dr Malcolm Green, Chair of the British Lung Foundation, on the impact of transport on health and safety (Minutes of Transport and Health Study Group 14 August 1992). Although the direct action, with all its unpredictable dynamics, was a key element in bringing about ‘third order’ change, the equally important role of policy entrepreneurs such as Stephen Joseph must be recognised. It was these individuals who successfully coupled together the policy streams and ensured that the mutated ideas about sustainable mobility would be successfully


transplanted in the roads sector, and the Roads for Prosperity programme destroyed. It could also be said, however, that the environmentalists were assisted by the surprisingly passive response of the road lobby. Within the roads policy community, there appeared to be a lack of awareness of what was going on around them until it was too late. It was as if the very existence of a longstanding policy community prevented key actors from perceiving the importance of exogenous factors. In effect, they were being outflanked by shifts in the terms of the policy debate and were progressively isolated within government. The community remained intact, but its political authority and credibility was disappearing. As Wolmar points out, the road lobby also began to show signs of division. On the one hand, there are the hard-liners such as the Freight Transport Association (FTA), and on the other there are organisations such as the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), which appear to recognise that there has been a fundamental shift in public opinion against roads which, in Britain at least, is probably permanent and irreversible (Wolmar 1997:58). Ironically, the efficient strategy devised by individuals such as Tom Burke and Stephen Joseph mirrored that employed in the 1950s by the Roads Campaign Council. It was the ‘empty chair’ principle widened and brought to a new intensity. The 1990s case study also illustrates that, if ‘third order’ change is to be won against a hegemonic policy community (in contrast to a ‘hollow core’ such as rail), then not only is a mutation of ideas required which widens and deepens the policy agenda, but also a well organised and purposeful advocacy coalition to execute a multi-arena campaign is needed. A missing link, however, was a ‘promiscuous’ Transport Minister willing to abandon the roads community and instigate genuine ‘third order’ change. For a while, at least, the environmentalists had to bide their time. The roads hegemony hangs on: 1993–4 The late 1980s and early 1990s saw a succession of Conservative Transport Secretaries who either saw road building as the principal policy ‘solution’, or were at least not prepared to initiate any fundamental change in the dominant values underpinning this policy. As we have seen, John MacGregor had a strong natural inclination to be a roads advocate, even if he was also willing to advocate the benefits of road pricing. Thus the traumatic experiences of Twyford Down and Oxleas Wood were seen by government as a setback which required some policy reappraisal and finetuning rather than a basic change. In August 1993 MacGregor announced a package of proposals designed chiefly to speed up the implementation of the Roads for Prosperity programme. These proposals included a hoped for less adversarial approach to decision taking on road schemes with round-table conferences to seek consensus over plans; a sweeping review of public inquiry rules to cut red tape and time-wasting procedures; and help to enable public inquiry inspectors to produce their reports


faster. The Transport Secretary therefore hoped to pacify anti-roads campaigners by integrating them more into the planning process while at the same time streamlining and speeding up the public inquiries. The fatal problem for the government, however, was that, for groups such as Alarm UK and the Twyford Down protesters, the public inquiry was seen as an irrelevant anachronism which should be bypassed in favour of a more radical and populist campaign, i.e. the ‘empty chair’ should be occupied by environmental ideas about sustainable mobility. In this context, there was an appropriate irony that on the day MacGregor made his announcement, the Twyford Down protesters were released from prison and immediately held a demonstration outside the DTp. As the Financial Times commented, MacGregor’s measures also threw a spotlight on growing tensions between the Transport and Environmental Departments, particularly given the DoE’s growing concern about the harmful effects of vehicle emissions (Financial Times 6 August 1993). Tucked away in MacGregor’s announcement, however, there were two measures which, although intended to make the road building programme more efficient, also undermined its political momentum and credibility. First, there was to be a review of the total of over 500 trunk road schemes in order to establish priorities. Although intended officially to give special attention to the highest priority roads, it also signalled politically that there were some schemes in the Roads for Prosperity programme which were less of a priority, and might be dropped altogether. Second, it was also announced that the executive trunk road building functions were to be detached from the DTp and given to a newly created Highways Agency. Again, this was portrayed as a means of making the construction programme more efficient. As an Independent Leader column commented, however, ‘on closer inspection the setting up of the new agency should help to free the DTp’s Ministers to concentrate on what really matters politically: devising and implementing a coherent strategic transport policy’ (Independent 6 August 1993). As we have seen, from the 1950s the Department's executive responsibility for building trunk roads had been a major factor in consolidating the roads community, but now that link was to be broken. In an era when roads were more widely accepted as a policy ‘solution’ this institutional change might not have been so significant, but with new environmental ideas rapidly gaining political credibility this represented another undermining of the community. The setting up of a Highways Agency was part of a wide long-term administrative reform throughout Whitehall known as Next Steps, and illustrates how the introduction of a cross-sectoral idea (i.e. the benefits to be gained from separating policy-making from implementation) can accidentally assist in damaging a long-standing policy hegemony. At the end of 1993 it was clear, however, that within the DTp the roads hegemony continued to hold sway. A notable example was provided by a speech given by Roads Minister Robert Key in which he declared:


I love roads. I have always loved roads. Looking back on my childhood…. I remember my father doing a diversion to Lincolnshire because he had heard there was some dual carriageway there! And of course we saw the first motorways. The car is going to be with us for a very long time. We must start thinking in terms that will allow it to flourish. (Observer 15 August 1993) Although Key’s tribute to roads could be said to epitomise the dominant discourse on British transport policy for nearly forty years, it was also significant that it was done in terms of harking back to a ‘golden age’, when indeed it was generally considered a great thrill just to travel on one of the new motorways. By the mid-1990s, however, the congestion and pollution to be found on these same motorways was a more fashionable political topic than the benefits of popular consumerism, which by this time looked rather passé. On the part of the environmental advocacy coalition, the continuing commitment of the DTp to Roads for Prosperity only had the effect of driving them on to further action. More than at any stage in the previous forty years, the stage was now set in the roads sector for a head on confrontation between the two adversarial communities. Building on the gains made at Twyford Down, the next large-scale occupation occurred at Wanstead in East London, where a number of houses were occupied on the route of the link road to connect the A102(M) in Hackney with the A12 and M11 in Redbridge. It could be said that it was no coincidence that the new focus of attention should be in London, given the genesis of Alarm UK there, and the previous success at Oxleas Wood. Those involved at Wanstead included Reclaim the Streets, a group which over the following years would stage a number of high profile occupations of urban streets designed to highlight the adverse effects of traffic (Wall 1999: 87–9). In highlighting the effects of road building on an urban community, the Wanstead occupation therefore complemented the more rural environment found at Twyford Down. It could also be said that a London occupation was effective in making the site easily accessible for the national media. As with John Tyme in the 1970s, the aim was to employ an ‘arena without rules’ to convey messages to the core policy-making arena which would change the terms of the policy debate. In this instance, the environmental advocacy coalition adopted an ‘outsider’ strategy in order to shift the ‘insider’ policy debate. As one prominent anti-roads campaigner put it: ‘If people in the Department of Transport want to know what I’m doing, let them read about it in the papers’ (interview 24 October 1995). The arguments of the environmentalists were also assisted by increasing concerns within the government about what the total cost of implementing Roads for Prosperity might turn out to be. For example, a National Audit Office report claimed that the plan to widen 600 miles of motorway was now expected to cost nearly twice the original £3.4 billion estimate; that financial and environmental


constraints would mean that some stretches could not be designed to meet forecast traffic demand; and that some projects would have an expected life of fifteen years instead of the normal forty years (NAO 1993). Motorway widening formed a significant part of Roads for Prosperity, including, as we have seen, the setting up of a special Unit, and the growing realisation of the actual cost of this initiative undoubtedly undermined its credibility. It could be said that this concern was reflected in the 1993 Budget which announced some cuts in the planned trunk roads construction budget (£140 million in 1994–5 and £100 million in 1995–6, although it was expected that spending would be maintained at around £2 billion a year). More significantly, the government now proposed that not only would motorway tolling be introduced once the electronic technology was ready (money raised from the tolls would be used to maintain and improve the motorway network), but Ministers were also prepared to pay ‘shadow tolls’ to the promoters of privately financed roads. This suggested that the government increasingly envisaged a significant proportion of the costs of Roads for Prosperity being offloaded over to the private sector (see DTp 1993 and HC Transport Committee 1994). It indicated that there was still no fundamental shift in the values underpinning trunk roads policy, although the government did announce annual 5 per cent real increases in fuel duty in order to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and help the UK meet the Rio Earth Summit commitment to bring carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels by the year 2000. The confrontation between concepts of ‘sustainable mobility’ and ‘Roads for Prosperity’ was also evident at the EU level. Having been pressured by the Commission for its failure to undertake Environmental Impact Assessments on a number of trunk road schemes, the British government found itself involved with the Commission this time on the need to promote new road schemes. Thus, the concept of Trans European Networks (TENs) had been developed within the framework of the new provisions of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, and EU President Jacques Delors’ White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (COM(93)700) (Glaister et al. 1998:96). From the overall TENs concept, involving transport, telecommunications and energy networks, there developed the idea of Trans European Road Networks (TERNs), designed to link the peripheral regions into the single market, and also to ease congestion around towns and cities. As part of this blueprint, the Commission proposed the upgrading of twelve main trunk routes in the UK. The emphasis placed by the Commission on the importance of roads in processes of economic regeneration had many echoes of the values underpinning Roads for Prosperity. At the same time, it also suggested a significant degree of conflict with values of sustainable mobility expressed in vehicle emission regulations and a requirement for Environmental Impact Assessments. Notwithstanding the apparent boost which TERNs gave to the roads community, the UK government, as with Environmental Impact Assessments, generally seemed suspicious of this supranational intervention, particularly, as Glaister et al. point out, the financing


regulation which sets a firm ceiling for EU intervention of 10 per cent of the total investment cost of any project (Glaister et al. 1998: 96). Overall, therefore, throughout the 1990s the trunk roads sector remained one where EU intervention remained relatively light. In January 1994, however, the government simultaneously produced a series of White Papers which indicated that the sustainable development and mobility discourse was beginning to gain an institutional foothold within Whitehall. The four White Papers, on the implementation of sustainable development itself (Cm. 2426, 1994); climate change (Cm. 2427); biodiversity (Cm. 2428); and sustainable forestry (Cm. 2429), were produced chiefly as the British government’s response to the agreements made at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Of greater significance politically, a White Paper specifically on sustainable development enabled the government to officially set out goals on transport policy which were not governed by the DTp’s adherence to roads as the policy ‘solution’. Thus it was emphasised that the main goal for sustainable development in the transport sector must be to meet the economic and social needs for access to facilities with less need for travel and in ways which did not place unacceptable burdens on the environment. Among the policies required to obtain these objectives were those of influencing the rate of traffic growth and providing a framework for individual choice in transport which enabled environmental objectives to be met (Cm. 2426, para. 83). Hence among the measures available to further these goals were: ensuring transport costs reflected the wider costs of transport decisions for the economy and the environment which were not currently priced; land use policies which would enable people and business to take advantage of locations which meet their needs for access with less use of transport or less polluting means of transport; market measures or regulation to improve the environmental performance of transport; and policies and programmes to promote use of public transport instead of the car, and rail and water to transport freight instead of roads, where these could meet the needs for transport efficiently (Cm. 2426, 1994, para. 84). Such a list of goals undoubtedly offered a direct challenge to the principles of Roads for Prosperity. The stark choices to be made were not spelled out in the White Papers, but institutional developments linked to their publication demonstrated that the environmental advocacy coalition was winning new access to the policy core. Thus the Prime Minister, John Major, was to invite a small group of individuals to meet him about four times a year to advise the government on strategic issues. The group’s responsibilities would be to keep in view general sustainability issues at home and abroad, identify major problems or opportunities likely to arise, monitor progress, and consider questions of priority. In addition to the Prime Minister, they would have access to all Ministers (Cm. 2426, 1994, para. 109). It was highly significant that these advisers were headed by Sir Crispin Tickell who, as we have seen, was a key member of the advocacy coalition campaigning to overthrow Roads for Prosperity. Not


surprisingly, it was reported that the DTp had strongly opposed the setting up of this advisory team (Observer 16 January 1994). This was not the only institutional blow suffered by the DTp. The government also announced the setting up of a UK Round Table on Sustainable Development to be chaired by Environment Secretary John Gummer. This body would discuss major issues of sustainable development between people who approach them from different positions and who have different responsibilities (Cm. 2426, 1994, para. 110). Thus the Round Table was eventually established in January 1995, with John Gummer and Professor Sir Richard Southwood (a former ViceChancellor of Oxford University and former Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution) as co-chairmen. There was a large membership of thirty, drawn from a wide range of organisations, including industrialists, trade unionists and academics, as well as members of the environmental Establishment such as Charles Secrett of FoE and Barbara Young of the RSPB (Sir Crispin Tickell was an ex-officio member). In addition, there were a number of subgroups. For example, Stephen Joseph was a member of the Freight subgroup. One subgroup (chaired by Charles Secrett) was set up specifically to examine the subject of ‘Defining a Sustainable Transport Sector’ and produced a report in 1996 (UK Round Table on Sustainable Development 1996). The Round Table might have been seen as the type of apolitical forum envisaged by Sabatier as being necessary for rival advocacy coalitions to reconcile core and secondary values. In fact, however, the Round Table tended to strengthen the political hand of the DoE against the DTp. Thus the report on Defining a Sustainable Transport Sector recommended that road transport policy should be based on setting national targets for reducing traffic levels over the short and medium term, and suggested solutions such as traffic restrictions, parking charges and the promotion of public transport (UK Round Table on Sustainable Development 1996: para. 35). The Round Table represented another significant building block in the multi-arena strategy. This intensifying pressure was illustrated yet again in March 1994, when John Gummer announced a new Planning Policy Guidance Note for local authorities. This PPG 13 set out new transport and planning aims including ensuring that new developments which necessitate journeys were built where there was a choice of transport; providing housing developments with public transport links; and improving the quality of life in towns and cities in order to reduce the need for long distance commuting (DoE/DTp 1994). PPG 13 therefore represented a further assertion on transport matters by the DoE, and came to have symbolic political importance in that the title itself became a shorthand reference for opposition to Roads for Prosperity. Meanwhile, direct action continued to attract headlines. For example, in February 1994 in Wanstead 1,200 police, bailiffs and security guards took ten hours to remove 300 protesters barricaded into four houses. This high profile action moved the Observer to comment that civil disobedience in Britain had found a new face ‘Road-building has become to the 1990s what the Cruise


missile and the Trident were to the 1970s and 80s’ (Observer 27 February 1994). Similarly, The Economist commented that: ‘Protesting about new roads has become that rarest of British phenomena, a truly populist movement drawing supporters from all walks of life’. These included not only radical greens, but also Nimby protesters and Shire Tories (The Economist 19 February 1994). Direct action was therefore having the effect of making anti-road protests politically fashionable, and giving the roads lobby an old fashioned image which appealed to a narrow constituency of road builders and car makers. This was a far cry indeed away from the image of roads as a key tool of popular consumerism and economic prosperity. This concerted pressure had its first tangible reward at the end of March 1994, when John MacGregor announced the results of his review of trunk roads. As we have seen, this review, in operation since the Summer of 1993, had been planned originally as part of a programme to speed up delivery of trunk road improvements. To a considerable extent, however, these objectives had been replaced by a need to limit political damage. The review had been overtaken by events, and left MacGregor an exposed and less credible Minister. Consequently, in the review he acknowledged that: the road improvement programme must be part of a broader based strategy. This must include making better use of the existing road system, encouraging more environmentally friendly transport, reducing people’s need to travel without inhibiting their freedom to do so, and making them more aware of the real costs of travel. (DTp 1994: para. 2.5) In determining priorities, proposals for new routes through open countryside would be reduced still further, and some schemes with particular environmental disadvantages would be withdrawn. Instead, priority would be given to urgently needed bypasses and the widening of congested motorways (DTp 1994: para. 4.2). Thus forty-nine of the 371 schemes originally planned over the next ten years were withdrawn. On the other hand, eighty schemes were given top priority, while 173 were given ‘priority 2’ status, and sixty-nine were placed in a pool for long-term completion. At the same time, it was hoped that current levels of public expenditure would be maintained (nearly £6 billion over the next three years), and that electronic tolling and private sector Design, Build, Finance and Operate (DBFO) contracts could provide other means of finance (DTp 1994: paras. 71–7). (One idea which has not been developed politically is for the creation of a Public Road Authority on a regional basis, operating on the lines of the old electricity or water board, see Newbery 1994.) The overall conclusion from the review, therefore, was that the DTp recognised the need to make concessions to sustainable mobility, but that MacGregor saw no need to slow down the implementation of Roads for Prosperity. One indication of this was the government’s determination to press on with the public inquiry into the


Birmingham Northern Relief Road, intended to be Britain’s first privately financed toll motorway. The Sustainable Development White Paper and the 1994 trunk roads review indicated that a shift in the dominant discourse was taking place within Whitehall, but that the paradigm of roads as the chief transport policy ‘solution’ had yet to be overthrown. By now, however, the direct action movement was gaining considerable internal momentum, which not only kept the issue at a high level of political salience, but also projected the image of a wide national advocacy coalition against road building. Thus the urban direct action at Wanstead was quickly followed by the more rural and middle class revolt at Batheaston, a suburb of the ancient city of Bath in the west country of England. Although there was considerable local controversy over the need for a bypass, the occupation of Solsbury Hill became a national cause célèbre. This was mainly through the involvement of the writer Bel Mooney, wife of the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby. For a period Bel Mooney joined the occupation of Solsbury Hill, and was visited by such members of the ‘Establishment’ as the Marchioness of Worcester (who, as we have seen, became an important figure in wining and dining Ministers) and Viscount Norwich (Independent 21 May 1994). Solsbury Hill therefore demonstrated again how effective the ‘arenas without rules’ of the construction sites had become as transmitters of ideas and images. Enlisting eminent writers, broadcasters and members of the aristocracy to the cause, and publicly identifying them with the radical green activists, consolidated the popular image of a wide advocacy coalition with common basic values. The government’s response to this phenomenon was to try and impose more ‘rules’ in the form of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. This introduced the offence of aggravated trespass, which meant that demonstrators could be arrested merely for standing on private land if they had the intention of disrupting people ‘taking part in a lawful activity’. In reality, however, the politics of direct action had moved beyond such legal interpretations. The government had learned to its cost at Twyford Down that the imprisonment of protesters had the effect of making them popular heroes and heroines, and the dynamics of direct action had moved on considerably since then. As the Observer put it: Last summer, the M3 extension through the chalk hills of Twyford Down provided the only battlefront between anti-roads protesters and contractors, security guards and police. This summer, there are more flashpoints around the country. And, unlike Twyford Down, where demonstrators were mostly New Age travellers and radical eco-activists, these local campaigns are supported by many middle-class citizens, and a few of the rich and famous. (Observer 19 June 1994)


Direct action against roads policy was rapidly becoming more ‘respectable’, and even fashionable, so that the introduction of new trespass offences could appear as a heavy-handed response to a movement of popular protest. The extent to which a new discourse was infiltrating government supporters is well illustrated by Simon Jenkins, writing in the Conservative inclined magazine, the Spectator. He concluded: Dump one of these roads in my back yard and I sense that I would do a Mooney. Those who sneer should visit the last road that the hippies and harpies tried to stop, the M3 through Twyford Down above Winchester. This great chalk gash above the Itchen Valley is an outrage. The M3 should have been in a tunnel and in any other European country it would have been. Roads there must be. But let them be fair in their planning and discreet in their execution. As long as Whitehall is staffed by secretive philistines, I am for direct action. The English landscape is the sum of a million back yards. Thank God for their defenders. (Spectator 21 May 1994) A reflection of a change in the spirit of the times saw the departure of John MacGregor as Transport Secretary in July 1994. Although he had already expressed a wish to the Prime Minister to leave the government before the next election, the impression had grown that he had been overtaken by events. On his arrival at the DTp in 1992 he had realistic hopes of eventually becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his strong advocacy of Roads for Prosperity appeared to suit him well for the job. Two years later, he left the DTp to return to the backbenches, having apparently given up hope of further promotion. It could be said that he was the last in a long line of Transport Ministers and Secretaries stretching back to Boyd-Carpenter and Watkinson who truly believed that ‘there are votes in roads’. His position was epitomised by his response a few days before his departure to an announcement by the Labour Party that, if elected, it would operate a moratorium on new trunk roads schemes while it carried out a review on both environmental and economic grounds. MacGregor retorted that such a review would ‘greatly damage Britain’s economic competitiveness, add to congestion costs and harm the environment by the non-building of bypass schemes’ (Independent 20 July 1994). Hitherto Labour had shown little inclination to openly query the values underlying Roads for Prosperity, but now it was attempting to take advantage of the mood shift. MacGregor, on the other hand, was firmly wedded to the long dominant paradigm. What the government now required was a more ‘promiscuous’ Transport Secretary who could operate with a much wider range of actors; could recognise the paradigmatic shift taking place; and could even provide a type of unofficial leadership of the ‘sustainable mobility’ advocacy coalition. Remarkably, perhaps by a combination of luck and good judgement, it was to get exactly that!


Transport Secretary Brian Mawhinney: ‘aggressive moderation’ 1994–5 Perhaps more than any other individual in the dynamics of ‘third order’ roads policy change in the 1990s, the role of Dr Brian Mawhinney, as Transport Secretary 1994–5, not only symbolised a policy watershed which led directly to the destruction of Roads for Prosperity, but was also highly influential himself in shifting the dominant transport ‘frame’ within Whitehall. In this respect, his role can be equated with that of John Boyd-Carpenter in the mid-1950s (who also served as a Transport Minister for a relatively short period of time), in that it was not necessarily what he achieved in hard policy terms, but how he shifted the focus of government thinking, particularly within the DTp itself. Unlike his predecessors as Transport Secretary since the early 1980s, Mawhinney had little time for the concept of roads as the chief transport policy ‘solution’. Part of this different ‘frame’ could be attributed to a shrewd political judgement of the way the wind was blowing. When he was appointed in July 1994 he was regarded as a loyal ally of the Prime Minister, John Major, who would provide a ‘safe pair of hands’ in the minefield which Transport had become. Just as John Tyme had unsettled Ministers in the 1970s, so the widespread roads protests and direct action of the 1990s had placed the government on the defensive. In this climate, yet another Minister declaring how much he loved roads was hardly likely to defuse the politically combustible atmosphere. At the same time, there was also a highly personal element in Mawhinney’s thinking. Trained as a radiation biologist, Mawhinney was a former senior lecturer at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, and prior to becoming Transport Secretary had served as a Junior Minister in the Department of Health. This experience gave Mawhinney a particular awareness of the health issues at stake in transport policy, and in particular the harmful effects of vehicle emissions. Mawhinney therefore walked a fine line between acting as ‘a safe pair of hands’ policy broker, and an unofficial leader of the ‘sustainable mobility’ environmental advocacy coalition. His latter role was perhaps best exemplified when he openly broke with the Thatcherite past, and revealed that ‘the great car economy’, an expression synonymous with the former Prime Minister, was not a phrase he had chosen to use since he had become Transport Secretary, nor did he envisage using it in the future (Observer 16 October 1994). Privately, he was known to be even more outspoken, even to openly attacking the lack of environmental awareness of many of his Tory predecessors in the job. As he himself describes: I also soon discovered that there was little dialogue between the Department and environmental groups. My junior Minister, Steve Norris, was an honourable exception. He had good contacts with ‘green’ groups and urged me to make use of them. I did. Soon I had representatives of all the main environmental organisations (those which operated within the law


and democratic parameters) in my office—many for the first time—to set out their concerns and ideas. All of us saw this as an important development. (Mawhinney 1999:145) In comparison with his predecessors at the DTp, Mawhinney adopted an unorthodox and highly personal approach. In this case, a Minister could be seen to matter, even if the chief effects were somewhat intangible in the form of shifting the centre of gravity of the policy debate. By choosing to align himself with the environmental lobby, Mawhinney could act as an influential leader of an advocacy coalition. At the same time, as we shall see shortly, his ultimate aim was to act as a Policy Broker. Mawhinney offers a particularly vivid example, therefore, of the ability of Ministers to vary the degree of intimacy with different interests over time. It could be argued that, like Bill Rodgers in the 1970s, he realised that a new political settlement was required for trunk roads. By adopting a position at the forefront of the environmental lobby he could shift the balance of power within the policy network. Via this process he could act as an instrument of change within the DTp, and in the policy sector as a whole. One early piece of evidence of Mawhinney’s intent was to appoint a Junior Minister for both road and rail. Previously, each of these traditional rivals for public expenditure had been given its own Minister, but now a more coordinated approach was demanded. There was also something of a paradox about Mawhinney’s character for, although he acted as a policy broker, he was also generally regarded as a Minister with a particularly aggressive style, and with little patience with those who might oppose him. In the event, this approach as one of the hard men of politics probably stood him in good stead at the DTp, where he considered that the dominant roads culture had to be changed. Mawhinney also demonstrated that he had an eye for personal publicity and public relations. As Ernest Marples and Barbara Castle discovered in the 1960s, these are always useful attributes to possess at a Ministry where an element of showmanship can have more public impact than a whole series of official reports. For example, towards the end of his tenancy of the DTp, Mawhinney chaired a well-publicised debate on transport policy between representatives of the road and environmental lobbies. The debate was held at the prestigious venue of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, and Mawhinney ensured further publicity for the event by travelling there on a coach with invited representatives of the media (Dudley 1995b). The Sheldonian debate had greater significance than a public relations exercise, however, for it symbolised the key feature of Mawhinney’s own approach to transport policy. From the outset, he endeavoured to instigate a fresh discourse which would both shift the terms of the debate and also reconcile the opposing road and environmental communities. Thus in his early months at the DTp Mawhinney declared publicly that he wished to create national forums between the road and the environmental lobbies. One notable, if idiosyncratic,


feature of Mawhinney’s period at the DTp was his attempt to bring together the adversarial communities of the road and environmental lobbies. Consequently, during a meeting with officials of the BRF, he caused great consternation by virtually ordering them to meet the environmentalists. On the other hand, he persuaded representatives from Transport 2000 and FoE that the BRF was seeking an accommodation! When this historic meeting took place, however, although there was some agreement on details, not surprisingly there was little consensus on fundamental principles, such as the need for a strategic roads plan (interviews 23 August 1995 and 24 October 1995). The first public evidence of Mawhinney’s policy style came in his address to the Conservative Party conference in October 1994. In it, he called for a new debate on the future of road building, but significantly he outlined his own priorities as being to ‘manage the existing road work in the most effective manner and to minimise new trunk road building through open countryside and cities’. This suggested that pushing on with Roads for Prosperity schemes would not be one of his priorities. Enlarging on these remarks in a press conference after his speech, Mawhinney revealed ‘I have started to ask a few questions about the programmes I have inherited. We are now going to enter a debate as we seek to find a balance between the economic, social and environmental criteria of road building policy’ (Financial Times 12 October 1994). Mawhinney’s strategy of discourse and debate as a type of policy ‘solution’ could be seen partly as an exercise in political expediency in order to buy time and to avoid making awkward decisions. As we have stressed, however, shifting dominant policy ‘frames’, particularly those embedded deep in Whitehall culture, involves more than just a u-turn on policy decisions. Instead, it requires a general perception that new knowledge is politically significant and must be acted on. In this context, Mawhinney’s policy style as a policy and knowledge broker fitted well in a period when frame reflection was taking place within the policy core. Another reason for Mawhinney’s call for a policy debate could have been his awareness that two prestigious knowledge based institutions were about to produce reports which would question the fundamental values and perceptions underpinning transport policy. First, at the end of October 1994 there arrived the Report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution on the subject of Transport and the Environment (Cm. 2674, 1994). The RCEP had been founded in 1969 as the outcome of concern felt by some individuals that the fragmentation of government departments was working to the detriment of environmental protection. It has always been chaired by a Fellow of the Royal Society, and tends to be seen as a predominantly scientific body. As Owens and Rayner note, such an image is interesting, given that typically no more than half its members have fallen into a broadly scientific category. Other disciplines, particularly law, economics and philosophy, have always been represented, and typically some members have had first hand knowledge of sectors such as industry or agriculture, though all serve in an individual capacity (Owens and


Rayner 1999:9). Significantly, Owens and Rayner argue that the Commission has acted variously as frame reflective knowledge broker, persuasive advocate and policy entrepreneur (Owens and Rayner 1999:14). The RCEP is therefore a body which is capable of being particularly influential in coupling the policy streams, i.e. it can have significant effects on the policy process while seemingly existing in a world removed from that process. Here, the timing of the RCEP report was particularly fortuitous in that it coincided with a period when government was openly seeking alternative policy ‘solutions’. This was particularly so given that the study was first undertaken in 1992, when Roads for Prosperity held sway. Indeed, the growth in roads expenditure was one of the principal reasons for the particular form of the study (interview 9 December 1997). The 1994 Transport and the Environment report set out clearly and methodically the dangers to public health posed by vehicle emissions, as well as examining the overall impact of transport policies (Cm. 2674, 1994: para. 1.9). In its quest for a sustainable transport system, the RCEP made a total of 110 recommendations. Probably the two most radical of these, and certainly the most publicised, were that planned expenditure on motorways and other trunk roads should be reduced to about half its then current level (Cm. 2674, 1994: para. 12. 65) and that fuel duty be increased year by year so as to double the price of fuel, relative to the prices of other goods, by 2005 (Cm. 2674, 1994: para. 7.58). Such recommendations as these set out starkly the political and financial costs to be paid in implementing what were considered to be the conditions of sustainable mobility. For the Transport Secretary, with his environmental sympathies, the RCEP report represented a welcome ally in his determination to shift the terms of the policy debate. At the same time, a recommendation to double the price of fuel was hardly likely to encourage wide public support for the virtues of sustainable mobility. Consequently, although Mawhinney was generally supportive of the report’s conclusions, he also apparently sought to discredit the doubling of the fuel price recommendation by means of press briefings (interview 9 December 1997). Nevertheless, publication of the RCEP report not only crystallised the issues at stake, but also had the effect of giving new ideas about sustainable mobility an official sanction which significantly increased their credibility within the policy core, i.e. at this time the new politics of air pollution (Weale 1992) became synonymous with the dynamics of transport policy change. In 1997 the RCEP published a follow-up report on developments since 1994 (Cm. 3752, 1997). On this occasion, however, it was decided not to make specific recommendations, but rather to consolidate rather than to break new ground (interview 9 December 1997). Perhaps partly for this reason this report did not have the public impact of its predecessor. It could also be said that the 1994 report took advantage of a ‘policy window’ in order to achieve high political salience. As Owens and Rayner conclude, knowledge has most effect when it is skilfully framed to resonate in the climate of the day (Owens and Rayner 1999:18).


The second key intervention by experts concerned a report by the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA) on Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic (SACTRA 1994). Significantly, this report was submitted to the DTp in May 1994, but was only published in December 1994. It could be said that this delay in itself reflected the sea change in government thinking which was taking place during this period. Hence the findings of the report were much more in tune with Mawhinney’s thinking than they had been with that of John MacGregor. As we saw in Chapter 6, SACTRA was set up by Bill Rodgers basically to give permanent life to the Leitch Committee and act as an alternative source of expertise to that of the DTp. It could not be said that the work of SACTRA had previously achieved a high level of political salience, but in 1989 its terms of reference were revised and expanded to now include advising the DTp on the evidence of the circumstances, nature and magnitude of traffic redistribution, mode choice and generation (resulting from new road schemes), especially on inter-urban roads and trunk roads close to conurbations; and to recommend whether and how the Department’s methods should be amended (SACTRA 1994: para. 1.01). In the climate of 1989 which produced Roads for Prosperity, SACTRA’s answers to the question of whether new roads generate extra traffic might have been employed as a good reason for building more roads. By late 1994, however, in a climate greatly more amenable to the principles of sustainable mobility, a positive answer to the question by SACTRA was likely to provoke a very different response. In fact, SACTRA did indeed conclude from the evidence it had taken that ‘induced traffic can and does occur probably quite extensively, though its size and significance are likely to vary widely in different circumstances’ (SACTRA 1994: para. 15.03). Nevertheless, the committee was convinced that there were circumstances where induced traffic could seriously affect the design, environmental appraisal and economic evaluation of schemes (SACTRA 1994: para. 15.04). In a political climate post Twyford Down and Oxleas Wood, the conclusion that new roads were only a ‘solution’ in that they created an apparent demand for still more roads gave politicians such as Mawhinney powerful evidence for instigating the dismantling of Roads for Prosperity, i.e. if road building created an insatiable demand for more roads, which in turn generated more new traffic, then the conditions for sustainable mobility were being destroyed. Thus what gave the SACTRA report its great political salience was not so much the findings themselves (significant as they were), but the manner in which the findings were ‘framed’. Both the RCEP and SACTRA reports therefore had the effect of lending great weight to the environmental advocacy coalition’s multi-arena campaign. After the trunk roads review earlier in the year, more tangible evidence of the declining government confidence in Roads for Prosperity arrived in the Budget of November 1994. Planned expenditure on trunk roads was cut from £2.1 billion in 1994–5 to £1.7 billion in 1997–8. The veteran road lobbyist Robert Phillipson (Director-General of the aggregates federation BACMI but also a former


Director of the BRF) expressed the mood of the roads advocates when he described the cuts as ‘the biggest hit on the roads programme since the Romans left’, adding ‘and we know what happened after that’ (Construction News 1 December 1994). The cuts could partly be attributed to the objective of Chancellor Kenneth Clarke to cut the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, but there was no doubt that trunk roads were now being seen as something of a soft option for public expenditure cuts, i.e. road building had lost its popular ‘image’ as the principal transport policy ‘solution’. Mawhinney’s response was to intensify his objective of progress and reconciliation by discourse. He called for ‘an end to the shouting and the insults’ to be replaced by a national debate about transport issues (Financial Times 8 December 1994). This plea was made as the direct action campaign was intensifying. The M11 protest in East London was finally coming to an end, but now similar action was being threatened or carried out at a number of other sites including Pollok near Glasgow, the Newbury bypass, and the M65 in Lancashire (Wall 1999:82–7). One further key to Mawhinney’s distinctive approach as a policy broker with strong environmental sympathies is provided by his keen commitment to Christian values, which he attempted to put into practice in his work as a Minister. In this context, he had little sympathy with the direct action protesters or their middle class supporters. They are not heroes or ‘people’s champions’. They are people who practise a form of transport menace and tyranny; trying to break the law and seeking to overturn by ‘force’ what has been decided according to law. Romans 13 applies [a reference to rendering tribute to whom tribute is due]. Even more disturbing is the number of people local to these schemes who offer support and sustenance to those behaving in this way. Many of them seem to be pillars of respectability in their local communities. They seem not even to notice the inherent contradiction between their roadrelated activities and their otherwise strong support for law and order. Most of them would be angry and affronted if the issue was put to them in this way. (Mawhinney 1999:146) The paradox was that, even as Mawhinney condemned what he perceived as unreasonable behaviour (his policy broker side), he simultaneously expressed beliefs which could just as easily have come from those arrested at Twyford Down (his environmental advocacy coalition leadership side): As Christians we should be helping to lead the transport debate. We value the freedom and opportunities to expand work, visit family and enjoy relaxation which roads provide. But we also believe that we live in and have some responsibility for the world our God created…. If Christians do not have great concern for environmental issues, who should? ‘Man’ is told


to subdue the earth, rule over the rest of creation and cultivate the ground for food. And because it was only humans who were made in the image of God, we are expected to act responsibly towards the rest of creation. Achieving the proper balance between caring for God’s creation, using it for our benefit and not exploiting it just to satisfy our greed and selfishness is not easy. But few would question that this is an issue which ought to be firmly on Christians’ agenda. (Mawhinney 1999:147) Such sentiments as these (perhaps the epitome of the sustainable mobility discourse) coming from a Transport Secretary, make a massive contrast with the values underlying the ‘there are votes in roads’ discourse expressed by Harold Watkinson in the 1950s. Given the Minister’s personal values, therefore, it was perhaps not surprising that the great debate on transport was launched with a further severe squeeze on the roads advocates. Thus, to coincide with publication of the SACTRA report in December 1994, Mawhinney announced that all new trunk road schemes in the planning stages—amounting to some 270 schemes of the total 360-strong programme—would be subject to ‘extra assessment to determine their overall impact on traffic’. Research into the DTp’s long-established traffic forecasting techniques would also be carried out (Guardian 20 December 1994). In addition, four major road schemes earmarked to start in the next two years would no longer proceed with public funding, while two others were postponed. Significantly, one of the postponed schemes was the highly controversial and politically salient Newbury bypass, where two protest camps had already been set up. In response to Mawhinney’s announcement, Road Alert! (which itself was based in Newbury) announced that these camps would now disband. We can therefore see how Mawhinney employed the apparently apolitical forum SACTRA, whose report had in fact been handed to John MacGregor the previous May, to shift policy towards the ‘frame’ of sustainable mobility. After all, if it had been scientifically proved that new roads have the effect of generating new traffic, then how many major planned roads could truly be justified in the light of ‘extra assessment to determine their overall impact on traffic’? In one well-timed and adroit manoeuvre, therefore, Mawhinney had undermined much of the raison d’être behind Roads for Prosperity. Almost unnoticed, the Transport Secretary had acted to shift road building within the DTp from policy ‘solution’ to policy ‘problem’. Publicly in 1995, Mawhinney launched his ‘Great Debate’ on transport policy. In essence, this took the form of giving six key speeches on different aspects of transport policy between February and April 1995, and then publishing them as a type of Green Paper inviting Consultation (DTp 1995). In his Foreword, Mawhinney posed the by now familiar questions about striking a balance between promotion of economic growth, protection of the environment and support for personal choice (DTp 1995: para. 13). His aim was to promote


dialogue (demonstrated in his own case by organising the Sheldonian debate) and then to receive conclusions by the Autumn of 1995 (DTp 1995: paras. 15–18). In the event, by the conclusion of the Great Debate Mawhinney himself had left the DTp. In July 1995 he was given a promotion (in itself an unusual event for a Transport Secretary) to become Chairman of the Conservative Party in the run up to the general election. Even in his last days in office, however, Mawhinney acted in a characteristically idiosyncratic manner by giving the goahead to the Newbury bypass. Mawhinney himself acknowledges that the decision caused him to take into account all his own environmental values, but that he concluded the merits of proceeding, in human terms, outweighed any countervailing environmental arguments (Mawhinney 1999:147). Mawhinney illustrates again the ultimately highly individual and ‘celibate’ nature of his ministerial style by placing the decision in the context of his Christian beliefs: But as a Christian I knew I was right to give the most careful thought to where my duty lay. Some Christians agreed with my judgement on where the balance of advantage lay. Others did not. That is alright [sic], for there is no such thing as a ‘Christian policy on roads’. God left it to us to make those decisions…. Nevertheless, we do need to break past habits and conventions, when decisions in favour of man’s wishes and money almost always prevailed over environmental factors…. And yes, I still remember that beautiful countryside around Newbury which is no more and how much I enjoyed walking through it as a preliminary to making my decision—even as I know that tens of thousands of people live better lives as a result of that decision. (Mawhinney 1999:147–8) A more prosaic explanation for Mawhinney’s decision could of course be that, in the light of the Great Debate, a decision in favour of the bypass would at least offer some recompense to the road lobby to compensate for all they had lost in terms of Roads for Prosperity. There were also local political factors. Newbury was held by a Liberal Democrat MP, who supported the bypass. Conservative support for the bypass might there-fore undermine Liberal support at the next general election. Nevertheless, the Newbury decision was one final illustration of Mawhinney’s highly individual style, in which a tendency to execute ‘celibate’ decision making was always present, notwithstanding the apparently ‘promiscuous’ nature of the Great Debate. In this context, the final and ultimate irony of the Newbury decision was that it unleashed a direct action protest which would be the culmination of a process which had begun at Twyford Down. The intensity and massive political salience of the Newbury protest would represent one final nail in the coffin of Roads for Prosperity in bringing about ‘third order’ change. Even in a decision which


apparently favoured the road lobby, therefore, Mawhinney unwittingly furthered the cause of the environmentalists. Rounding up ‘third order’ change 1995–7 When Brian Mawhinney left the DTp in July 1995, he was replaced as Transport Secretary by Sir George Young. It could be said that it was unfortunate that Mawhinney, having launched his Great Debate, should depart the scene just as the main consultative phase was getting under way. It is interesting to speculate how far Mawhinney, with his evangelical style of ‘aggressive moderation’ would have carried policy forward, but Sir George Young was of a very different character. In many respects, Sir George appeared to be the ideal figure to act as a ‘promiscuous’ Minister who would also be an unofficial leader of the environmental advocacy coalition. Popularly known as the ‘bicycling baronet’, he was sympathetic to the Green cause, and indeed was a member of FoE. Like Mawhinney, therefore, his values and policy ‘frame’ were a long way from earlier Tory Transport Secretaries. After quite long experience as a Junior Minister, Sir George was entering the Cabinet for the first time and, again like Mawhinney, appeared to be a Minister whose reputation was rising. As a Minister on the centre-left of the Tory party, he also appeared well suited to directing a Great Debate which was likely to lead transport policy away from the values of popular consumerism. On the other hand, the political timing of the Great Debate was wrong. With a general election scheduled for less than two years away, Ministers would inevitably be sensitive about introducing transport policies such as road pricing and tax increases which might alienate motoring voters (the Labour government which came to office in 1997 was to encounter similar internal difficulties). It was one thing to destroy the hegemony of the roads community, but quite another to construct and implement an integrated transport policy in its place. There was also the question of Sir George Young himself. Notwithstanding his environmental credentials and his political credibility, at the DTp he appeared to be more of an Executive Minister type rather than a policy initiator. Thus he was generally content to manage the Department and the political agenda rather than to carry the process forward. He also lacked the showman qualities which, as Mawhinney discovered, invariably stand a Transport Secretary in good stead. Nevertheless, the DTp under Sir George Young was unlikely to see any significant revival by the roads community. Indeed, it could be said that it was during his term of office that ‘third order’ change visibly took place and the hegemonic roads community was finally undermined fatally. In certain respects, Sir George Young proved more amenable to experimenting with transport ‘solutions’ than his predecessor. For example, after John MacGregor’s enthusiasm for road tolls, Mawhinney was generally sceptical about their value as a policy instrument. In contrast, Sir George was supportive of the potential benefits to be gained from tolls, and introduced technology trials.


The feature above all about the period 1995–7, however, was the inexorable manner in which the tide turned against the roads community. The environmentalists’ intense multi-arena campaign finally reaped rich rewards not only in policy terms which saw the destruction of Roads for Prosperity but, even more fundamentally, in the manner in which the Whitehall Establishment, and beyond, accepted the ‘truth’ that alternative transport policy solutions must be found. One notable recruit to this cause was the Prince of Wales. In a foreword to a conference programme on transport policy, the heir to the throne called for radical changes in transport policy to combat the environmental damage, health problems and disruption to traditional community life caused by overdependence on the car. He believed that Britons must be encouraged to drive less and that new forms of transport were needed (Observer 15 October 1995). Following up this message, at the conference itself Sir George Young made the key statement that the clear message from the Great Debate was that large-scale road building programmes were no longer acceptable, and that more attention should now be paid to public transport. In this context, it was necessary to increase people’s awareness of the consequences of their travel decisions (Financial Times 25 November 1995). This was a clear signal from the Transport Secretary that popular consumerism and the virtues of mobility no longer represented the politically acceptable ‘frame’. Instead, attention was switching to the delicate question of how sustainable mobility should actually be implemented. Given the clear policy trend announced by the Transport Secretary, it was hardly surprising that the Budget of November 1995 should once again severely undermine the financial and political credibility of the trunk roads programme. Thus it was now intended that trunk roads expenditure, at over £2 billion in 1994–5, would fall to £1.83 billion in 1995–6, and £1.41 billion in 1998–9. Even more significantly, seventy-seven schemes were scrapped. These included most of the sixty-seven schemes identified as ‘longer-term’ in the 1994 review (Financial Times 29 November 1995). The government hoped to some extent to counteract this trend by means of increasing Design Build Finance and Operate projects, but the striking out of so many future projects fortified the new popular image of trunk road building as an activity where the heyday had passed. The BRF, which inevitably complained bitterly about the drastic turn in its fortunes, estimated that the latest cuts had shrunk the trunk roads programme from the £20 billion 500-scheme Roads for Prosperity programme in 1993, to a £6 billion programme of 150 schemes by the end of 1995. Only nine conventionally funded and eleven DBFO improvement schemes were expected to start before 1997 (Contract Journal 7 December 1995). By the end of 1995, therefore, the process of ‘third order’ paradigmatic change was already well advanced. As 1996 dawned, however, the ‘empty chair’ principle came into operation with a vengeance, with the massive three month long direct action protest during the site clearance operation for the Newbury bypass. As we have seen, Ministers had been understandably concerned about the Newbury decision for several years, and Brian Mawhinney’s approval for the


go-ahead on his last day as Transport Secretary had come as a surprise. Now, the full force of the direct action movement and the environmental ‘Establishment’ was concentrated on this one case. As Festing comments, with up to 10,000 trees to defend, the route of the Newbury bypass seemed ideal for protesters looking to move on after direct action at sites such as the M11 and Solsbury Hill (Festing 1996:42). There were also a number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) which gave the bypass route an extra ecological dimension. On the other hand, there was also extensive local support for the bypass, with the A34 through the centre of Newbury attracting considerable traffic congestion. It was not so much the local arguments for or against the bypass which gave Newbury its great political salience. Rather it was its symbolic importance as a barometer of the policy debate which was approaching its culmination. There were also additional political factors within the environmental advocacy coalition which assisted the collective action process. As Doherty relates, a summit meeting of environmental activists was called by George Monbiot (an academic and Green activist) and others in Oxford in December 1994 at which many criticisms of the pressure groups were aired. Friends of the Earth was held particularly responsible for the failure to mobilise its local groups to join protests. At the Oxford meeting, Charles Secrett, its Director, accepted that it had made a major mistake at Twyford in not backing the direct action and committed the organisation to more direct support for road protests (Doherty 1998:375). Newbury became the case where this new FoE policy was put into practical action. Not only did FoE act as a bridge between the direct action movement and the environmental ‘Establishment’ groups, but it also had the necessary experience and resources in dealing with the media to help convey the desired messages from the campaign. Thus, at the beginning of 1996, a whole floor of FoE headquarters was cleared to deal with media inquiries and, at the height of the campaign, staff were dealing with fifty to one hundred calls a day. The general approach was to convey the issue in terms of national policy. Particular emphasis was placed on the SACTRA Message: ‘Roads Create Traffic’. It was found that this message seemed to stick when nothing else did. In addition, the health issues raised by the RCEP were also effective (interview 23 June 1999). In such a manner did actions such as Newbury act as a ‘megaphone’ for science. FoE therefore helped to give a relevant policy ‘frame’ to the Newbury action and also translate it in terms of practical policy. There was never any realistic hope of stopping implementation of the bypass, but the Newbury campaign was nevertheless pro-active. Thus during the first week of site clearance work was considerably slowed. By the time that the site clearance was completed in April 1996, arrests had risen to over 900 (Wall 1999: 85). It is not possible here to trace the dynamics of the Newbury direct action in detail, but in addition to the sheer scale of the protest one notable feature was to create an image of a protest covering a wide range of interests. In this context, the presence of Lady Jeannine Barber and her friends on a regular basis on the construction site can be equated with the involvement of Bel Mooney and the


Marchioness of Worcester in the Solsbury Hill campaign. In addition, a number of local business people formed the group Business Against the Bypass. Significantly, the Third Battle of Newbury (the previous two battles had occurred during the Civil War), was an umbrella group consisting of both local residents and direct action protesters. Although the local residents had only a limited involvement in the direct action, the existence of an umbrella group, together with the active involvement of FoE, officially joined together the three main branches of anti-roads protests. The broad spectrum of the alliance against the Newbury bypass was illustrated on two occasions in particular. First, in January, leaders of six of the leading environmental groups visited the site. The groups involved were Greenpeace UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the World Wide Fund for Nature, FoE, the Council for British Archaeology and the Wild Life Trust. The fact that such a broad spectrum, from the environmental Establishment to the more radical activists such as Greenpeace, joined together and expressed solidarity with the direct action protesters, was of considerable symbolic importance. It indicated that, at least on the issue of road building, the environmental advocacy coalition was able to express itself through a demonstration of genuine collective action. Second, this unity was symbolically consolidated in February, when around 7, 000 people turned up to walk part of the bypass route. Among those marching was the Marchioness of Worcester. A few days earlier, she had written in the Conservative-supporting newspaper, the Daily Telegraph: On Sunday the government will see thousands of Barbours and tweed hats joining disenchanted youth to demonstrate their solidarity against the bypass. A sympathetic civil servant told me that the government will reconsider the scheme only if Middle England is seen to be against it. Well, on Sunday I shall be at the front along with Lady Barber and the Hon. Mrs Henry Tennant. (Daily Telegraph 9 February 1996) The extent to which three titled ladies represented ‘Middle England’ might be debated, but the key point was that a mass march on such a scale, and involving people obviously not of the eco-warrior type, sent the message to Ministers that Middle England was in revolt over roads policy. Forty years after the RCC’s ‘Roads Crusade’, the ‘empty chair’ had been filled with a vengeance. It was inevitable that the Newbury bypass would be built. Indeed, ironically the actual construction of the road during 1996–8 attracted only relatively small scale protests. By then, attention had moved on. In the broader perspective, however, the environmental advocacy coalition had won a great, and almost final, victory. The popular image of roads as the transport ‘solution’ had been all but destroyed, and the political and economic credibility of Roads for Prosperity fatally undermined.


In this new climate, it was not surprising that Newbury should prove to be the effective climax of direct action on transport issues. This is not to say, of course, that direct action ceased after Newbury. For example, in 1997 there were highly publicised evictions on the site of the A30 in Devon. As Wall describes, ‘the campaign saw the press deification of young tunneller Daniel Hooper, or “Swampy”. The media celebrated roads protest and crystallised the actions of thousands of grass root campaigners into the form of a single personality’ (Wall 1999:91). Later, in 1997, ‘Swampy’ reappeared at another highly publicised direct action on the site of the second runway at Manchester Airport (see Griggs et al. 1998). The problem for the protesters was that, in personalising the issue, much of the original message was lost. In any case, with the severe cutbacks to the trunk roads programme, much of the raison d’être behind the protests had disappeared. Indicative of the change was the disbandment of Alarm UK as an anti-roads group in 1998. During 1998–9 direct action and evictions continued on the site of the Birmingham Northern Relief Road, designed to be Britain’s first toll road, but these protests were only a vestige of what had taken place at Newbury, and the national political salience was low. Instead, protesters turned their attention to issues such as house building on greenfield sites. It might well be impossible to sustain the momentum of such a remarkable phenomenon as the anti-roads protests of the early to mid-1990s. Unlike the departure from the scene of John Tyme in the 1970s, however, the degree of policy change achieved was more deep-seated. As we have seen, Sir George Young had already indicated that the government now recognised the limited effectiveness of building roads. This message was reiterated and amplified in a transport Green Paper produced in April 1996 (Cm. 3234, 1996). The Green Paper was generally criticised for its failure to promise more resources to public transport and the lack of farreaching solutions to the problems of traffic growth. For example, the Confederation of British Industry said that the Paper sidestepped the difficult decisions needed to deliver a transport system which supported UK competitiveness, while FoE claimed that unless the government set targets for the reduction of traffic—an idea rejected by the Paper—it could not determine the mix of policies needed to make transport environmentally acceptable (Financial Times 26 April 1996). The criticisms tended to overlook, however, the extent to which government thinking on transport had shifted over the previous two or three years. The Green Paper perhaps reflected the government’s reluctance to commit itself to radical transport policies a year away from a general election, and in this respect it represented a tame response to Mawhinney’s Great Debate. Nevertheless, in the context of the environmental advocacy coalition’s multi-arena campaign to change the ‘policy flow’ within Whitehall, most of the objectives had been achieved. Thus the Green Paper conceded that the debate showed a strong preference for improved public transport over expanded roads capacity and stated that ‘the government believes there needs to be a shift in priorities to reflect this’ (Cm. 3234, 1996:8). An important theme related directly to one of


the main concerns of our study—namely, the attempts by antiroads groups to change the way policy makers ‘frame’ transport problems. The whole tenor of the Green Paper was that transport problems had to be viewed in a new light. No better indicator of this changing discourse was the statement that: Future spending will focus, increasingly, on maintaining and managing the capacity of existing roads, and selective improvements through new construction, such as providing much needed bypasses and removing bottlenecks. (Cm. 3234, 1996:65) As if to underscore the fact that this was not simply rhetorical discourse designed to disguise ‘business as usual’, it reminded readers that the government’s review of the trunk roads programme, published in November 1995, had withdrawn some seventy-seven road schemes from the programme ‘either because they were no longer considered to be environmentally acceptable or because they were unlikely to be taken forward in the foreseeable future’ (Cm. 3234, 1996:65). The apparently inexorable destruction of Roads for Prosperity continued as the Conservative administration finally drew to its close. An interesting insight into official sensitivity on the trunk roads cuts was given in a leaked memorandum from Hugh Wenban-Smith, head of the DTp’s national roads programme division, to Sir George Young. Referring to the way news of substantial cuts had been broken on the day of the 1995 Budget, the memo suggested: ‘Because [the review] would inevitably be perceived as bad news, we took great pains to issue the results on Budget Day and with considerable success. The Department as such was not blamed for the very substantial cutback. Officials propose that we should deal with this year’s announcement the same way’ (Daily Telegraph 26 November 1996). The memo betrays the state of political and mental ambivalence and confusion within the DTp. There was obvious embarrassment at the systematic dismantling of what only a few years previously had been a central pillar of the government’s expenditure programme. On the other hand, there was no suggestion that destruction of road’s formerly hegemonic position should in any way be halted. The sensitivity of Wenban-Smith was obvious when a new round of severe cuts to the trunk roads programme was indeed announced on Budget Day in November 1996. Now, 110 schemes worth about £6 billion were axed from the government’s spending plans. This cut nearly half the number of schemes on the government’s programme, and left a total of 114 projects still in the main programme. Schemes dropped included twelve from the main short-term plans and twenty-one bypasses in addition to several motorway widening schemes. Sir George Young announced that the longer-term schemes had been dropped because they had little chance of coming to fruition within a reasonable timetable (Financial Times 27 November 1996). It was estimated that national roads spending would fall to just under £1.5 billion over each of the next three years


from a figure of £1.63 billion in 1996–7. These figures of course include road maintenance. In terms of new construction, it was hoped that three or four new starts would be made in the next year, but Sir George Young could not guarantee this (Guardian 28 November 1996). Although three new candidates for the DBFO route were announced, the construction of any new major road would henceforth be an exceptional event. By the time the Conservatives left office in May 1997, therefore, the process of ‘third order’ change on trunk roads policy was almost complete. The idea of popular consumerism linked to ‘there are votes in roads’ had sustained the hegemonic roads community, with some fluctuations, for four decades. Now, however, the government had concluded that ‘there are no votes in roads’, and instead the idea of sustainable mobility held sway. In an intense multi-arena campaign over a period of only about four to five years, culminating in the display of collective action at Newbury, the environmental advocacy coalition had been remarkably effective in shifting the policy ‘frame’ of government. Crucially, it was the insight of those who understood that change could be brought about by indirect means which proved decisive. Thus if the desired messages could be transmitted to Westminster and Whitehall, including those from ‘arenas without rules’ such as the construction sites, then a mood shift would take place in which roads as the transport policy ‘solution’ would no longer be the accepted wisdom. The missing link was a key Minister able to receive these messages, and translate them into action. In Brian Mawhinney, the environmentalists found a Minister ‘promiscuous’ enough to abandon the roads community, but also ‘celibate’ enough to set an agenda of his own. After that, filling the ‘empty chair’ of popular public opinion at Newbury provided the final piece in the jigsaw. Under the new Labour government, committed to introducing an integrated transport policy, it was inevitable that Ministers would continue the trend away from road building. At the same time, they would learn that implementing a new transport ‘solution’ held many complex political problems. In the final section, we will briefly examine the aftermath of the destruction of Roads for Prosperity. Labour and an integrated transport policy: the ‘Great Debate’ continued The election of a Labour government in May 1997 offered no respite for the roads advocates. Indeed, Labour had made a Manifesto commitment to develop an integrated transport policy, and political circumstances suggested that this objective would be given a high priority. Immediately on taking office, the new government merged the Transport and Environment Departments to form the Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions (DETR), under a single Secretary of State. As expected, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, was given this job. Prescott had a long-standing personal interest in transport policy (he had once been a seaman), and there was no doubt that he placed transport


reform at the top of his agenda. At the same time, the sheer size of the new Department, the existence of a Transport Minister who could potentially act as a countervailing force, and Prescott’s additional duties as Deputy Prime Minister, suggested that it might be difficult for the new Secretary of State to act in the ‘celibate’ manner required for such an onerous task. As we have seen, in the 1990s the Environment Department had become a stronghold of the values enshrined in sustainable development, but amalgamating it with a Transport Department which, despite all the changes which had taken place, still had some ambivalence about these values, represented quite a large political and administrative gamble. The omens from the previous merger, 1970– 6, were not propitious, and although times had moved on, the institutional barriers were still strong. These barriers were illustrated early on for the government in 1997 when, to demonstrate its intent, it subjected twelve particularly controversial trunk road schemes to an accelerated review. This plan backfired on the government somewhat, however, through internal disagreements between John Prescott and the Transport Minister, Gavin Strang. In the event, two schemes were abandoned (including the controversial and salient Salisbury bypass), four approved and the decisions on the other five deferred. The Transport Department had apparently wished to approve nearly all of the schemes, but Prescott placed a veto on these plans. In one sense, the affair illustrated that the traditionally roads biased Transport Department was no longer in full control of its own destiny, which further weakened the advocacy coalition for road building. On the other hand, it also represented a warning to Prescott of the severe political obstacles he was likely to encounter in implementing an integrated transport policy. Nevertheless, in 1997 the government quickly indicated that it wished to develop this integrated policy by announcing a review of the whole trunk roads programme which would question the actual basis of road building decisions (as we have seen, Labour had originally made this commitment in 1994). This review would run alongside preparations for a 1998 White Paper covering all modes of transport, with Ministers claiming there was now a consensus that the car should be used less, and instead that an integrated public transport system should be developed. As part of the White Paper, the government was to look at the possibility of creating a dedicated income stream for public transport from sources such as motorway tolls, congestion charges in cities or a business levy. The debate was moving on, therefore, from defining roads as a policy ‘problem’ to the highly politically sensitive topic of imposing tolls. In a 1997 Consultation Paper, the government declared that the trunk roads review would seek long-term solutions and give more weight to environmental considerations while promoting sustainable economic development (DETR 1997a: para. 25). The concept of sustainable development continued to dominate the official discourse, but, as Stephen Joseph of Transport 2000 discovered, although the environmental advocacy coalition might join together in a highly effective display of collective action in order to defeat Roads for Prosperity,


there was no guarantee that they would do the same in order to support an integrated system of public transport, particularly if the political and financial costs appeared to be high. Here, the ‘empty chair’ largely remained empty. In this case, there-fore, it was easier for senior Ministers to resist the pressure for change. Nevertheless, in 1998 the government published the first White Paper on transport policy since that produced by Bill Rodgers in 1977 (Cm. 3950, 1998). Significantly, in his Foreword John Prescott acknowledged the contribution made by the previous government’s 1996 Green Paper, and stressed that the White Paper would build on that foundation. In this context, Prescott stated that the main aim of the White Paper would be to increase personal choice by improving the alternatives and to secure mobility that was sustainable in the long term (Cm. 3950, 1998:3). To a considerable extent, therefore, there was a continuity in approach between the two governments, with sustainable mobility continuing to be the key policy idea. The new White Paper, however, not only systematically set out the policy approach which had been developing since the early 1990s, it also set out the agenda for the next stage and offered some solutions. For example, charging users on motorways and trunk roads was now firmly back on the political agenda, although it was emphasised that charging schemes would in general only be feasible with full electronic technology (Cm. 3950, 1998: para. 4.103). Institutionally, a Commission for Integrated Transport would be set up to provide independent advice to government on the implementation of an integrated transport policy, to monitor developments across transport, environment, health and other sectors and to review progress towards meeting the objective (Cm. 3950, 1998: para. 4.4). On trunk roads policy itself, the values underpinning Roads for Prosperity were officially laid to rest, in quite explicit terms. ‘The days of “predict and provide” are over—we will give top priority to improving the maintenance and management of existing roads before building new ones’ (Cm. 3950, 1998: para. 3.123, original emphasis). In support of this approach, it was intended that the priorities for trunk roads would complement improvements to rail in particular, as part of the integrated approach. Improvements to road maintenance would be the first priority, with new technology used extensively in network control and traffic management (this approach suggested that epistemic communities of information technologists might well displace road builders as the new elite of the transport community). Finally, carefully targeted capacity improvements to address existing congestion on the network would be promoted where they supported an integrated transport policy (Cm. 3950, 1998: para. 3.125). Significantly, however, some roads would be ‘de-trunked’ and handed over to the local authorities, where it was decided that these roads served mainly local and regional traffic (Cm. 3950, 1998: para. 3.131). Consequently, the Transport Department (via the Highways Agency) would lose elements of its empire which had been an integral element in its power since the 1936 Trunk Roads Act.


Similarly, new objectives were set for the Highways Agency itself. Henceforth, the Agency’s strategic aim would be to contribute to sustainable development by maintaining, improving and operating the trunk road network in support of the integrated transport and land use policies. Thus the Agency’s main purpose in future would be as a network operator rather than as a road builder. The performance of the network in meeting the new objectives would be measured by a series of indicators to be developed by the Agency and published each year in its annual report (Cm. 3950, 1998: paras. 3.136–7). In addition, the Agency would work with local authorities and public transport operators to explore sustainable transport options, including those that could be achieved through the use of planning conditions and planning obligations (Cm. 3950, 1998: para. 3.150). All this meant that the power of the Highways Agency would in future be much more circumscribed, and its discretionary powers strictly limited. Alongside the transport White Paper, the government conducted its review of trunk roads policy, and this review was published in the same month (DETR 1998). This had been preceded by a 1997 consultation document (DETR 1997b). The 1998 review outlined a new investment strategy of targeted improvements. The Labour government had inherited a trunk road programme of 147 schemes. Of these, it was decided that sixty-seven schemes required an early decision. Here, the review reflected the major policy change which had taken place: ‘We treated these 67 schemes as 67 transport problems requiring a solution—but not necessarily a road solution’ (DETR 1998: section 7.4). From this list, thirtyseven schemes were placed in the targeted programme, costing £1.4 billion. It was intended to start these schemes within the next seven years subject to the completion of statutory processes (as we have seen, anything but a formality) (DETR 1998:10). On the other hand, thirty-six schemes were withdrawn from the programme, although this included nineteen schemes on roads to be detrunked, which would therefore place the decision in the hands of the local authorities (i.e. national government could no longer be blamed if the roads were not built). The new strategy was also reflected in the approach to appraisal. Here, the government had been in consultation with English Nature, English Heritage, the Environment Agency and the Countryside Commission, and even sought their views on individual schemes (DETR 1998: section 7.1). The environmental Establishment was therefore now to be more closely integrated into quite detailed planning matters on trunk roads, still further undermining the traditional roads community. The Highways Agency was also directed to become more integrated with other stakeholders by developing a toolkit of techniques to make better use of the network. Amongst the policies to be developed was managing traffic demand on the network, including giving priority to buses, coaches and lorries where appropriate. In order to provide better information to drivers, Regional Traffic Control Centres would be set up to improve reliability on the network (DETR 1998: section 7.1).


It could be said that, together, the 1998 White Paper and Trunk Roads Review represented a new ‘peace treaty’. Compared with the 1970s, however, it was ‘signed’ almost entirely on the terms set by the environmental advocacy coalition, under the banner of sustainable mobility. As the decade drew to a close it became clear that, although sustainable mobility had defeated Roads for Prosperity, to a significant extent the Great Debate on wider issues, initiated by Brian Mawhinney, was continuing in full swing, not least within the government itself. On the one hand, John Prescott was successful in winning a deal from the Treasury to ‘ringfence’ revenues from road tolls to finance better public transport. (As we have seen, the road lobby tried unsuccessfully for decades to persuade the Treasury to hypothecate transport revenues for road building.) On the other hand, Prescott encountered many more problems when it came to introducing a Transport Bill to implement the integrated transport policy. In particular, it was suggested that individuals within the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit (who Prescott branded as ‘teenyboppers’) were worried that the introduction of road tolls would alienate ‘Middle England’ voters that Labour had courted in order to regain power. Even the Prime Minister himself, Tony Blair, was apparently angry when his car was stuck in a traffic jam apparently caused by a new bus lane on the M4 (Guardian 7 July 1999). The government might be ‘anti-new roads’, but it was fearful of being labelled as ‘anti-car’. ‘Middle England’ may have demonstrated at Newbury, but in the mind of Tony Blair and others the ‘Middle England’ motorist continued to occupy the ‘empty chair’—thus demonstrating Wildavsky’s dictum that today’s ‘solutions’ invariably create tomorrow's ‘problems’ (Wildavsky 1979:62–85). The new position was wittily summed up by Joe Rogaly: It boils down to the kind of strategy New Labour likes—a neatly packaged three-point plan. Use the price mechanism to clear the roads. Put money into buses, trains and urban tramways. Promote the development of alternatives to the internal combustion engine, to avoid pollution. It needs a cunning slogan—‘new transport,’ say—towrap it up, and a friend of the party—say Bernie Ecclestone of Formula One—to head a commission to promote it. (Financial Times 3 July 1999) It was perhaps in defining ‘new transport’ that the future course of policy would be determined.

9 The ‘hollow core’ revisited Rail privatisation 1987–92

The manner and speed in which the railways were sold off represented a grotesque act of ideological vandalism. Let’s not be dogmatic. I have heard the case for private sector train operators strongly put. And when did we last greet news of an air disaster with a call to nationalise the airlines? But the rail privatisation scheme devised by John Major’s late and unlamented Tory government was shaped in the cause of narrow political advantage rather than that of an efficient and safe railway network. A broken administration wanted to pretend it still had ideas and energy. That is why it privatised the railways. They were sold with a flawed regulatory system, without a proper incentive structure, and with negligible provision for serious penalties on those companies that put profit before passenger safety. (Philip Stephens, Financial Times, 8 October 1999) The power of the privatisation idea The above quotation was written in the immediate aftermath of a dramatic and politically salient collision between two trains just outside Paddington station in London in October 1999, in which thirty-one people were killed. By the end of 1999, the privatised rail system had been fully operational for over two years. By then, selling off the railways was itself under suspicion as one of the key ‘problems’ underlying the physical causes of the collision. The Paddington accident thus acted as a crisis point which highlighted various aspects of privatisation, including the fragmented structure of the train operating companies; the deficiencies in investment by the infrastructure owning company Railtrack; the prevailing culture which, some alleged, placed profit before safety; the extent to which government should intervene in the affairs of the rail industry; and apparent weaknesses in the regulatory framework. The whole crisis was therefore ‘framed’ in terms of the gap between aspiration and achievement in the government’s official objective of a modern and efficient integrated transport system.


Politically, it was not so much that anyone realistically expected that the railways would return to public ownership (although the 1999 Transport Bill gave statutory authority to a new Strategic Rail Authority), but rather that rail privatisation was perceived, probably more than any other state ‘sell off’, as a predominantly ideological act whose full political and economic consequences had yet to be discovered. As we saw in Chapter 3, for all that Beeching and Marples advocated the idea of a commercial railway, the possibility of returning the railways to the private sector was not in their policy ‘frame’. Apart from practical considerations, in the 1960s the railways were seen generally as one of the core state owned industries, for which government had a natural responsibility. When the realistic possibility of privatising the railways finally arrived on the political agenda in the late 1980s (several peripheral British Rail assets had already been sold off), the large-scale privatisation programme was already well advanced, with former public corporations such as British Telecommunications (BT), British Gas (BG) and British Airways (BA) transferred to the public sector. Significantly for rail, 1988 was the year when the British Steel Corporation (BSC) was privatised. In the early 1980s, the Thatcher government had pumped in billions of pounds of public money just to keep the BSC afloat. Even in the mid—1980s, a sale of the BSC was generally regarded as unthinkable. As the BSC began to make profits, however, senior management exerted pressure on Ministers to make the Corporation a candidate for privatisation. For its part, although wary of the BSC’s sale prospects, the government perceived that privatisation of this former ‘lame duck’ would carry a heavy symbolism. Not only would it signal the government’s success in bringing a ‘national champion’ industry back from the dead, it would also illustrate that even those industries formerly considered uncommercial and too politically sensitive for privatisation, such as British Rail and British Coal, were now in the government’s ‘frame’ for a sale (Dudley and Richardson 1990). Unlike the BSC, where senior management had a long record of asserting itself in its dealings with Ministers, BR remained basically a ‘hollow core’. The lack of a politically assertive management, holding strong ideological basic and core beliefs about strategy and ownership, as in the case of the BSC, once again left the rail industry vulnerable to the rapid insertion of new policy ideas. In common with many of the other privatised public corporations, BR could have been sold off as a single company. Indeed, this was the objective consistently sought by BR management. In the case of rail, however, Ministers, for a variety of motives, were anxious to fragment the organisation, and were particularly open to ideas from right wing think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies (Zahariadis 1996; Harris and Godward 1997; Welsby and Nichols 1999). This dependence on ‘the ideas stream’ tended to accentuate the ‘hollow core’ character of the railways. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was no equivalent of a single dominant individual such as Beeching, but rather a succession of key individual

THE ‘HOLLOW CORE’ REVISITED 191

privatisation advocates at the elite policy core who at various times carried the policy forward. Conversely, there was no powerful rail industry advocacy coalition to either reject the idea or modify it. Instead, there were strong elements of idiosyncratic policy learning. This was particularly evident in the enthusiasm of Prime Minister John Major’s Policy Unit (apparently supported for a period by the Prime Minister himself), for a return to the pre-nationalisation structure of regional companies—an idea suggested by the Centre for Policy Studies. This idea appeared to owe more to a nostalgia for a lost ‘golden age’ of traditional British values, rather than a considered evaluation of the privatisation options. Eventually, the key development that emerged was the decision to split BR and create a separate track authority. The Treasury favoured this option for the reason that it was calculated that the sale of a separate track company would maximise privatisation revenues (although there was initially some fudging of policy on an eventual sale of Railtrack, as the track company was called, the sale eventually took place in 1996). It could also be said that the Treasury saw privatisation as a means of offloading the massive amount of capital investment which was required by the rail network. The track authority decision also owed something to a 1991 EC Directive which favoured the administrative separation of track and operating authorities, a course of action which had already taken place in 1988 in Sweden (although, as Harris and Godward point out, in the Swedish case there was no intention to privatise the track authority (Harris and Godward 1997:65)). The policy framework was set out in a 1992 White Paper (Cm. 2012, 1992), and enacted in the 1993 Railways Act. Although the Railways Bill attracted great political salience, both inside and outside Parliament (most famously when it was described by one highly sceptical Tory MP, Robert Adley, as ‘a poll tax on wheels’), it emerged relatively unscathed. In this case, unlike trunk roads, there was no powerful multi-arena advocacy coalition to force the government into fundamental policy change. For example, Transport 2000, despite strong opposition to the proposals, had little effect on policy on this occasion. The irony was that a group financed chiefly by rail interests, which was highly influential in winning ‘third order’ change in roads policy, seemed almost powerless in what could be called its own ‘domestic’ sector. During the very period when the environmental advocacy coalition’s multi-arena campaign was shifting the core policy discourse on roads, rail privatisation continued its largely unhindered progress. This was despite the setting up of the group, Save Our Railways, in 1993 (financed by the rail unions, Transport 2000, consumer groups and some local authorities) which hired one of the leading figures from Alarm UK, Jonathan Bray, to direct its policy. In the case of rail, however, there was an inability to attach policy issues to a concept such as ‘sustainable mobility’. Instead, it was the enormously powerful political idea of privatisation itself, shaped in the case of rail by a few key individuals, which eventually won the day. In this chapter, we will concentrate chiefly on the crucial policy-making period 1987–92, when the privatisation idea took over the rail ‘hollow core’,


culminating in the White Paper which set out officially the broad policy framework (many details were only filled in during implementation). First, however, we will examine briefly the events which led eventually to this new period of ‘third order’ policy change. The post-Beeching survival of the rail ‘hollow core’ The implementation of the Beeching Plan did not turn BR into a commercial railway or strengthen the political status of its management. The BR Chairman 1971–6, Richard Marsh, who had also served as Minister of Transport 1968–9, summed up the situation when he arrived at BR: In 1968 I had been responsible for seeing on to the Statute Book a major Transport Act which had, among other things, wiped out BR’s capital debts of £1,200 million and had given them yet another new start. In 1969 and 1970, as a result of these massive capital write-offs, BR had claimed to make profits, but they had, in fact, only been making surpluses. They certainly had not been generating a sufficiently large surplus to replace their assets, and it did not take me very long, after arriving at the board, to see that once again we were sliding back into the red. (Marsh 1978:165) Marsh concluded that the commercial railway was an impossibility, and entered into consultations with government to put the subsidies on a more planned and systematic basis, and also to improve the level of capital investment. On investment, he was continually frustrated by government economic crises and cutbacks (as the road lobby also experienced in the early to mid-1970s) (Marsh 1978:168). At the same time, the oil crisis of this period appeared to give rail a more politically acceptable ‘image’ after the ‘golden age’ of road building in the 1960s when rail was widely regarded as a dying industry (Henshaw 1994:214). In this climate, the 1974 Railways Act moved towards a block grant structure for socially necessary passenger services; wrote off £250 million of accumulated debt; and introduced grants to assist the provision of facilities for freight haulage by rail (Harris and Godward 1997:26). As Wistrich describes, under the new system of ‘public service obligation’ (PSO), grants could be made for unremunerative passenger services, to provide a service comparable to that in 1974. In this more sympathetic climate, the 1977 White Paper on transport policy confirmed the continuation of a high level of revenue support and promised no major cuts in the rail network (Wistrich 1983: 35–6). Nevertheless, by the late 1970s the government was once more becoming concerned about the size of the rail deficits, and the extent to which levels of subsidy might rise in the future. As Pryke notes, the BR Board was once again under some financial discipline, so that by 1978 the (visible) freight deficit had


been eliminated, although the Board had previously said that it was incurable (Pryke 1981:87). It was inevitable that the arrival of the Thatcher government in 1979 would place greater pressure on BR to improve productivity and efficiency, even if large-scale rail privatisation was not on the political agenda in the early 1980s. This led BR management to adopt a dual strategy of pressing government for greater capital investment, while pushing the rail unions towards more modern and efficient working practices. For example, a joint report by BR and the DTp in 1981 took the view that a substantial electrification programme would be financially worthwhile for 80 per cent of passenger and 70 per cent of freight services. At the same time, flexible rostering of train drivers’ duties was secured in 1982 after a bitter dispute with the drivers’ union ASLEF (Wistrich 1983:36). As we saw in Chapter 7, however, in the 1980s the political climate was once more moving against rail, and in favour of roads. The Prime Minister herself was firmly committed to the values underlying ‘the great car economy’, and invariably travelled by road. More broadly, there was an implicit assumption that any publicly owned and subsidised monopoly, such as rail, must almost inevitably be overmanned and inefficient (although the number of staff employed by the BRB fell by over 20 per cent between 1974 and 1983, from 199,437 to 155,423, between 1975 and 1982 the deficit on railway operations rose from £692 to £1,035 million (Harris and Godward 1997:33–5)). Thus in 1982 the government appointed Sir David Serpell to chair a study of Railway Finances. As we saw in Chapter 3, he had been an important figure during the Beeching era as a member of the Stedeford Committee and a Deputy Secretary in the MoT. It demonstrated, therefore, that what might be called the Beeching commercial railway advocacy coalition still had significant political influence. The Serpell Report itself (Serpell 1983) carried several echoes of the Beeching Plan two decades earlier. In particular, it published five network mileage options, in order to assess whether significant economic improvements might arise from a smaller network. As Harris and Godward note, the Serpell Report did conclude that there were many opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs of the railway while keeping it at broadly its present size, but it was the publication of the network options (going down to a rump of 1,630 miles from its 1983 base of 10,541 miles) which attracted most political attention (Harris and Godward 1997:36). The Serpell Report was not received sympathetically in the public arena. Sir David’s Beeching connections, and the prospect it appeared to raise, however remote, of a massive reduction of the rail network, aroused widespread hostility. As Henshaw points out, particularly vehement criticism of the report came from the Central Transport Consultative Committee, whose members were still smarting from their involuntary involvement in the Beeching closure programme (Henshaw 1994:222). The Thatcher government was politically shrewd enough to realise that any Beeching type network reductions in the 1980s would carry too heavy a political price. As with the steel industry at this time, it was content


to continue paying the subsidies and wait for a ‘policy window’ in the political and economic climate to initiate policy change. On the other hand, at the policy core the Serpell Report did have some influence. For example, Foster recounts how a very senior civil servant who had been closely involved in many earlier railway reviews told him that it was only the Serpell Report that persuaded him that the railways were substantially inefficient and could be run better with fewer resources (Foster 1992:137). Thus within government circles Serpell, as a surviving member of the Beeching-led commercial railway advocacy coalition, was winning some important converts. In the 1980s, however, the Beeching 1963 type policy ‘solution’ of severe network reductions was no longer in the dominant policy ‘frame’ of Ministers and officials. Instead, the commercial railway idea would mutate and attach itself to the rapidly developing privatisation idea and its associated discourse. For all its failure to make a direct political impact, however, the Serpell Report provided an important bridging point between the old and new advocacy coalitions. Henceforth, it would be the privatisation advocacy coalition which would carry forward many of the Beeching basic values about the benefits to be gained from a more commercially operated railway. Developments in the mid- to late 1980s acted as a two edged sword for BR management. On the one hand, in 1982 BR passenger services were reorganised into three quasi-independent organisations. InterCity operated the prestige express services, Network SouthEast the commuter trains in and around the capital, and Provincial the remainder, including a few heavily subsidised rural lines. As the 1980s progressed, BR’s finances improved dramatically. By 1988 InterCity services had achieved profitability and Network SouthEast passenger levels had grown by 15 per cent in three years. Overcrowding became an issue, and BR attempted to ration by price through raising fares for five consecutive years at more than the rate of inflation. Countering the Beeching era, new stations were opening at the rate of about fifteen a year (Henshaw 1994:223–4). This better financial news for BR management, however, also made rail a more viable prospect for privatisation. As the privatisation programme gathered momentum, and formerly ‘unsellable’ organisations such as British Steel returned to the private sector, so Ministers were prepared to turn their attention to rail. As we saw in Chapter 7, by the late 1980s the Roads for Prosperity White Paper was in preparation, and an apparent new ‘golden age’ for road building was at hand. In this climate, rail was decidedly not seen as a key official policy ‘solution’, and the prospect of privatisation became an increasingly fashionable option, at least within government itself. The ever-present occurrence of the ‘hollow core’ however, determined the trajectory of the policy idea. Rail interests would largely be bypassed in favour of alternative external advice and the political instinct of often ‘celibate’ Ministers.


Transport and transplanting the privatisation idea In 1979, the nationalised industries in the UK accounted for about a tenth of the Gross Domestic Product, a seventh of total investment in the economy and around a tenth of the Retail Price Index. They employed about one and a half million people, and dominated the transport, energy, communication, steel and shipbuilding sectors of the economy (HM Treasury 1990:6). Given its eventual position as one of the central pillars of the Thatcher era of government, and an ideological totem, the privatisation idea grew from relatively small beginnings. For example, in the 1979 Conservative election manifesto the National Freight Corporation was the only transport undertaking in the public sector to be identified as a target for denationalisation. In contrast, for rail the key was seen as higher productivity. In the event, the privatisation of the NFC followed a tortured path, and was only settled in the form of an employee buy-out early in 1982 (McLachlan 1983). Transport had been targeted by the 1945–51 Labour government as a key element in its nationalisation programme, which in turn was intended to shape an integrated transport policy. Conversely, therefore, a largescale privatisation programme would inevitably place pressure on the resources of the DTp. Once the privatisation idea became more politically fashionable generally in the mid— to late 1980s, then a momentum would build up within the Department to transfer the state owned transport industries to the private sector. In a sense, this was a factor in the privatisation of rail. By the 1990s, many of the other transport industries had been privatised, and within the DTp there was by this time a natural momentum which saw rail as one of the final pieces in the transport privatisation jigsaw. After the NFC in 1982, transport privatisation continued with the sale of Associated British Ports in 1983, but then only resumed on a major scale in 1987 with the sale of British Airways and the British Airports Authority. Of greater political and commercial significance for BR, how-ever, was the sale between 1986 and 1988 of the National Bus Company (a similar sale took place of the Scottish Transport Group). In retrospect, it can be seen that the decision to fragment the NBC for the purposes of privatisation set a precedent which would be followed by BR. The majority of NBC constituent companies (known as subsidiaries) had their roots largely in suburban and rural areas away from the centres of the principal towns and cities, which traditionally were operated by municipally owned companies. By 1945, these largely suburban companies were subsidiaries of either British Electric Traction (BET) or Tilling. Significantly, the 1945 Labour government was committed to nationalisation of the railways, road haulage and civil aviation, but not the bus industry. In the event, however, the Chairman of Tilling initiated a deal with the government, and so the Tilling companies were nationalised in 1947. The BET companies were only sold to the state in 1967, and the National Bus Company was formed in 1969 largely by an amalgamation of the former BET


and Tilling companies. Although the Beeching plan had envisaged many of the lost rural rail lines being replaced by bus services, the growth in car ownership and the development of a hegemonic roads community hit the bus industry with similar severity to that of rail. Pryke calculates that between 1963 and 1968 the companies controlled by NBC lost 10 per cent of their traffic, while output per effective worker fell by 6 per cent. He also considers that management was complacent, inward looking, inbred and amateur (Pryke 1981:96–7). During the 1970s and early 1980s subsidies to NBC subsidiaries by local authorities grew enormously (e.g. so called Section 34 grants for rural bus services increased from £2.7 million in 1974 to £64.6 million in 1984), and the Thatcher government decided to make the bus industry something of a ‘guinea pig’ for experiments in radical policy change. It could be said that, to a considerable extent, the bus industry mirrored the ‘hollow core’ character of rail. This made the industry susceptible to top down ministerial initiatives. Indeed, the bus industry was politically even more vulnerable than rail. In the case of rail, there was at least some tradition of consumer representation, while the threat of rail closures could usually bring forward some articulate middle class opposition. Buses had fewer influential political friends, and generally carried an image of transport providers for those too poor to own a car. The appointment of Nicholas Ridley as Transport Secretary in 1983 brought a controversial and highly ‘celibate’ Minister to the DTp, who was prepared to propose and implement radical policy ‘solutions’. When the Conservatives were still in opposition, in 1978, Ridley had produced a report which advocated dismantling the nationalised industries and weakening the power of public sector trade unions (Feigenbaum et al. 1999:65). Ridley was a close ally of the Prime Minister, and one of the key ideological ‘framers’ of her government’s policies (Ridley 1991). He swiftly targeted the bus industry, and the 1984 Buses White Paper (Cmnd. 9300, 1984) proposed that all road service (quantity) licensing should be abolished outside London; that local authorities would put out tenders for subsidised services; that NBC be privatised in the form of small, free standing units and become independent companies; and that municipal bus operations be incorporated into companies still owned by their District Councils. Since the 1930s, the bus industry had been strictly regulated and abolition of road service licensing, which took place in 1986, took away much of the security of operations of companies such as the NBC, and the principle of crosssubsidisation which underpinned the system. In this more hostile environment, NBC privatisation gathered momentum. Initially, NBC senior management appeared confident that they could persuade the Secretary of State to split the company into only a few component parts. It later transpired that, as early as the end of 1983, NBC management had suggested to Ridley an employee buy-out of the group as a whole. The idea had been rejected on the grounds that the government could not countenance selling a monopoly into the private sector (Financial Times 16 May 1985). In later privatisations, of course, virtual monopolies such as BT and BG were sold in one piece. The difference was that


the ‘hollow core’ of the bus industry made it the ideal candidate for government experiments. Thus an NBC management suggestion that the company be split into four parts was also rejected by Ridley. The Transport Secretary did face some opposition from the Treasury, which feared that a fragmented NBC would raise less money than if the organisation was sold as a whole. Ridley was not to be deterred, however, and between July 1986 and April 1988 NBC sold all its 72 subsidiaries, many in the form of management buy-outs, for a total exceeding £325 million (Dudley 1989). Ridley himself left the DTp in 1986, before rail privatisation gathered momentum, but it could be said that in his radical policy approach to the bus industry, and in particular the little regarded privatisation of the NBC, this highly ‘celibate’ Minister was already setting the agenda for rail. Within the DTp, he had demonstrated not only that radical policy shifts could be forced through (particularly where a ‘hollow core’ was involved), but also that a public corporation could be fragmented to a high degree yet successfully privatised. Significantly, Ridley went on to once again act in a highly ‘celibate’ manner as Environment Secretary. In setting up the National Rivers Authority, he largely bypassed his own officials and the principal water industry interests. Some Ministers, at least, seem born to be ‘celibate’ (see Maloney and Richardson 1995: 71–97). It is perhaps ironical, with regard to NBC privatisation, that the industry subsequently entered a period of rapid consolidation (in a manner reminiscent of the BET—Tilling duopoly). One effect was to make rapid profits for some executives involved in employee buy-outs (suggesting that in a number of cases the government sale had been under-priced). Of greater long-term political significance, the consolidation created a small number of large-scale bus operators, such as Stagecoach, First Group and National Express, which not only dominated the bus industry, but would also successfully bid for a number of train operating franchises in the 1990s. NBC privatisation therefore had the important political effect of providing the government with ready-made candidates with apparently the necessary experience and expertise to take on the responsibilities of running a fragmented privatised railway. Privatisation of the transport industries therefore mirrors the development of privatisation policy as a whole. As Feigenbaum et al. note, there was no fully developed, coherent, and self-conscious plan for systemic privatisation at the outset. Rather, Conservative policy evolved during the early 1980s until a full blown, ideologically driven, and systemic programme emerged. The British case shows that governments do not necessarily have fixed or invariant privatisation strategies. They can shift from one strategy to another over time, and it is possible to identify various phases (Feigenbaum et al. 1999:60). In the case of transport, however, we do once again see the great significance of individuals such as ‘celibate’ Ministers in the transplantation of new ideas. A determined and idiosyncratic individual such as Nicholas Ridley could impose a fresh policy ‘frame’ through largely bypassing the relevant interests and imposing top-down


implementation. Significantly, Ridley was a leading figure in the ‘less government’ advocacy coalition rather than having an involved interest in the ‘problems’ of the transport industry. Thus his ‘solutions’ treated industries such as buses as a test bed for implementing more general economic and political theories. The behaviour of Ridley at the DTp is a reminder that, although there was undoubtedly a significant element of serendipity in the development of rail privatisation, there were also individuals with a long-standing vision and commitment to pushing back the frontiers of the state, and who also possessed a determination to transplant these ideas when the opportunity presented itself. In contrast to the road haulage, air and bus industries, the 1980s saw only a few BR interests privatised. These were basically peripheral to the core train operating businesses, and included British Rail Hotels in 1983–4, the Sealink harbour and ferry subsidiary in 1984, and Travellers Fare, which provided catering at railway stations, in 1988. In addition, British Rail Engineering Ltd (BREL), was sold off in 1989. Although these sales were relatively minor compared with the sale of BR as a whole, it could be said that politically the steady drip of BR sales did at least keep rail privatisation on the political agenda, and so created a climate where the subject was an appropriate one for public debate. In coupling the policy streams, it is important to recognise that the political climate is right for ‘an idea whose time has come’. At least by 1987, the rail ‘hollow core’ was once more ripe for the insertion of new policy ideas. Inserting the rail privatisation idea Rail privatisation truly arrived on the political agenda in 1987. The decisive victory by the Conservatives in the general election of that year ensured that the privatisation idea generally would gather new momentum. The boom in the economy also had the effect of improving the commercial position of BR. In this respect there is an analogy with the British Steel Corporation, whose financial position also improved in the late 1980s, thus making privatisation a realistic proposition. Here, the connection with steel disappears, however, for while pressure from BSC management pushed through privatisation of the BSC as a whole in 1988, a BR sale was put on ice. Rail privatisation was firmly on the political agenda, but the policy-making process (let alone implementation) remained fluid. Zahariadis argues that the question was not whether to sell but how to do it. Breaking up BR, however, was an implementation minefield. Because of daunting valuation problems, divisions along lines other than those currently existing would be extremely difficult. A sale of existing sectors was likely to attract limited interest because several networks, such as Provincial, InterCity and SouthEast, covered only between a third and three quarters of their costs by 1988. More specifically, the Provincial network under private ownership would require either substantial route closures or considerable subsidies (Zahariadis 1996:413).


It could also be said that the long-running debate over the form of privatisation (which continued until 1992) was a symptom of the ‘hollow core’. No interest, and in particular management itself (unlike industries such as telecommunications, gas and steel), was able to assert itself and push government into a definite decision on the form of privatisation. This left the sector open to a range of exogenous inputs, each with its own ‘solution’. In particular, the now politically fashionable think tanks. Ironically, a 1987 report by one of these think tanks, the Adam Smith Institute, would produce a ‘solution’ which was very close to the one eventually adopted five years later. As Denham and Garnett emphasise, the term ‘think tank’ (borrowed from Second World War military jargon for a secure room where plans and strategies could be discussed) is notoriously difficult to define. For example, they can be large institutions with long-term horizons focused on changing the ‘climate’ of elite opinion. They can also be contract research organisations which serve government agencies and private sponsors on a contractual basis. More relevantly for this study, they can also be ‘advocacy tanks’, which have a strong policy partisanship and campaign aggressively on current policy issues. The format chosen for the research output of ‘advocacy tanks’ is, typically, short pamphlets and papers rather than book-length studies (Denham and Garnett 1996: 44–3). An ‘advocacy tank’ can therefore be a potentially strong influence in leading and shaping an advocacy coalition, particularly in a sector where a ‘hollow core’ exists. Although ‘think tanks’ in Britain can be traced back to the Utilitarians in the nineteenth century, during the 1980s the ‘advocacy tanks’ of the New Right came to have a political salience through their influence on the Thatcher government. In one sense, the emergence of a new importance for ‘think tanks’ can be seen as a response to the growing complexity of government and a corresponding need for expert advice (Denham and Garnett 1996:47–58). In fact the one official ‘think tank’ inherited by the Thatcher government, the Central Policy Review Staff, was abolished in 1983. This indicated that the government was suspicious of internal advice and was receptive to more radical ideas from external sources. One of the principal ‘think tanks’ which sought to fill this ideological and political vacuum was the Adam Smith Institute. Founded in 1977 by three graduates of St Andrew’s University, naming the Institute after Adam Smith was simultaneously an affirmation of faith in market liberalism and homage to the founders’ Scottish associations (Heffernan 1996: 73–4). Under the leadership of two of its founders, Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler, the Adam Smith Institute developed a talent for self-promotion. It is elite-focused, targeting decisionmakers first and opinion formers second. Its primary audience is to be found in Whitehall and Westminster, among them Ministers, civil servants and political opinion formers. Its objective is to exert influence within the policy arena rather than win the battles of ideas; to frame policy options and have certain decisions taken (Heffernan 1996:78).


In the case of rail privatisation, however, there was an idiosyncratic twist which made the contribution by the Adam Smith Institute somewhat different than merely a proposal from an ideas stream ‘advocacy tank’. The relevant paper was produced by Kenneth Irvine in 1987 (Irvine 1987). In the Adam Smith pamphlet, The Right Lines, he put forward the key idea of an infrastructure authority, with different operators competing to run trains on this infrastructure. The infrastructure authority would control track, power supplies, signalling, stations and non-operational land. Given its contents, the distinctive feature about the pamphlet was that Irvine himself was a former BR management trainee, who continued to have extensive contacts in the industry. In fact, the idea for an infrastructure authority came from BR freight managers who were frustrated with its uncompetitive and closed structure. These ideas had been put to senior management, but had been rejected. Irvine developed the pamphlet ideas in association with a BR executive, and Madsen Pirie enthusiastically accepted the project (The Rail Sale, BBC Radio Four 30 November 1999). It could be argued therefore, that the infrastructure authority idea came internally from a frustrated epistemic community of BR operational managers. Politically, these ideas were then injected into government via the ‘advocacy tank’ of the Adam Smith Institute. In this sense, endogenous ideas took on an exogenous character in order to be transplanted into the policy process (see Radaelli 1997). As in the case of trunk roads, an important turning point in rail privatisation was the appointment of Paul Channon as Transport Secretary in 1987. Channon was not only the Minister to publish Roads for Prosperity, he was also the first Minister to put rail privatisation firmly on the political agenda, and also to a significant extent ‘framed’ the debate which would continue over the next five years. Although Channon was not a ‘showman’ Minister, and lacked the radical ideological edge of a Nicholas Ridley, it could be said that his influence at key turning points in both road and rail policy made him the most influential and politically significant Transport Minister of the 1980s. In the case of rail privatisation, however, there was one other particularly influential figure in these early vital days of inserting the privatisation idea into the public agenda and the DTp. Greg Bourne, previously of the oil company BP (perhaps in itself an ominous indicator for rail), was put in charge of privatisation initiatives in the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit, and during 1988 enthusiastically set about initiating discussions on rail. These developments first surfaced into the public consciousness in May 1988. First, the Junior Transport Minister responsible for BR, David Mitchell, made the announcement that the government was minded to consent to BR’s proposal to cease operation of the Settle—Carlisle line. A vociferous campaign had been waged to save this scenic line, however, and the government was seeking a ‘solution’. Consequently, Mitchell announced that a final decision would be delayed until November to see if the line could be taken over by a private operator (HC Debates 16 May 1988, cols. 683–4). Significantly, it was reported that while Channon and Mitchell had generally favoured saving the Settle-


Carlisle line, they were overruled by Greg Bourne, who insisted on the privatisation ‘solution’ (in the event the Settle-Carlisle line was reprieved by BR) (Transport Retort June 1988). The Settle—Carlisle line decision was just the prelude to a much wider debate on rail privatisation. Within days it was reported that options for the eventual privatisation of the railways had been under discussion for some time, and the issue had long been a candidate for inclusion in the Conservative manifesto for the next general election (Financial Times 21 May 1988). Bourne had already initiated discussions with BR management, and significantly the chief policy options were already clear. First, BR could be sold as a single operating unit. This ‘BR plc’ solution was favoured by BR management itself, and was advocated to the Number Ten Policy Unit by the Chairman Sir Bob Reid. As we have seen, this ‘solution’ had already been accepted by government in the case of industries such as telecommunications, gas, British Airways and British Steel. For the political ‘hollow core’ of rail, however, this simple ‘solution’ to the privatisation ‘problem’ would not be acceptable to Ministers. Second, there was the option of a separation of infrastructure and operation, as already suggested by Kenneth Irvine in his 1987 Adam Smith Institute paper (this idea was also supported by Professor David Starkie, an influential academic on transport matters). On the other hand, opponents of the idea claimed that the track authority would create a monopoly, which it would be difficult to regulate. Third, there was the option of splitting BR into regional companies. It was considered that this represented the Japanese ‘solution’ where the lossmaking state railway had been split into six passenger companies and a single national freight operator. It was also the ‘solution’ advocated by the Centre for Policy Studies, a rival ‘think tank’ to the Adam Smith Institute. A paper published in June 1988 by Andrew Gritten, suggested splitting BR into a dozen regional companies (Gritten 1988). This ‘solution’ was apparently the one favoured by Greg Bourne himself (Transport Retort June 1988). Critics (such as BR management) alleged that the idea would be unworkable because each region depended upon another for feeder traffic and it would be virtually impossible to strip out the costs of one area from another (Guardian 21 May 1988). When Sir Bob Reid announced record BR profits of £291 million in July 1988, he also acknowledged that three meetings had been held with DTp officials on the subject of privatisation, although he believed there was no case for making major changes to a business which was essentially in good shape (Guardian 6 July 1988). By the time of the Conservative Party Conference in October, however, the Transport Secretary was prepared to admit that policy options were being discussed. Although he conceded that rail privatisation could not be achieved in the current parliament, he revealed that he had set work in hand to study the options ‘Before we make any decision about whether to privatise, we need to be clear about how best to do it’ (Financial Times 12 October 1988). Later in the month, Channon went even further in a speech at the


Centre for Policy Studies, when he listed four options for privatisation. To the three already widely publicised of BR plc; regional companies; and a track authority; he added that of a sale of BR’s five existing business sectors— #8212;InterCity, Freight, Parcels, Network SouthEast and Provincial (Financial Times 29 October 1988). For BR management, by the end of 1988 it was becoming clear that they faced a steep uphill struggle in order to persuade the government to accept the ‘BR plc’ option. Nevertheless, it was equally clear that privatisation was now a real possibility, and that the ‘hollow core’ ensured that policy options were open. Consequently, Sir Bob Reid announced that BR was considering substituting buses for trains on some provincial and rural routes as a preparation for privatisation (Guardian 9 December 1988). It could be said that such an announcement of this ‘Beeching’ type solution was designed to send a message to government of the political costs if privatisation went wrong. Nevertheless, BR now had to make practical preparations for privatisation, and early in 1989 it announced that it had called in merchant bankers Lazard Brothers and management consultants Coopers and Lybrand to help draw up internal proposals on ownership and structure in response to the DTp options. For its part, the government itself had appointed accountants Deloitte Haskins and Sells to recommend the structure of the rail business, while merchant bankers Samuel Montague would try to establish a value for BR, and National Economic Research Associates would consider how to regulate the industry after privatisation (Railway Gazette February 1989). Given that no official decision had yet been made on whether to privatise at all, events appeared to be gaining their own momentum, and indicated the extent to which the rail privatisation idea had been successfully injected into the policy agenda. One event which appeared to put some restraint on the privatisation process, however, was a serious accident at Clapham Junction in December 1988, when thirty-five people were killed. The accident was attributed to a signal failure, but also implicitly raised doubts about how rail safety and investment issues would be dealt with in a privatised system. A further serious accident at Purley in March 1989 only intensified the fears. As Zahariadis comments, if the government could not enforce strict safety regulations in a corporation it owned, it was much less likely to do so in a company it did not own (Zahariadis 1996: 415). As events in 1989 unfolded, an even more important, and highly surprising, development was the attitude towards rail privatisation of the Prime Minister herself. In 1988–9 she backed Paul Channon’s plans to give greater priority to transport policy, including expansion of the trunk roads programme. One positive indicator of her attitude was the appointment in July 1988 of Michael Portillo as a Minister of State at the DTp. Portillo was a young protégé of the Prime Minister, and his portfolio included the introduction of private capital to roads and rail. The addition of Portillo to the Departmental team undoubtedly gave transport a more ideological cutting edge, and appeared to indicate top level


backing for schemes such as rail privatisation. As 1989 progressed, however, enthusiasm for this radical project appeared to cool markedly. To a significant extent, this could be attributed to a weakening in the personal position of the Prime Minister herself. A policy disaster such as the poll tax, combined with internal differences within the government on the key policy question of Britain’s future in Europe, made Mrs Thatcher appear politically weaker compared with her apparently impregnable position after the 1987 election. In this more hostile and uncertain climate, risky ventures such as rail privatisation appeared considerably less attractive. There was also some ambivalence about the Prime Minister’s values on public funding in transport. As Joe Rogaly observed: At about the same time (as publication of the BR privatisation options) the Prime Minister’s staff put up a paper showing the likely effect of the Channel Tunnel on British industry. This indicates that if the road and rail networks that head down from Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and the Midlands are left as they are, the South East will get all the business and the rest of the country will become a declining hinterland. Investment in road and rail should be tailored accordingly. Surely, it was argued, Ministers and officials ought to stop thinking ‘transport’ and start thinking ‘infrastructure’? It is my understanding that Mrs Thatcher and, by extension, Mr Channon, have bought this. They have a natural ally in the Department of Industry under Lord Young. (Financial Times 10 February 1989) Rogaly was arguing that the Prime Minister was in fact not so opposed to central planning and direction as her ideological rhetoric suggested. It could also be said that the Channel Tunnel project itself, in which the Prime Minister had invested immense personal political capital, was beginning to loom larger in the consciousness of Ministers. In this climate, grand infrastructure visions such as Roads for Prosperity or the Channel Tunnel rail link from London became more salient than the fragmentation and sale of BR. The Prime Minister’s shifting attitudes remind us that issues of high politics such as rail privatisation are not just dependent on Departmental attitudes, or indeed those of apparently influential policy advisers. Ultimately, a Prime Minister, particularly one as dominant as Mrs Thatcher, can have enormous influence on the trajectory of ‘an idea whose time has come’. In a ‘hollow core’ such as rail, the impact can be particularly significant. The developing uncertainty was reflected in a statement by Paul Channon in May 1989 that rail privatisation would only go ahead if the government was satisfied that the consumer would benefit. He also emphasised that there was no intention to close lines all over the UK, and that there was no reason why an industry could not be subsidised just because it was in the private sector (Guardian 13 May 1989). In June 1989, Mrs Thatcher herself emphasised that


the government had no plans to bring forward rail privatisation in response to two one-day strikes by the NUR. She considered that privatisation of rail required ‘very, very careful consideration of all the options’ (Financial Times 30 June 1989). The momentum of rail privatisation was also hit by the departure of Paul Channon from the DTp in July 1989. Notwithstanding his major policy initiatives on road and rail, the increased salience of transport during his tenure, particularly a series of disparate disasters such as the bomb on a plane which crashed on the town of Lockerbie, and the Clapham and Purley rail crashes, damaged his credibility. Ironically, the fact that the Prime Minister herself was taking more interest in transport issues also worked against him. Channon was not known as a close ally of Mrs Thatcher, and was widely regarded as a Minister who lacked the political weight to influence the Prime Minister. Significantly, his successor, Cecil Parkinson, was the archetypal long-standing Thatcher ally who had worked as Conservative Party Chairman during the successful 1983 election campaign. The series of strikes by the rail unions had apparently made the Prime Minister more determined to weaken them, while the strikes had also damaged the credibility of BR management. In this case, an ally such as Parkinson could be relied on to support the Prime Minister. On the other hand, as we noted earlier, there was also the key argument about investment in road and rail infrastructure. The crucial political factor was that, from the outset, rail privatisation was envisaged as a long-term project—not to be implemented before the next election. This had the effect of giving the government, at least for the moment, something of a breathing space on the issue. Difficult decisions could therefore be postponed. By the time of the Conservative Party Conference in October 1989, it was clear that this latter approach had won the day. It had been widely expected that the Transport Secretary would use the Party Conference to outline the government’s preferred option on rail privatisation. In the event, however, Parkinson merely said that although rail privatisation would still be firmly on the agenda if the government won a fourth term of office, it was not at the top of his list of priorities at the moment. Instead, the immediate task was to modernise the railways (Financial Times 12 October 1989). In fact, Parkinson has subsequently revealed that, prior to making his Conference speech, the Prime Minister tried to persuade him to take out all references to rail privatisation. He countered, however, that to do so would make the government look as if it was performing a u-turn, given the expectation of an announcement (The Rail Sale, BBC Radio Four 30 November 1999). Nevertheless, Parkinson’s extreme caution on the issue indicated that the Prime Minister was distinctly losing her earlier enthusiasm for privatising rail. In a press conference after the speech, Parkinson was if anything even more cautious and said that rail privatisation was never going to happen before the next parliament, if ever (Independent 13 October 1989). The use of the words ‘if ever’ no doubt reflected his earlier conversation with Mrs Thatcher!


This political cooling of the enthusiasm for rail privatisation, particularly on the part of the Prime Minister, meant that 1990 was largely a year in which events marked time. One further deterrent for the government in pushing ahead was that the economic climate had taken a turn for the worse after the boom years of the late 1980s, with a commensurate deterioration in BR’s finances. In December 1989 the government had set new financial and service quality objectives for BR, with the expectation that its commercial performance would continue to improve. For example, it was envisaged that Network SouthEast should lose its subsidy (around £100 million in 1989–90) by 1993 and work towards making an 8 per cent return by 1996. Provincial was expected to reduce its subsidy requirement by £80–100 million by 1993, and the other subsidy-free sectors—InterCity, Freight and Parcels, were told to increase their profitability. In the event, Network SouthEast in particular experienced a steep decline, and in 1989–90 BR suffered its first operating loss for five years. In this now more hostile climate for BR, a sale of its assets, in whatever form, became a much more problematic proposition. Nevertheless, despite the Transport Secretary’s ‘if ever’ comment at the 1989 Party Conference, rail privatisation never entirely left the political agenda. For the Prime Minister, the ultimate objective of privatising rail remained intact, even if the political will to push through such a controversial issue had dimmed. This stance was reflected in Cecil Parkinson’s statement at the 1990 Conservative Party Conference that the issue was not whether rail would be privatised, but how and when (Transport Retort December 1990). In addition, although BR management had lobbied for the ‘BR plc’ option when it appeared that the government was seriously intending to push ahead with privatisation, this lobbying declined when it became clear that ministerial enthusiasm had cooled. Unlike industries such as steel, where much of the impetus for privatisation came from management, there was little raw ideological zeal for privatisation itself at BR headquarters. The outcome was something of a policy vacuum. The event which altered this situation was the departure of Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister in November 1990, and her replacement by John Major. Ironically, where Mrs Thatcher’s political instincts had caused her to curb her enthusiasm for privatisation where rail was concerned, Major chose rail as an issue where he could demonstrate his Thatcherite credentials. On such twists and turns of political chance are the fates of industries decided! The battle to occupy the ‘hollow core’ 1991–2 There is no doubt that from early in 1991 there was a new urgency and impetus to rail privatisation after the relative lull of the previous year and a half. The arrival of John Major as Prime Minister pushed the issue back on to the political agenda, with a much firmer commitment to go ahead with privatisation if the Conservatives won the next general election. This did not mean that the


government was any nearer its objective of choosing one of the available options. Indeed, the list appeared to be growing! Thus early in 1991 up to ten methods of privatising BR were being considered by Ministers. Nevertheless, the new Transport Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, was determined that plans should include provision for competition from independent operators (Guardian 14 January 1991). Rifkind was to prove more sympathetic to rail generally than several of his predecessors, but was not to prove successful in providing a decisive leadership on policy. Much of the period in the run up to the 1992 general election, therefore, was marked by considerable internal debate and argument within government. This debate, however, continued to largely bypass BR, whose new Chairman, Sir Bob Reid (by coincidence having the same name as his predecessor), maintained its commitment to ‘BR plc’ as the preferred privatisation option. Given that this option was virtually excluded by the government from the outset, there was once again little hope that BR management would at last occupy the ‘hollow core’. The important role of ideology in rail privatisation is illustrated by the continued decline in BR’s financial fortunes, which in fact made it a highly problematic candidate for privatisation. The government itself recognised the mounting crisis and pushed through Parliament in one day the British Railways Board (Finance) Bill. This Bill increased the statutory limit on BR’s borrowing to £3 billion at any one time and raised the cumulative aggregate of the government’s PSO grant payments to the same figure; in both cases, the Commons could subsequently raise the figure to £5 billion. Unlike the case of the British Steel Corporation, for example, the government was firming up its privatisation plans just as the finances of the industry were deteriorating. In the case of rail, it was the ideological commitment to privatisation which overrode all other considerations. The degree to which BR failed to pick up the new trend of events is illustrated by Chairman Sir Bob Reid’s statement in January 1991 that BR would not be ready for privatisation for another twenty years. In a note to senior staff, he also stressed that his managerial brief was not to privatise BR although, if the government insisted, he would not stand in the way (Guardian 21 January 1991). Instead, he called on the government to allow increased spending of up to £2 billion a year on improving the rail network (Independent 18 February 1991). It could be said that Sir Bob’s relative lack of concern at the threat of privatisation was understandable. The Major government was keener on exploring the policy options than its predecessor, but was obviously still a very long way from making up its mind. The fundamental pragmatism of the Transport Secretary, is illustrated by Rifkind’s observation that: The test I apply is whether it [rail privatisation] will help the travelling public, directly or indirectly. If it won’t help the travelling public, then it would be a bloody silly thing to do. (Financial Times 25 February 1991)


On the one hand, the government had a by now long-standing commitment to explore the possibilities of rail privatisation in the next Parliament. Given the apparently inexorable tide of privatisation generally, and the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm on the rail issue to show his commitment to Thatcherite policies, the political enthusiasm of the government was clear. On the other hand, Rifkind’s publicly expressed doubts betrayed his own reservations not only on the form privatisation should take, but also on whether it ever should take place at all. The privatisation idea had injected itself into the rail sector, but had yet to be successfully transplanted. In fact during 1991, the government was given a policy lead from an unexpected source in the form of the EC. As we have seen, transport was generally not a policy area where the EC was especially influential, but in the early 1990s a decision was taken on rail policy which provided a fascinating counterpoint to the government’s confused plans for rail privatisation. In 1988, the Swedish State Railway SJ was split in two. The infrastructure company Banverket became responsible for the infrastructure, while the operational side remained with SJ. The idea of a separate infrastructure company had obvious similarities with the idea put forward by the Adam Smith Institute, although the policy objectives were different. In Sweden, the aim was not privatisation but a concern about finding a solution to rising rail deficits. By removing all infrastructure obligations to a separate authority, SJ could be left to run profitable train services relatively free of political constraints (Railway Gazette April 1989). The EC Commission, concerned more about liberalisation policies rather than privatisation, picked up the Swedish idea and decided that it could be adapted to serve Europe as a whole. At the end of 1988, Transport Commissioner Karel van Miert, a young and ambitious Belgian socialist, proposed that the EC’s state owned railways should throw open their tracks to rival operators of trains. This proposal was greeted with widespread scepticism but a package of railway proposals to the Council of Ministers in 1990 included a draft directive that would separate responsibility for infrastructure from the operation of trains, and grant freedom of access to the network to any operator who could meet the necessary qualifications. The railways would be expected to reorganise themselves in such a way as to divide financial and managerial responsibility for the infrastructure from the operation of trains. This was required to be done in a way that was ‘transparent’, i.e. the accounts would show clearly what it was costing to provide and maintain the track, and how much was being contributed by those parts of the organisation responsible for running trains and marketing the service. Significantly, early in 1991 van Miert acknowledged that the fact that the Swedish experiment seemed to be working well had no doubt been a factor in causing some national railways to look at the idea more positively (Railway Gazette January 1991). Thus, in 1991 the final Directive 91/440 provided for the managerial autonomy of railway undertakings; a fundamental reorganisation of the public


railway companies’ financial situation; track access rights for international passenger and freight transport services organised by international groupings of railway corporations and internationally combined transport organised by single railway companies; and a vertical separation of the infrastructure network from transport operations at least in the accounting sense. The Commission had originally wanted the creation of separate companies for infrastructure and operations, but this proposal was successfully resisted by most of the EC railway companies and some of the national governments (Denkhaus 1997). Nevertheless, the EC had provided an important initiative, and hence heralded a step towards occupation of the ‘hollow core’ in Britain. It could be said that in the case of Britain, the EC policy represented an example of the ‘garbage can’ model, i.e. a ‘solution’ looking for a ‘problem’. Within the EC, separation of infrastructure and operations was seen as a ‘solution’ in terms of liberalisation of track access and greater transparency in accounting. In Britain, however, the separation could be a ‘solution’ to the privatisation ‘problem’. There was also the added political bonus that separation would mean that Britain was complying fully with the EC Directive. The Directive also offered the British government a handy policy alternative to privatisation. If a full sell-off of BR fell through, then the open access clauses of the Directive would allow at least some new operators to enter the sector, and so save the Ministers from some embarrassment. At the same time, despite its clear explicit and implicit advantages to the government, it could not be said that the Directive either galvanised the government into action or short-circuited the policy-making process. Instead, although the chief policy options had now been on the table for around three years, the government appointed three Junior Ministers —#8212;Public Transport Minister Roger Freeman, Industry Minister John Redwood and Treasury Minister Francis Maude, to decide on the best option of privatising BR. Given that the final decision was always bound to be made by senior Ministers, up to the Prime Minister himself, this new strategy again betrayed an indecision and ambivalence towards the whole prospect of privatising rail on the part of the government. It was reported that the government had basically narrowed the options down to two—selling off individual BR sectors with InterCity and Railfreight as front-runners, or the Adam Smith Institute idea of a track authority. It was nevertheless recognised that each of these options carried heavy risks. In the case of selling individual sectors, neither Network SouthEast nor Regional Railways (the new name for Provincial) could be privatised easily without altering subsidy arrangements. In the case of the track authority, it was still an untried option which would involve huge reorganisation of the railways without any clear gains in efficiency. Consequently, Ministers were attracted to the ‘EC option’ of ‘privatisation by stealth’, starting by allowing open access to BR lines for private passenger and freight operators (Transport Retort May 1991). As 1991 progressed, therefore, it was clear that the ‘hollow core’ on rail privatisation was still far from being filled, and much of the following twelve


months was taken up with both public and internal debate on the whole issue itself and the various policy options. On the part of BR, there still appeared to be little conception of the potential imminence of privatisation, beyond continuing to campaign for the ‘BR plc’ option. Indeed, the strategy here depended on conveying the image of BR as an organisation with a long-term future, with particular emphasis on commercial efficiency. Thus in 1991 BR implemented the Organising for Quality (OfQ) project, with the goal of devolving responsibility and accountability to the component Business Units as far as possible within the constraints imposed by the BR Board’s statutory duties. The seven Business Units were InterCity, Regional Railways, Network SouthEast, European Passenger Services, Trainload Freight, Railfreight Distribution and BR Telecommunications. The key to the new organisation, however, were the new Profit Centres within each Business Unit. These Profit Centres were intended to be the most important level of the new organisation, with the Directors accountable for their business, and as far as possible having control and ownership of all assets and resources. For example, in the case of InterCity the Profit Centres were divided into routes: East Coast Main Line, West Coast Main Line, Great Western, Cross Country and Midland Main Line, and Gatwick and Anglia (Welsby 1991). The problem for BR was that, the more it devolved responsibilities to units such as Profit Centres, the more it helped to make the government’s case in favour of fragmenting the organisation for privatisation, and the more it weakened its own arguments in favour of a sale of ‘BR plc’. In this case, it could be said that Organising for Quality may have made sound business sense, but it represented something of an ‘own goal’ politically. Nevertheless, BR continued to present its case for a long-term life. The chief event in this context occurred in July 1991, when Sir Bob Reid presented his ten year plan, Future Rail (BRB 1991) at a major press conference. Hitherto, the BRB had issued five-year plans, updated annually, but now a wider and more long-term vision was presented. Politically, Sir Bob Reid no doubt intended Future Rail to not only help him make his own personal mark as BR Chairman, but also to signify generally that BR had a long-term future. There was little in the plan that was new in terms of major projects, however, and on the question of privatisation Sir Bob responded rather cryptically that he was a great believer in the Chinese proverb: ‘Inaction, watch the timing—The shares are not ours. We are the managers’ (Rail 21 August 1991). Sir Bob’s somewhat fatalistic attitude on privatisation was reflected in later events. Future Rail made little impact on the government, and as time went on the Chairman became more passive. It was said that he had assumed the government would play fair on privatisation, but then found his faith had been misplaced (Financial Times 13 January 1992). His behaviour can certainly be contrasted with other nationalised industry Chairmen such as Lord King of British Airways and Sir Bob Scholey at British Steel, who aggressively lobbied government for privatisation on their terms.


Up to the end, therefore, there was little chance that BR itself would occupy the ‘hollow core’. Instead, the rail privatisation debate was conducted almost entirely internally within government. A key figure here was clearly Transport Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, but despite giving considerable attention to rail privatisation he too ultimately failed to fill the ‘hollow core’. From the Autumn of 1991 he intended to publish a White Paper on the subject, but by the time of the general election in April 1992 this key document had not appeared. Basically, Rifkind’s ideas were consistently opposed by other Ministers, including the Prime Minister himself. As we have seen in the case of Mrs Thatcher, rail privatisation was a subject of such high political salience that a Transport Secretary could not act in a ‘celibate’ fashion with the Prime Minister in opposition to the plans (although to some extent a contrast could be drawn here with Harold Watkinson in the 1950s, who quickly stamped on a suggestion by Harold Macmillan that the new motorways might be tolled). It could also be said that Rifkind’s generally sympathetic attitude towards the railways made him rather ambivalent on the subject of privatisation, rather than a wholehearted zealot. This sympathy towards rail was reflected in his announcement in May 1991 that he had developed a package of initiatives to switch freight from road to rail. For example, Section 8 grants, designed to encourage the construction of rail freight facilities on customers’ premises, would be increased three-fold. At the same time, Rifkind demonstrated his support for the ‘EC solution’ of incremental liberalisation by announcing that BR’s monopoly on passenger and freight services would end, and that the railway system would be opened up to other companies (Rail 12 June 1991). Rifkind’s relatively cautious approach was reflected in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in October 1991. He said that there would be ‘substantial’ privatisation of BR, but that it was not going to be possible to simply privatise the whole of it. The government was ready to sell off profitable sectors of BR, such as InterCity, but was anxious to preserve loss-making rural services. This suggested that Rifkind was advocating something of a hybrid ‘solution’, with profitable BR sectors privatised, and other loss-making services franchised with a subsidy. Rifkind also conceded that a Bill to force BR to break its monopoly over freight and passenger services would not be introduced until the next Parliament, and so meanwhile he had written to Sir Bob Reid urging him to voluntarily open BR’s lines to private competition, pending the legislation (Independent 10 October 1991). It could be said that asking BR to voluntarily surrender its monopoly was akin to asking turkeys to vote for Christmas, and reflected the government’s by now long standing indecision. Significantly, Rifkind made no mention of the track authority solution, with which he had little sympathy, considering it would cut across the massive reorganisation BR had undergone in dividing itself along business lines (Financial Times 31 October 1991). He later conceded that a track authority could be set up in the case of loss-making services such as Network SouthEast and Regional Railways, and the subsidised services franchised to the variety of


operators, on the lines of the system already operating in the bus industry. He nevertheless remained committed to privatising wholesale the profitable businesses such as InterCity and Railfreight. Rifkind had hoped to present this hybrid ‘solution’ in a White Paper before the general election, but other members of the government would not be accommodating to the Transport Secretary’s plans. Early in 1992 a politically embarrassing gaffe by Public Transport Minister Roger Freeman symbolised the capacity of rail privatisation to provide banana skins for the government. In a TV interview, Freeman said that, after privatisation, there should be ‘cheap and cheerful’ trains for people such as typists, and more expensive ‘luxury’ travel for people like civil servants and businessmen (Independent 11 January 1992). Freeman’s comments were designed to illustrate how new operators could provide a wide variety of services, but only succeeded in offending large numbers of people, for which he was compelled to apologise. In a deeper sense, Freeman’s lack of political judgement seemed symptomatic of Ministers’ confusion on rail privatisation as the election loomed. BR might have been largely bypassed, but the battle for the dominant policy idea continued within government. The Prime Minister had first announced the intention to publish a White Paper on rail privatisation when he launched his major policy idea of a Citizen’s Charter in the Summer of 1991 (once again we see the mutation of ideas with rail privatisation now linked to the concept of developing the rights of the public as consumers). It had been hoped that the White Paper would be produced before the end of the year, and Rifkind submitted a draft to the Prime Minister in early November, but the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Downing Street Policy Unit argued for more radical options. The Policy Unit, apparently backed by the Prime Minister, favoured a return to the pre-nationalisation regional company structure (the idea proposed by the Centre for Policy Studies in 1988), while the DTI, led by Secretary of State Peter Lilley, lobbied strongly for the track authority idea (proposed by the Adam Smith Institute) (Independent 15 January 1992). A meeting called by the Prime Minister in January 1992 failed to resolve the differences, with the result that positions became even more entrenched. It could be said that all the relevant Ministers were at least basically members of the privatisation advocacy coalition, but did not share secondary values about the degree of competition to be allowed within rail, and how the idea of liberalisation could be linked to that of privatisation. By February 1992 it was becoming clear to the government that time was rapidly running out if a White Paper was to be produced before a likely general election in April. Significantly, in a speech early in February, the Prime Minister emphasised breaking up the monopoly rather than privatisation. This suggested that, with the continuing impasse within the Cabinet subcommittee dealing with rail privatisation, John Major was being won round to the ‘EC solution’ of incremental liberalisation rather than privatisation. Up to this time, the track


authority idea had been pushed into the background (despite having the support of Peter Lilley) against Rifkind’s ‘hybrid’ solution and the regional companies idea favoured by the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit. Now, however, a new key actor began to assert itself, in the form of the Treasury, with the result that the track authority idea began to move more to centre stage. The Treasury (apparently with the growing support of the Prime Minister) had become alarmed at how relatively small would be their revenues from either the ‘hybrid’ or regional companies solutions. On the other hand, a holding company owning all the track, land and stations would be worth around £2 billion—a sale price equivalent to taking 1p off income tax for a year. This scheme would also leave scope for some competition between franchised rail services (Guardian 17 February 1992). Thus one can see the first inkling of an idea being transplanted, and a coupling of the policy streams. Regardless of the pure merits of the track authority idea, it also had three great assets within the political stream. First, it offered a relatively high return to the Treasury if and when a sale of the track authority took place. An important implicit political theme of privatisation was that the substantial revenues involved allowed scope for electorally popular tax cuts. In this context, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan described privatisation as being like ‘selling the family silver’, but for hard pressed Ministers battling in the political arena, any straw which might assist in electoral victory was to be clutched (Macmillan’s comments nevertheless illustrate the contrast between the Beeching era, when the idea of a commercial railway totally excluded privatisation, and the Thatcher and Major governments, when the policy ‘frame’ of a Conservative government had changed radically). Second, the creation of a track authority would allow the government to claim that it was complying with the EC Directive. At least on this issue, it would work ‘with the grain’ set by Brussels. As the EC intended, a track authority also allowed some flexibility. An incremental liberalisation could be adopted, or full scale franchising of the train services. Third, the track authority solution offered a degree of compromise. Views on the ‘hybrid’ and regional companies solutions had become so entrenched within the Cabinet that the adoption of either option risked a severe row between Ministers. Although the track authority idea had clearly gained ground within government, the Conservative election manifesto emphasised an incremental approach. It was intended that BR’s monopoly would be ended, and passenger services would be franchised on a local or regional basis. The profitable freight and parcels operations would be sold. The Party would also be prepared to sell stations, either to the franchisees or independent companies. Crucially, however, it was also announced that BR’s track and station responsibilities would be split from its passenger services, giving a state owned (at least for the moment) infrastructure company. The government would also set up a Rail Regulator, to ensure that all private companies could have fair access to the network and to award the


franchises. Significantly, the manifesto plan was seen as a victory for the Adam Smith Institute, who put forward the idea of a track authority, which the government hoped could be sold off when the recession ended and the property market recovered (Guardian 19 March 1992). Kenneth Irvine, the author of the 1987 Adam Smith Institute paper, did meet the committee which drew up the Conservative manifesto (The Rail Sale, BBC Radio Four 30 November 1999), although, as we have seen, the attractions of the track authority solution had already been acknowledged by key senior Ministers. For the purposes of the election, however, the Tories were anxious to emphasise the franchising of rail services, and that arrangements to sustain the current national network of services would be maintained through continued subsidies for loss-making services. Thus Ministers used the by now rather oldfashioned word of denationalisation rather than privatisation (Financial Times 21 March 1992). The policy-making process had taken place within a tight elite circle of Ministers, officials and their advisers, but at least for a brief period acknowledgement must be made of the ‘empty chair’ of public opinion. Transplanting the rail privatisation idea The relatively unexpected Conservative victory in the general election of April 1992 provided the final impetus for finally selecting policy options and pushing ahead with the implementation of rail privatisation. The new, if narrow, mandate cleared the air politically, and provided John Major and his Ministers with the confidence to press ahead with this most problematic of privatisations. There was also a sense in which a large element of political fatigue had set in within the government. The internal debate had been continuing intermittently for nearly five years, and there was little new left to say. Crucially, the Prime Minister and his Policy Unit appeared resigned that the regional companies option in its ‘golden age’ entirety was not a practical proposition. Equally important, the election allowed a ministerial change to be made without public political embarrassment. The departure of Malcolm Rifkind from the DTp, and his replacement by John MacGregor, broke the stalemate which had developed over the previous twelve months. Rifkind’s commitment to privatising InterCity in particular in its entirety had led to a confrontation with other Ministers such as Peter Lilley, but MacGregor had a more flexible and pragmatic approach. As we saw in the case of trunk roads, MacGregor was appointed to Transport with a strong reputation as a business manager and something of a ‘Mr Fixit’. He was nevertheless also a Minister who, unlike Rifkind, strongly favoured roads as the principal policy ‘solution’. Ironically, his lack of flexibility on roads would eventually provide his downfall. In the case of rail, however, his lack of personal empathy, at least in the short run, was something of an advantage. Where Rifkind was more naturally prorail than his predecessors, it could be said that MacGregor was much more in the Ernest Marples tradition. Thus rail privatisation became fundamentally a task to be executed with the maximum


efficiency and the minimum of political confrontation. He had the clear backing of the Prime Minister to get on with the job, with the government generally anxious to press ahead with fulfilling a commitment made by successive Transport Secretaries and two Prime Ministers. By 1992, most of the major nationalised industries had been privatised, with rail and coal being two of the few remaining. By this time, therefore, the strength of the privatisation ‘frame’ was such that politically it was almost inconceivable that the government could renege on its commitment to privatise rail in some form. Despite publicly expressed doubts by BR management, the vehement opposition of the rail unions, the at best lukewarm support for the policy by a significant number of Conservative MPs, and persistent criticism from the public arena generally, the Prime Minister, John MacGregor and the Cabinet were locked in to a policy ‘frame’ from which there was no escape. On this occasion, the ‘empty chair’ failed to operate. It could be said that, in addition to the government’s great faith in privatisation, there were three further reasons in particular why the ‘empty chair’ had more effect on roads policy than rail. First, although there was considerable opposition to rail privatisation, there was not the coordinated advocacy coalition characteristic of the environmental lobby on trunk roads in the 1990s. Second, there was no ‘arena without rules’, such as the public inquiry or the construction sites, which the opposition to rail privatisation could exploit. Third, there were not the scientific health and environmental issues which added such political potency to the trunk roads issue. Consequently, there was another dimension to the ‘hollow core’ in that there was no equivalent of the phrase ‘sustainable mobility’ which could act as a rallying cry for the anti-privatisation discourse. In these circumstances, MacGregor was able to set about finalising policy with little to inhibit his thinking. It could not be said that he acted exactly as a ‘celibate’ Minister in terms of policy-making. The debate on the policy options had been hammered out under his predecessor, with the track authority ‘solution’ emerging eventually as the favourite. Nevertheless, it was left to MacGregor to make the official final decision for the government’s White Paper, and to this extent he emerges as an important member of the privatisation advocacy coalition. As Preston notes, however, one more influential member of the coalition also appeared at this time. Sir Christopher Foster was appointed MacGregor’s special adviser on rail privatisation, and served until November 1993 (Preston 1996:2). Foster was an influential economist of long standing, who had served Transport Ministers in both Labour and Conservative governments. For example, in the 1960s he worked as Director-General of Economic Planning in the MoT during Barbara Castle’s period as Minister, and in the 1970s he headed a government inquiry into road haulage licensing. Notwithstanding his work for Labour governments, he was a persistent critic of the relationships between government and the nationalised industries (e.g. Foster 1971), and by the 1990s had become one of the most prominent advocates of both liberalisation and privatisation (Foster 1992). Sir Christopher’s presence alongside the Transport Secretary


indicated, therefore, not only the government’s serious intent to finally push ahead with rail privatisation, but also an anxiety to give some expert legitimacy to its decisions. As Preston observes, a 1994 paper by Foster set out the case for rail privatisation in Britain, and defended the government’s policy as reflecting a coherent approach which would produce greater economic efficiency (Foster 1994). This represented one of the few clear statements of the government’s economic rationale behind railway privatisation (Preston 1996:2). Foster’s presence and support did give some academic and commercial credibility to the government’s plans—generally a missing link in Ministers’ efforts to occupy the ‘hollow core’. A constant feature of the ‘hollow core’ perpetuated by MacGregor was the exclusion of BR from the policy-making arena. The Transport Secretary held an early informal meeting with Sir Bob Reid (Independent 20 April 1992), but BR management were not involved in the policy design, such as the track authority (The Rail Sale, BBC Radio Four 30 November 1999). In May 1992, the government officially announced in the Queen’s Speech its intention to privatise British Rail and British Coal. A paving bill was to be introduced to allow for privatisation of both industries. At this time, it was envisaged that private operators would run services in competition with BR (a proposal later dropped), but crucially it was emphasised by John MacGregor that Rifkind’s plan to sell off InterCity had been abandoned, and instead lines would be franchised in order to encourage competition and efficiency (Independent 7 May 1992). As Zahariadis emphasises, given that there were no immediate plans to sell off the track authority, this was not privatisation in terms of ‘popular capitalism’ share sales of the 1980s. In fact, MacGregor himself sometimes referred to it as the ‘commercialisation’ of rail (Zahariadis 1996:415). It was also significant that the government disclosed that the model for the operating services would be based on the National Bus Company, and the infrastructure body on the now privatised British Airports Authority (Guardian 7 May 1992). As we noted earlier, Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley’s ‘celibate’ insistence on fragmenting the NBC set a precedent within the DTp. In such ways do powerful members of advocacy coalitions institutionalise ideas. One further significant announcement was MacGregor’s intention that BR should, at least for the moment, act as the track authority, although a sell-off in the longer term remained a possibility. This angered some right wing Tory MPs. As one put it: ‘It means the dead hand of BR will still be on the rail network, even after it is privatised’ (Independent 8 May 1992). There was also a growing debate about the crucial question of how high would be the charges made by the track authority to the train operating companies. Despite these doubts, as we have seen, the track authority idea offered several attractions politically. First, it represented something of a middle way between Rifkind’s solution of selling off the business sectors and the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit favoured idea of vertically integrated regional companies. Vertical integration would go,


but there could still be some franchising on regional lines and also based on BR’s profit centre concept. Thus the track authority broke the Cabinet stalemate. Second, the separation and fragmentation of BR allowed for an incremental franchising of services. At this stage, the government was clearly uncertain about how the private sector might be persuaded to run trains, and the fragmentation of BR allowed for both a ‘softly softly’ or more radical approach. Third, the separation of track authority and trains allowed Britain to comply with the 1991 EC Directive. This might save any politically embarrassing conflicts with Brussels at a later date, if the companies were sold off as vertically integrated entities. It was also significant that government officials visited Sweden before the White Paper was drafted to examine the separation of track authority and operations. Although they concluded that the Swedish system was flawed because the track authority remained in the public sector, there is no doubt that a significant degree of crossnational policy learning took place (Hass-Klau 1998:35). Fourth, and crucially, there was the prospect of a later lucrative sale of the track authority. This held particular attractions for the Treasury and the Prime Minister. Thus a sale within striking distance of the next election could help deliver electorally popular tax cuts. The much-postponed White Paper was finally published in July 1992 (Cm. 2012, 1992). By this time, most of the government’s intentions had been signposted over the previous few months, and so politically the ground had been prepared for the official announcement. In fact, the White Paper itself was only twenty-one pages long, with no financial information on the cost of privatisation. Nevertheless, it did confirm that BR would be split into a track authority, Railtrack, and a service operator. A Franchise Authority would determine what services or groups of services were to be put out for competition, and the franchisees would, where necessary, be given subsidies to run the services. In addition, an independent Regulator would be created to supervise access to the lines by operators, promote competition and promote the interests of consumers. It was intended that many stations would be leased or sold, and that parcels and freight should eventually be transferred entirely to the private sector. It was intended that the first franchises would be allocated in 1994, and MacGregor hoped that the whole process could be completed by 1997 (the probable year of the next election; a hope which would be fulfilled). One shift since the Queen’s Speech two months earlier was the emphasis which was now placed on Railtrack as a new company, rather than BR under another guise. This appeared to be a concession to the right wing critics who feared that ‘the dead hand’ of BR would retain a major holding in the rail network. It could also be said that setting up a new company would institutionally perhaps assist privatisation by dismantling the BR senior management structure which might still feel some resentment at failing to win privatisation as a single entity.


Although all the problems and complexities of implementation lay ahead, the key policy framework had been set, and the ‘hollow core’ had been occupied at last. The triumph of the privatisation idea Given the highly controversial and complex character of rail privatisation, its implementation proceeded with perhaps surprising adherence to the timetable. The Bill to privatise the railways was contested rigorously in Parliament by the Labour party together with a number of dissenting Tory MPs and Peers, and outside Parliament by the trade unions, consumer groups and Save Our Railways. In the event, however, the Bill emerged from Parliament relatively unscathed, with some of the key modifications made in order to ensure the saleability of franchises, including a reduction in the level of inter-operator competition in the early years (Harris and Godward 1997:67). Other amendments incorporated into the Bill included fare capping, protection against network closures and the interavailability of tickets between operators (Hass-Klau 1998: 37). As Welsby and Nichols comment, the Bill was drafted and passed while policy was still evolving. For example, it was not explicitly mentioned in the Bill that Railtrack would operate as a separate company, and at that stage there was no policy to privatise the infrastructure for the foreseeable future (although, as we have seen, this was an important implicit element in government policy-making). Nor did the Bill include any provisions covering the rolling stock leasing companies (ROSCOs), which were to be set up to lease the passenger vehicles to franchisees (Welsby and Nichols 1999:61). Thus the highly ideological character of the policy, and the lack of consultation on detail during the policy-making phase up to the publication of the White Paper, meant that there was an ad hoc element to implementation (Nash 1993:317). In this context, John MacGregor claimed later that he deliberately kept some concessions in reserve when the Bill was published, knowing that he would need to give way on some issues to ensure that the Bill got through (The Rail Sale BBC Radio Four 30 November 1999). Nevertheless, the radical nature of the privatisation idea which had come to occupy the rail ‘hollow core’ necessitated a high degree of problematic policy learning. Once the Railways Act came into force the primary objective was to restructure BR into 90 to 100 companies to facilitate franchising of the passenger services, the sale of the ROSCOs, and the numerous support activities, particularly those relating to maintenance of both rolling stock and infrastructure. Restructuring began in 1993 and took about two years to complete (Welsby and Nichols 1999:61). The core of the privatisation process, apart from the sale of Railtrack, was the phased franchising of the twenty-five train operating companies. The first two franchises were let in early 1996, and by March 1997 all twenty-five had been


transferred to the private sector. In fact, there was greater interest from private companies to procure franchises than was anticipated (Hass-Klau 1998:38–9). As we noted earlier, several of the successful bidders were owners of former NBC subsidiances, such as Stagecoach, National Express and FirstGroup. The completion of the rail privatisation process prior to the 1997 general election meant that MacGregor’s 1992 forecast had been fulfilled. It also effectively precluded re-nationalisation by the incoming Labour government, as this would have been too complicated and expensive. It could be argued that this was one more implicit explanation for the government’s decision to fragment BR. Thus one top civil servant was told simply to privatise the railways ‘as soon as was practicable’, and to make the process irreversible before the next election (The Economist 3 July 1999). Railtrack began trading in 1994, and immediately became one of the country’s leading 100 companies (Harris and Godward 1997:84). Its May 1996 flotation yielded £1.95 billion. Thus the timing of Railtrack privatisation, and the price it fetched, matched almost exactly Treasury thinking in 1992. Railtrack throughout its life has been a highly salient and controversial organisation politically, particularly in the widespread perception of its failure to invest adequately. The problem is that the incentive structures of rail privatisation have serious defects. The train operators can add ‘slots’ only if Railtrack finds network slots for them. Although Railtrack has a regulatory duty to meet the train operator’s needs, it has no financial incentive to do so. This is because 97 per cent of its track-access income is fixed regardless of the number of trains. Hence a new political debate is developing on who will eventually pay for the much-needed Railtrack investment (The Economist 3 July 1999). A question such as this, however, was given scant consideration during the process of policy design —#8212;once again illustrating the veracity of policy as its own cause. Proceeds from rail privatisation eventually totalled £5,300 million, on the face of it sufficient motive for the sell-off. Nevertheless, throughout the years leading up to the publication of the White Paper, the process was essentially ideologically rather than financially driven. As in the case of Beeching, there was the paradox that the ‘hollow core’ can be extremely difficult to fill, and the process here took five years. In coupling the policy streams, there was undoubtedly a significant degree of serendipity and opportunism—for example, the timing of the publication of the Adam Smith Institute paper, combined with the enthusiasm of Paul Channon; the determination of John Major to be seen, at least on some issues, as ‘more Thatcherite than Thatcher’; the framing of the 1991 EC Directive; and the conflict between Malcolm Rifkind and the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit. On the other hand, ultimately it was the idea of privatisation, and the persistence and enthusiasm of those who advocated it, in one form or another, which really determined the ‘flow’ of policy. These few individuals included Nicholas Ridley, Kenneth Irvine, Greg Bourne, Paul Channon, John Major, Peter Lilley, John MacGregor and Sir Christopher Foster. To these individuals,


however, must be added the institutional power of the Treasury, which favoured the track authority option. Not surprisingly, the Treasury’s reasons for this were based on financial interest rather than basic values. On the other hand, the Treasury interest was an important factor in transplanting the rail privatisation idea. In such ways are the policy streams coupled. Ironically, Margaret Thatcher herself, although undoubtedly an early advocate of a rail sell-off, became much cooler towards the idea as her own political position deteriorated and the problematic character of the enterprise became clear. Similarly, Malcolm Rifkind, although a key actor in the story and basically a member of the privatisation advocacy coalition, was also sensitive to the hazards of the political stream. For the others, however, it seemed to be a case of ‘privatisation at all costs’. The basic and core values shared by these individuals over several years, and their determination to largely override the problems of the political stream, were eventually decisive.

10 Why does policy change? The ‘Four Is’ and the significance of time

Men, institutions and societies learn what to want as well as how to get, what to be as well as what to do; and the two forms of adaptation are closely connected. Since our ideas of regulation were formed in relation to norms which are deemed to be given, they need to be reconsidered in relation to norms which change with the effort made to pursue them. (Sir Geoffrey Vickers, The Vickers Papers, p. 306) Ideas and individuals as independent variables Over the past two decades, models of policy communities and policy networks have become valuable building blocks for analysts seeking to gain a better understanding of the policy process. Within these analyses, however, there is frequently an inherent paradox of explaining change within systems which exhibit innate qualities of stability. The chief objective of this book, therefore, has been to examine ways in which this key paradox may be resolved. To this end, a range of policy change models have been examined in the context of five case studies taken from UK road and rail policy since 1945. In the context of a policy change study, we have placed particular emphasis on attempting to identify the factors which cause ‘third order’ policy change, i.e. major policy change denoted by a shift in dominant paradigms (Hall 1993). Consequently, in developing our analysis, we have concentrated particularly on the ‘Four Is’ of Ideas, Interests, Institutions and Individuals (Peters 1996) as determinants of policy change. In addition, as a longitudinal study of a period covering over half a century, the effects of time itself are of considerable importance. A key factor in understanding the paradox of the interrelationship between policy stability and change is to appreciate how new ideas may infiltrate and be absorbed, or even bypass, interests and institutions in order to transplant themselves and bring about a paradigmatic shift in policy. In facilitating and executing the introduction of new ideas, it appears to be key individuals, acting in a variety of roles, who are primarily responsible for this task.


This is not to say, of course, that institutions and policy networks and communities of interests play no significant part in ‘third order’ policy change processes. Clearly, the presence of an institution such as the hegemonic roads policy community ensures, at the very least, that paradigmatic policy shifts are not easily brought about, i.e. relative stability is often the norm within a policy subsector. Even in periods of radical change, these underlying forces of stability may still be present. Similarly, new ideas may exploit the structural discontinuities between institutions, such as the ‘arenas without rules’ of the highway inquiries and road construction sites. Here, the seeking of alternative venues shifted the dominant policy image through a process of punctuated equilibria (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). Nevertheless, although the structure of policy networks can play an important part in determining the trajectory of new ideas, it is ‘the idea whose time has come’ which changes the dominant policy ‘frame’ and discourse of the whole sector. In our case studies, these ideas included popular consumerism; the commercial railway; roads for prosperity; sustainable mobility; and privatisation. Structurally, however, there was a major difference between roads, with its hegemonic policy community, and the ‘hollow core’ of rail. In the case of roads, the new ideas of the environmentalists were needed in order to bypass the established powerful policy community. In the case of rail and its ‘hollow core’, new ideas were introduced more directly by the policy elite. (However, exogenous and endogenous political and economic circumstances ensured that these ideas did not necessarily find it easy to invade the ‘hollow core’.) However, the introduction of new interests to form an issue network (Heclo 1978) does not in itself appear to be a condition of ‘third order’ policy change. For example, the environmental lobby achieved significant policy change in trunk roads policy during the 1970s, but was much less successful in the 1980s. Instead, it was the actions of key individuals in the 1990s, acting as policy entrepreneurs, particularly Ministers who could choose to act almost alone— what we term ‘celibate’ behaviour—and sometimes in concert with a wide range of interests, what we term ‘promiscuous’. Also, the use of ‘arenas without rules’ was sometimes important in triggering major policy change. Individuals often possessed the capacity to shape and lead, and even create, emerging advocacy coalitions which successfully transplanted new policy ideas and ‘frames’. These enormously important individuals appeared with regularity at key moments in our case studies. For example, in the case of roads, in the 1950s ‘celibate’ Ministers such as John Boyd-Carpenter and Harold Watkinson successfully attached road building to the concept of popular consumerism, and so gave leadership to a hitherto weak roads advocacy coalition; in the 1970s, individuals such as John Tyme and John Adams exposed weaknesses in the hegemonic roads policy community, and Ministers such as Bill Rodgers reshaped the policy agenda; in the 1990s a relative handful of protesters at Twyford Down refused to admit defeat when apparently all hope had gone, and policy entrepreneurs such as Stephen Joseph and Tom Burke subsequently shaped a


powerful environmental advocacy coalition. It could be argued that this advocacy coalition eventually included influential Ministers such as Environment Secretary John Gummer and Transport Secretary Brian Mawhinney. In the case of rail, Dr Beeching and Ernest Marples assumed a partnership which imposed the concept of a commercial railway on the ‘hollow core’. Indeed, the very name ‘Beeching’ became synonymous with this concept, even up to the present day. For rail privatisation, there was an intermittent succession of advocates, including Nicholas Ridley, Greg Bourne, Kenneth Irvine, Paul Channon, John Major, John MacGregor and Sir Christopher Foster. Alongside ideas and individuals, however, one other vital component in processes of ‘third order’ policy change which must be noted is that of time. In a longitudinal examination of case studies for periods of over half a century, it is possible to trace the dynamics of both stability and major policy change. Thus, although ‘third order’ policy change may take place over a relatively short period of time, it can often only be properly understood in the context of a long train of events which preceded it. It also appears that the combination of factors which facilitate ‘third order’ policy change do not appear frequendy. For both roads and rail, paradigmatic shifts occurred only twice each in over half a century. This conclusion emphasises again the vital analytical point that we can only determine the dynamics of policy change if we also understand the dynamics of policy stability. Policy-making is episodic in the sense that major reforms are followed by long periods of stability or incremental change. In the remainder of this chapter, we will briefly examine some of the major implications of the above conclusions. First, we will discuss the key interrelationship between ideas and interests. Second, we will analyse the role of institutions in ‘third order’ policy change. Third, we will examine further the key role played by individuals. Finally, we will discuss the importance of time in the dynamics of policy change. Ideas and interests: disentangling causality As Jacobsen argues: in influencing how groups relate their interests to shifting circumstances, ideas can unify or divide groups. They can become ‘constitutive of interests’ and even trigger a change of the context, which is comprised of both intellectual precepts and institutional arrangements and procedures that determine the limits of permissible political action. (Jacobsen 1995:292) Basically, in the transplanting of ideas in the political stream, these ideas are likely to become attached to particular interests. Disentangling the two can prove a difficult task. Nevertheless, a key to understanding a solution to this problem is to recognise the virtues of the longitudinal analysis. This allows us to trace the


dynamics and evolution of a policy idea from its source (or at least its evolution) in ‘the ideas stream’. As we observed in the case studies, there can be significant discontinuities in the development and evolution of ideas and advocacy coalitions, such as the manner in which popular consumerism attached itself to the trunk roads issue in the 1950s, or sustainable development attached itself to roads in the form of sustainable mobility in the 1990s. Consequently, through a longitudinal analysis we are able to isolate particular ideas, and trace their genesis and progress through a major policy shift. Thus one great virtue of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) as an analytical tool lies in how it allows us to observe the degree to which ideas may shape and radically change the perceptions and policy ‘frames’ of interests over time. Eventually, there-fore, at least for a period, the idea becomes synonymous with the interest, such as Roads for Prosperity or ‘the commercial railway’. At the same time, we also observed how the mutation of ideas could graft on quite basic beliefs to an existing advocacy coalition, in such forms as popular consumerism, sustainable development, privatisation etc. In this context, Hood comments that there is a ‘hard’ version of the power of ideas, which sees policy change as springing from the impact of crucial experiments and irrefutable logic. But there is also a ‘softer’ version seeing policy change as shaped by cultural changes or by persuasive arguments and metaphors which fit the times and the emerging interests in society, and hence become established as received ideas (Hood 1994:150–1). In our case studies, it could be said that the rail ‘hollow core’ saw the emergence of ‘harder’ ideas, such as Beeching’s ‘commercial railway’ and ‘privatisation’, while the roads sector tended to see some mutation of ideas in line with wider, but less well-defined, political and social trends. The implication of these findings is that, at least in the ‘softer’ case, even the basic beliefs of an advocacy coalition may shift significantly over time, in response to both exogenous and endogenous influences. As Hann argues, it is better to make an attribution of beliefs on the basis of what individuals (or groups) do rather than on what they say (Hann 1995:25, original emphases). An advocacy coalition may therefore itself be quite an amorphous structure, and subject to discontinuous learning and the introduction of new or modified ideas from ‘the ideas stream’. Similarly, actual processes of ‘third order’ policy change themselves can involve politically salient discontinuities in policy learning. Thus the learning made by an advocacy coalition may be of the type which Laird classifies as ‘development’. He argues that the frameworks and typologies of policy learning have an ungrounded quality, and believes that a more sophisticated conception of the learning process, one that distinguishes between different kinds of cognitive changes, can better enable us to analyse neglected problems such as the ability of groups to rethink their core values. For example, he notes that a key insight for our concerns is how psychologists assess the progress of individuals’ cognitive processes in two different ways. First, individuals engage in learning defined as ‘relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from practice or


experience’. Here, learning is a gradual, incremental process, driven by an individual’s interactions with the outside world. On the other hand, ‘development’ denotes qualitatively different stages of cognition. When children go from one stage of development to another, they reorganise their knowledge and the way they think about the world in a drastic way. Psychologists regard these stages of ‘development’ as progressive in that they result in increasingly sophisticated ways of organising knowledge and reasoning formally about problems. This process of ‘development’ is related to, but distinct from, learning (Laird 1999:3–4). The discontinuities involved in ‘development’ illustrate that the learning made by advocacy coalitions may not be just from experience in the sense that it is made in reaction to some perceived stimulus (Heclo 1974). Instead, learning can involve more internal processes which ‘re-frame’ the world in a substantively different way. This offers us some insight into the dynamics by which an advocacy coalition may modify itself and re-shape interests. Hence ‘frame reflective’ (Schön and Rein 1994) learning can involve a quantitative leap from one set of perceptions to another. As our case studies illustrate, for example, ‘celibate’ Ministers can successfully ‘reframe’ issues which allow them to not only provide leadership to an advocacy coalition, but also to re-shape its internal perceptions and world view. Other key policy entrepreneurs can perform a similar function. This process can therefore have the effect of both assisting collective action, as in the case of the 1950s road lobby and 1990s environmental advocacy coalition, and also pushing an issue to new heights of political salience. Pressure from various interests can of course also play a part in the development of an issue by an advocacy coalition (King and Hansen 1999), but ‘development’ learning often appears to involve the ‘re-framing’ of an issue by an influential individual. One other important analytical point in the relationship between ideas and interests in policy change processes is the degree to which new ideas may enter a sector by chance or through deliberate action. This is illustrated particularly through the endemic tension between the ACF and policy streams. As we noted in the case studies, in ‘third order’ policy change processes both serendipity and the planned approach are likely to be present in at least some measure. This was particularly well illustrated in the development of the 1990s environmental advocacy coalition on trunk roads, when, on the one hand, the desperation of the Twyford Down protesters led them to hit upon an effective form of protest in the form of direct action on the ‘arena without rules’ of the construction site. On the other hand, at almost the same time, more deliberate action by groups such as Alarm UK was winning a policy change at Oxleas Wood. Similarly, in the dynamics of rail privatisation a number of chance events existed alongside deliberate action by a succession of privatisation advocates. We might therefore be tempted to state that ‘third order’ policy change involves both chance and choice and leave it at that. Nevertheless, the distinction between the two matters because it can tell us something important about the dynamics of ideas and


advocacy coalitions, the coupling of the policy streams, and the political management of policy change (Maloney and Richardson 1995). An additional factor in assisting our understanding of the relationship between ideas and policy change is the evolution of ideas (John 1998). If ideas are to be successfully transplanted, then they require agents who can perform this task with some degree of rationality. To a significant extent, this is the role played by advocacy coalitions. As we noted in Chapter 2, in defending the ACF, Sabatier argues that although Kingdon’s multiple streams model is one of the few attempts by political scientists to deal seriously with the role of ideas and analysis in policy-making, the ACF views the ‘analytical’ streamas much more integrated with the ‘political’ stream than does Kingdon (Sabatier 1993:37). The ACF therefore illustrates how the evolution of ideas may be short-circuited by a skilful advocacy coalition, such as the road lobby in the 1950s, or the environmentalists in the 1990s. Yet the unexpected and the unpredictable still insist on occurring. An important clue to understanding how these discontinuities ‘mesh’ in with the more rational ACF is to once again emphasise the importance of ‘development’ learning processes. In ‘third order’ policy change processes, the unexpected is only politically significant if some type of message is transmitted and received, leading to a ‘re-framing’ by key actors. Thus the ultimate significance of the Twyford Down protest was to trigger intense activity by the environmentalists which resulted in the effective multi-arena strategy. Conversely, the apparent failure by the road lobby to learn appropriate lessons from these events hastened its defeat on Roads for Prosperity. Thus Kingdon’s policy windows became brief and intense periods of largely endogenous ‘development’ learning (Radaelli 1997), when issues were ‘re-framed’ and the ground was prepared for ‘third order’ policy change. In the face of these intense and discontinuous learning processes, previously powerful interests can be bypassed or even swept aside by new ideas which invade the policy core. Where established interests have no firm policy ideas or principles, as in the case of rail, then episodes of ‘development’ learning, such as Beeching’s ‘commercial railway’ and the evolution of privatisation as the new policy ‘solution’ can successfully invade the ‘hollow core’. Over a period of time, interests’ perceptions of themselves and the world around them can shift significantly, and it is the dynamics of these ‘re-framing’ processes which illustrate particularly how ideas shape the politics of interests. In order to understand radical change more fully, therefore, greater knowledge is required of the largely endogenous but vital dynamics of ‘development’ learning which fuel the process. It is these processes, often undertaken by individuals, which act as the crucibles of ‘third order’ policy change. In the final section, we will briefly discuss the important relationship between these processes and time.


Institutions and ideas: arenas as instruments of change A persistently intriguing paradox of new institutionalism is the extent to which several of its leading proponents have provided key insights into the role of ideas in the policy process. For example, Cohen et al. (1972) employ the ‘garbage can’ model to illustrate how in a temporal sorting model in which load is heavy and the structure is relatively unsegmented, intention is lost in context-dependent flows of problems, solutions, people and choice opportunities (March and Olsen 1989:14). Kingdon, however, adopts the ‘garbage can’ model of ‘organised anarchies’ and its four separate streams of problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities to become the policy streams model of problems, policies and politics, and their coupling through policy windows of ‘an idea whose time has come’ (Kingdon 1995:84–9). This adaptation of an institutional model to become one which ultimately stresses the primacy of ideas illustrates the fundamental ambivalence of institutional models in explaining the dynamics of ‘third order’ policy change. Hall, although himself generally associated with institutional explanations, in attempting to define and explain ‘third order’ policy change processes of shifts in dominant paradigms, emphasises the importance of a growing marketplace of economic ideas outside the state. Thus he sees the shift from Keynesianism to monetarism in Britain as a society-wide affair, mediated by the press, deeply imbricated with electoral competition, and fought in the public arena (Hall 1993: 287). This insight appears to fit much more comfortably into the context of advocacy coalitions and policy streams rather than institutional models. As King argues, to the extent that institutional factors operate, they must, it seems, operate in conjunction with others (King 1973:417). Goldstein believes that institutions reflect a set of dominant ideas translated through legal mechanisms into formal government organisations. If ideas become encased in institutions through legal procedures, they will continue to have policy impact over time. Generally, this institutional influence derives from the existence of formal organisations whose rules, norms, expectations and traditions establish constraints on individuals within these organisations, on elected leaders outside these organisations, and on society in general. Consequently, she argues that institutional structures alone are an insufficient explanation for post-war American trade policies. As critical is the belief system of those individuals who enforce laws (Goldstein 1988:181–2). Hall and Taylor acknowledge that historical institutionalists have difficulty in explaining ‘branching points’ when substantial institutional change takes place and historical development moves on to a new path. Thus they typically seek to locate institutions in a causal chain that accommodates a role for other factors, notably socio-economic development and the diffusion of ideas (Hall and Taylor 1996: 942). March and Olsen attempt to explain policy change in institutional terms by emphasising encounters between rules and the environment. Thus radical


change, such as produced by war or civil war, may replace one definition of appropriateness with another (March and Olsen 1989:16). This explanation may suffice in the sense that it describes the start and finish point of radical policy change. The problem is that, as with policy networks and communities, it treats the actual dynamics of radical policy change as largely a ‘black box’ where the clash between rules and the environment will eventually produce a new state of equilibrium. The emphasis placed on the close interrelationship between rules, appropriateness, trust and routines fits much more easily into explanations of stability rather than change. Notwithstanding the difficulties in explaining change in institutional terms, separate policy arenas can be important instruments in the dynamics of ‘third order’ policy change. As March and Olsen also observe, the boundaries between institutions create buffers against conflict, and this is often their most significant political effect (March and Olsen 1989:27). For example, it was of considerable political advantage to government if controversy over a trunk road scheme could be enclosed within the hegemonic roads policy community, and particularly the expertise of the epistemic community of highway engineers. Conversely, a system of punctuated equilibria involves changes in institutional structures, such as interests seeking out alternative venues in order to change the dominant policy ‘image’. We observed in the case studies the vital importance of these arena shifts in processes of ‘third order’ policy change. These included the ‘roads crusade’ initiative by the road lobby in the 1950s, and the seeking out of ‘arenas without rules’ by the environmentalists in the 1970s and 1990s. In both these cases, campaigns in the public arena influenced Ministers by filling the ‘empty chair’ of public opinion (Dudley 1994). In the case of rail, the abolition of the British Transport Commission and the creation of the British Railways Board assisted Beeching by giving him a new organisational structure to develop on his own terms. The apparently odd case study here is rail privatisation. The persistence of policy advocates, rather than any institutional shift, eventually ensured success. The opposition to privatisation failed partly because there was no unifying concept, such as sustainable mobility. Nevertheless, it could also be argued that the anti-campaign also lacked the effective ‘arenas without rules’ found in the trunk roads case study. (The most significant ‘opposition’ to rail privatisation came from within the policy elite itself, such as, remarkably, Margaret Thatcher, and a sceptical Minister such as Malcolm Rifkind.) Consequently, institutional factors, or rather the lack of them, also played a part in determining the trajectory of the rail privatisation idea. The crucial analytical point is made by Hall when he states that interests acquire power by trying to influence the political discourse of the day (Hall 1993: 290). In doing so, they may have a major impact on policy without necessarily acquiring the formal trappings of influence. In this context, the transmission of ideas is therefore the crucial (if underresearched) instrument of change within the policy process (Dudley and Richardson 1998). At the same time, institutional


factors have a prominent, but contingent, role to play in this transmission process. As Weaver and Rockman conclude, ‘specific institutional arrangements are insufficient to guarantee a high or low level of a specific capability, but they may exacerbate failures of governance or help to make society more manageable’ (Weaver and Rockman 1993:446). Consequently, the ‘image and venue’ model offers a particularly useful means of analysing the transmission process, and also provides a valuable component to the solution of explaining ‘third order’ policy change through the concept of punctuated equilibria. Ultimately, however, the institutions of the various policy arenas are the servants of ideas, rather than vice versa. Individuals: mobility matters Throughout our case studies, we have observed the ability of key individuals not only to re-define meaning in organisational dialogue (Bevir and Rhodes 1999: 225), but also to translate a shift in the discourse into concrete policy change. Individuals therefore emerge as key agents of ‘third order’ policy change, particularly through their ability to convey and transmit new ideas into the heart of a policy sector. (Our work in other sectors, such as water and steel, also suggests a key role for individuals e.g. Maloney and Richardson 1995:71–7; Dudley and Richardson 1999.) In leading and reshaping advocacy coalitions, individuals can also strengthen collective action and broaden the values and organisational base of an interest. The role of the individual is perhaps most frequently expressed in terms of policy entrepreneurship. For example, Kingdon’s definition of policy entrepreneurs as ‘advocates who are willing to invest their resources— #8212;time, energy, reputation, money—to promote a position in return for anticipated future gain in the form of material, purposive, or solidary benefits’, conveys the significance of those who he believes play a crucial role in coupling the policy streams. Kingdon, like Sabatier, sees policy entrepreneurs also performing a role as policy brokers (Sabatier 1993:25–8), and also possessing a creative role in bending problems to the solutions they are pushing (Kingdon 1995:179–83). This definition of the role of individuals as agents of policy change, however, generally lacks the concept of the individual as also a shaper and ‘framer’ of ideas. Thus influential individuals, such as ‘promiscuous’ and ‘celibate’ Ministers, can mutate ideas, graft them on to existing advocacy coalitions, and then provide decisive leadership to those same coalitions. Mintrom and Vergari (1998) see policy entrepreneurs particularly in terms of their role in policy diffusion, but it is in entrepreneurs’ functions as carriers and transmitters of ideas that they perhaps play a particularly crucial role. Kingdon notes that entrepreneurs are found in many locations. No single formal position or even informal place in the political system has a monopoly on them (Kingdon 1995:179). This observation is certainly borne out by our case


studies, where key individuals were found in a wide range of arenas. Yet, in processes of ‘third order’ policy change, Ministers emerged as persistently influential individuals. To a significant extent, this conclusion illustrates a degree of state autonomy. As Smith (1993) argues, state actors have interests which are important in both the development of policy networks and policy. Moreover, state actors are very important in terms of pressure group power. Frequently it is not pressure groups that determine state policy but state policy that affects the activities of groups (Smith 1993:7). At the same time, Smith (1999) also believes that the core executive is no longer sovereign (if it ever was), but it is at the centre of a network of different organisations that it does not directly control (Smith 1999:252). This is commensurate with Rhodes’ conclusion that the phrase ‘the hollowing out of the state’ summarises many of the changes which have taken, and are taking, place in British government (Rhodes 1997: 17). Although the state may in modern times be developing an arm’s-length relationship with many agencies and actors, our longitudinal case studies persistently demonstrated the importance of the ‘empty chair’ principle of activities whereby distant arenas sent messages to Ministers, particularly in the trunk roads sector. This ranged from ‘the roads crusade’ initiated by the Roads Campaign Council in the 1950s, to the effective employment of the ‘arenas without rules’ by the environmentalists in the 1970s and 1990s. Crucially, however, the transmission of these messages requires receptive individual Ministers to interpret and act on them. At certain times, ‘celibate’ Ministers could undergo periods of discontinuous ‘development’ learning, rather isolated from other stakeholders. Dunleavy defines policy entrepreneurs within government as chiefly elected politicians who scan the horizons of their institutionally defined office, picking up and promoting ideas, problems and solutions which will have favourable consequences for their careers (Dunleavy 1995:202). McLean and Bustani point out, however, that exceptionally determined or insightful politicians may be able to construct a new majority when there is more than one issue dimension. Quoting Riker, they refer to heresthetics as a word defining a political strategy where people win politically because they have induced other people to join them in alliances and coalitions. Typically, they win because they have set up the situation in such a way that other people will want to join them—even without any persuasion at all (McLean and Bustani 1999:819). The concept of heresthetics ties in well with our metaphor of ‘promiscuous’ and ‘celibate’ ministerial styles. The most effective Ministers in our case studies, such as Ernest Marples, John Boyd-Carpenter, Harold Watkinson, Bill Rodgers and Brian Mawhinney, not only gave leadership to advocacy coalitions, they also played a vital role in reconstructing those coalitions in order to widen and strengthen them, and to facilitate the conditions for ‘third order’ policy change. The leadership given by these Ministers nevertheless went beyond the rational behaviour of vote maximisers, although of course this played an important part in their calculations. In all cases, there was a strong endogenous element of their


own personal political vision and values which ‘re-framed’ the issue and vitally affected the dynamics of policy change. At the same time, the ambivalence of the ministerial role as policy actor is reflected in their ability to adopt different behavioural modes when dealing with existing policy communities and networks. They are mobile rather than static policy actors in the sense that, at one moment, they may side with a particular interest, while, at another time, they express sentiments which apparently place them in the camp of an opposing interest or they may reflect no organised interest at all. On other occasions, however, they may act as arbiters between interests. This inherent mobility, reflecting the power to decide on the frequency and nature of relationships with other policy actors, places a Minister in a position to introduce policy innovation and to produce change in the composition of the policy network itself (Dudley and Richardson 1996b and c:9–10). The distinctive role of individual Ministers indicates the fragmented and discontinuous character of state power, but also demonstrates the great potential of the individual to influence policy change. The endogenous processes of ‘development’ learning at work, and the inherent if elusive mobility of key individuals such as policy entrepreneurs, makes them a potent force in carrying, mutating and transplanting new policy ideas. Time and the dynamics of policy stability and change Time is undoubtedly a key element in processes of radical policy change, but what role does it actually play, and how can we recognise its true significance? At its most basic, the case studies repeatedly demonstrated the value of a longitudinal study in tracing the dynamics of change, even when radical change takes place over a short but intense period of time. For example, we can only understand the shift made by the road lobby from weak advocacy coalition to hegemonic policy community in a few short years in the late 1950s, if we appreciate the degree and character of the road lobby’s earlier failures, and thus how the introduction of the popular consumerism idea transformed their fortunes politically. Similarly, the role of Beeching only makes sense if we understand the evolution of the various earlier ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ of the rail industry, while the success of the environmentalists in the 1990s must be analysed in the context of their earlier successes and failures in the 1970s and 1980s. We can therefore strongly endorse the basic principle of the ACF that understanding the process of policy change—and the role of policy-oriented learning therein—requires a time perspective of a decade or more (Sabatier 1993: 16). On the other hand, the ACF hypothesis that on major controversies within a policy subsystem (i.e. when core beliefs are in dispute), the line-up of allies and opponents will tend to be rather stable over periods of a decade or so, is somewhat more problematic (Sabatier 1993:27). This hypothesis implicitly acknowledges the key role of time, and suggests that time itself will hold advocacy coalitions together for ten years or so. Our case studies indeed


demonstrated that at least relative stability is the norm for the majority of a period of over half a century, but also indicated the unpredictability of the timing of change. Thus it depends which decade we pick, e.g. the road lobby was transformed as an advocacy coalition in the 1950s, but was relatively stable in the 1960s. The role of time in radical ‘third order’ policy change is therefore perhaps more elusive than might at first be thought. Our own case studies have, of necessity, adopted the ‘snapshot’ approach by giving particular attention to five periods of rapid change. Yet we also acknowledge that stability and change complement one another, and have attempted to outline the dynamics of stability between these relatively short-lived periods of radical change. Dowding argues that network theory is incapable of explaining such phenomena as policy community breakdown nor issue network transcendence; or the dynamics of the change. As he puts it: ‘it cannot do so, for part of what is to be explained is the creation and destruction of communities. The imagery is simply metaphorical heuristics’ (Dowding 1995: 139). Our study has indeed indicated that network theory is more applicable to conditions of policy stability than policy change. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to note that the policy community concept provided the most useful tool of analysis in describing the political evolution of the road lobby. Conversely, the lack of a policy community in the case of rail undoubtedly played a part in the trajectory of new ideas. Even more significantly, it is possible to classify the adversarial road and environmental advocacy coalitions as types of policy communities (Dudley and Richardson 1996a). Policy communities and networks may ultimately be metaphors, but it could also be argued that, at least in some cases, metaphors are as near as we can come to describing reality. As Richardson comments, empirical research in all developed western societies—whether by political scientists, sociologists, psychologists or organisation analysts —#8212; has generally identified networks as important in making public and organisational decisions (Richardson 1999:196). In this context, our study has attempted to demonstrate both the strengths and limitations of network theory and to point to the conditions under which policy change can take place.

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Index

ACF see Advocacy Coalition Framework Adam Smith Institute 199 Adams, Dr John, M16 motorway 126 Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) analytical tool 222 ‘third order’ policy change 20 time 230 advocacy coalitions privatisation 213–214 radical change 28–31 Rodgers, Bill 128 Transport Ministers 67 aggravated trespass, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 168 Aims of Industry agency 84 Alarm UK London 147 protest groups 148 road schemes 139 Transport 2000 158 Aldcroft, D.H. 33 All Party Roads Study Group (APRSG), forum 95 Allen, G.F. 38 Allen, K. 38, 63 APRSG see All Party Roads Study Group Area Boards, British Transport Commission 34–35 Austen-Smith, D. 4

venue definition 31 Beeching, Dr Richard 22 maps 54, 55 Marples, Ernest 60 personality 53 road lobby 32 salary 51 beliefs, words/actions 222 BET see British Electric Traction Boyd-Carpenter, John Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation 1954–5 67 epistemic communities 82 roads 83 roads advocacy coalition 80 Roads Campaign Council 85 tolls 69 BR see British Railways BRB see British Railways Board BRF see British Road Federation British Electric Traction (BET) 195 British Industry Roads Campaign, British Road Federation 115 British Railways (BR) Beeching Plan 191 borrowing 206 British Steel Corporation 198 costs 57 ‘hollow core’ 189 Mitchell, David 200 passenger services 193 Prime Minister’s Policy Unit 215 privatisation 201, 202, 216–217 Franchise Authority 215–216 franchising 217 Treasury 190

Barnes, Alfred, Transport Minister 74, 75 Baumgartner, F.R. 10–11 bias mobilisation 51 image/venue interaction 107 policy monopolies 29

243

244 INDEX

British Railways Board (BRB) 50, 51 British Railways Density of Passenger Traffic, The Reshaping of British Railways report 54 British Road Federation. (BRF) Annual Report 1973 124 Mawhinney, Dr Brian 171 public opinion 76 road budgets 124 Watkinson, Harold 92 British Steel Corporation (BSC), privatisation 189 British Transport Commission (BTC) 75 Modernisation Plan 36, 37 rail deficits 35 Transport Act 1947 34 Brundtland, Gro Harlem 148 BSC see British Steel Corporation BTC see British Transport Commission Buchanan, C.D. 61 Burke, Tom economic growth 151 Heseltine, Michael 150 Members of Parliament 158 policy stream coupling 152 buses, rail line closures 54–55 Bushell case, Midlands Motorway Action Group 140–141 Bustani, C. 229 Cabinet Economic Policy Committee (EPC) 109 Callaghan, James, Prime Minister, Transport Department 127–128 Cameron, Sir John, National Union of Railwaymen 36 carbon dioxide, traffic 145 cars, health 138 Castle, Barbara Minister of Transport 1965–8 63 British Road Federation 111 Ministry of Transport budgets 112 causality, ideas/interests 221–225 Central Transport Consultative Committee (CTCC), Transport Act 1947 39 Channon, Paul, Transport Secretary 143, 200, 203–204

Christiansen, P.M. 5, 12 ‘classless society’, Crosland, Tony 127 COBA see Cost Benefit Analysis Cohen, M.D. 24 Conservative Party Conference 1994, Mawhinney, Dr Brian 171–172 Conservative government management reform 113 Thatcher government British Steel Corporation 189 bus industry 195 rail privatisation 203 Thatcherism 6–7 consultation Conservatives 9 trunk roads 119 Cost Benefit Analysis (COBA), roads policy 127 Countryside Alliance 12 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 168 Crosland, Tony, Environment Secretary 126–127 CTCC see Central Transport Consultative Committee ‘dash for growth’, British economy 124, 125 Della Salla, V. 9 Denham, H. 198–199 Denning, Lord 141 Department of the Environment (DoE) alternative policy ideas 137 creation 113 Department of the Environment Transport and Regions (DETR), formation 184 Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), rail privatisation 210 Department of Transport (DTp) 1990s 144–145 Callaghan, James 127–128 motorway widening 167 trunk roads 161 DETR see Department of the Environment Transport and Regions

INDEX

The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes report, British Railways Board 60 development vs. learning 223 dinner parties, Ministers 158 direct action orthodox lobbying techniques 156 roads 168 DoE see Department of the Environment Doherty, B. 179 Dowding, K. 7, 230 Drake, James 98, 111–112 DTI see Department of Trade and Industry DTp see Department of Transport Dunleavy, P. 228 Dyos, H.J. 33 Earth First! group 152 Earth Summit see United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992 EC see European Commission ‘eco-yuppies’ 12–13 empty chair principle 80 entrepreneurs, policy streams 26–27 environment, institutional agenda 148 environmental advocacy coalition 1990s 138 consolidation 156–160 Ministers 221 sustainable development 149 environmental establishment, British government 187 environmental groups advocacy coalition 137 direct action protesters 156 establishment 156–158 leaders, Newbury bypass 180 Mawhinney, Dr Brian 170, 171 policy frames 31 Prince Charles 178 road tolls 151 roads community 134 EPC see Cabinet Economic Policy Committee epistemic communities Ministry of Transport 82, 104

245

Stedeford Committee 47 transnational learning 73 Watkinson, Harold 86–87 EU see European Union Europe, Western, policy reforms 6 European Commission (EC) public inquiries 119 railways 207–208 Twyford Down 147 European Union (EU) alternative venues 13–14 pollution 150 road schemes 139–140 Trans European Networks 163–164 Feigenbaum, H. 197 Festing, S. 179 Fiennes, Gerard British Railways Board appointments 52 East Suffolk railway line 60–61 Finance Act 1956, British Transport Commission 38 Finer, S.E. 77, 84, 85 First World War, British railway nationalisation 34 FoE see Friends of the Earth Foster, Sir Christopher 193, 214 ‘Four Is’, policy change 219–231 ‘framing’, policy agendas 30 France, toll financing 82 Freeman, Roger, Public Transport Minister 210 Friends of the Earth (FoE) lobbying 116–117 Young, Sir George 178 Fritschler, A.L. 11 fuel duties, Lamont, Norman 154 Future Rail plan, British Railways 209 garbage can model European Commission policy 208 policy change 24 Garnett, M. 198–199 Geddes Committee, British Railways Board 62

246 INDEX

genetically modified (GM) foods, Britain 11–12 German Roads Delegation 72 global warming, vehicle emissions 145 GM foods see genetically modified foods Goldstein, J. 225–226 Goodwin, P. 146 Gourvish, T.R. 35–36 The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes report 60 Stedeford Committee 48 Grant, W. 6 ‘Great Debate’, Mawhinney, Dr Brian 176– 177 Gregory, R. 120 Gritten, A. 201 group participation, incentives/costs 2–5 Guillebaud Committee, British Cabinet 45– 46 Guillebaud inquiry, pay 44 Gummer, John 165, 166 Hall, P. authority shifts 19 economic ideas of state 225 policy influences 227 ‘third order’ policy change 17 Hall Report, road transport 44–45 Hamer, M. 44 Roads Campaign Council 84 roads lobbying 81 Thorneycroft, Peter 94 Hardy, R.H.N. 53 The Reshaping of British Railways report 57 road transport unions 62 Headey, B. 81 Heclo, H. 5 Heinz, J.P. 24 Hennessy, P. 27 Henshaw, D. 30, 42, 48–49 Railway Development Association 41 Serpell Report 193 heresthetics, Ministers 229 Heseltine, Michael, Environment Secretary 150 Highway Inquiries

British roads 11 role 119 Highways Act 1959, motorways/trunk roads 102 Highways Act 1971, Environment Secretary 114 Highways Agency, transport policy review 1998 186 Hill, Dr Charles 96 ‘hollow core’ MacGregor, John 214 policy networks 23 rail 191–194 Modernisation Plan 37 network 220 sector 22 Horam, John, Junior Minister 129 Hunter, L.C. 63–64 ideas evolution 224 mutation 18–19 ideology British Railways 216–217 rail privatisation 206 ‘image and venue’ model policy change 227 ‘third order’ policy change 19 independent variables ideas 219–221 ‘third order’ policy change 21 induced traffic 174 information gathering, cooperation 4 ‘insider-outsider’ cooperation, Transport Round Table 158 institutions ideas 225 policy shifts 220 interest groups alternative venues 10–14 uncertainty 4 Internet, ecology groups 12 Irvine, K. 199 issue expansion, rules 123 Jacobson, J.K. 221 Jeffreys, W. Rees

INDEX

nationalisation 76 road lobby 70 Jenkins, Sir Gilmour 87 John, P. 16 Jones, B.D. 10–11 bias mobilisation 51 image/venue interaction 107 policy monopolies 29 venue definition 31 Jordan, G. 2 Joseph, Stephen 138 Judge, D. ix, 2 Jukes, John, Director General of Highways 129 Keck, M.E. 13 Key, Robert, Roads Minister 162 Kingdon,J.W. 14–15 entrepreneurs 28 garbage can model 25–26, 225 ‘organised anarchies’ 24 policy entrepreneurs 227-228 policy streams 68 knowledge change 16-17 transmission, policy change 27 Labour government 184–188 Laing, John 103 Laird, F.R. 222–223 Lamb, R. 46, 64 Lamont, Norman, Chancellor of the Exchequer 153, 154 Lax, D. 3 Leitch Committee, roads policy 131–132 Lennox-Boyd, Alan, Transport Minister 80 Levin, R.H. 120 liberal-environmentalists, markets 151 line closures Consultative Committees 40 policy ‘frames’ 39–42 lobbying Friends of the Earth 117 information gathering 4 Lofthouse Committee Report 1966 113 longitudinal analysis ideas stream 222

247

time 18 MacGregor, John Transport Secretary 1992–4 153 ambitions 169 road/rail policies 212–213 Roads for Prosperity programme 161 trunk roads 166–167 McLean, I. 229 Macmillan, Harold Chancellor of the Exchequer, Watkinson, Harold 91 Prime Minister 95 Beeching Plan 59 British Transport Commission 46 Guillebaud inquiry 44 tolls 100 Majone, G. 25 Major, John Chief Secretary to the Treasury 142– 143 Prime Minister Policy Unit 190 rail privatisation 205, 211 sustainability issues 165 maps, Beeching, Dr Richard 54, 55 March, J.G. 121–122, 226 Marples, Ernest Minister of Transport 1959–64 26, 44 general election 1964 32 roads 108-109 The Reshaping of British Railways report 59 Marsh, R. 191 ‘The Master Plan’, Marples, Ernest 109 Mawhinney, Dr Brian Transport Secretary 1994–5 139, 169-172 Christianity 175–176 promotion 177 ‘Middle England’ Blair, Tony 188 roads policy 181 Ministers British Railways privatisation 208 change 80 classification 81

248 INDEX

empty chair principle 228 policy/idea entrepreneurs 67–70 ‘promiscuous’ vs. ‘celibate’ 20–21, 220 ‘third order’ policy change 20 Ministry of Transport (MoT) creation 71 engineers 110 Ministry of Civil Aviation 81–82 traffic flows 93 trunk roads 67, 72, 104 Mitchell, David, Junior Transport Minister 200 mobility, policy change 227–229 Mooney, Bel, Solsbury Hill 167 Moore, M.H. 15–16 Morrisonian relationship, British rail industry 25 MoT see Ministry of Transport ‘motorway box’ plan, London 116 motorways consultation, Highways Act 1959 102 industry 96 M1 93, 99 ‘need’ requirement 118 policy communities 93–103 tolls 69 widening 143–144, 167 National Bus Company (NBC), privatisation 194–195, 196 National Council on Inland Transport (NCIT) 58 National Economic Development Council (NEDC) 61 National Freight Corporation (NFC) 194 national interest, British Transport Commission 41 National Motorways Action Committee 126 National Rivers Authority 196 national venues, interest groups 10–13 nationalisation British economy 194 British railways 34 Nationalised Transport Advisory Council, British Transport Commission 50

NBC see National Bus Company NCIT see National Council on Inland Transport NEDC see National Economic Development Council negotiations, trust 3 network structures, road vs. rail 21–22 Newbury bypass Mawhinney, Dr Brian 176, 177 Sites of Special Scientific Interest 179 NFC see National Freight Corporation Nichols, A. 216 Nimby principle 120 nitrogen dioxide, vehicle emissions 149– 150 Norris, Steven, Minister for Transport in London 155 OfQ Organising for Quality project Olsen, J.P. 121–122, 226 Olson, M. 8 OPEC, oil prices 124 Organising for Quality (OfQ) project, British Railways 209 Owens, S. 172, 173 Oxleas Wood, British Road Federation 154 Paddington rail crash 188 Painter, M. 111, 125 Parkinson, Cecil, Transport Secretary 204 Passenger Transport Authorities (PTAs) 63 People Against the River Crossing group, Oxleas Wood 154 Peters, B.G. 9 Peyton, John, Minister for Transport Industries 125 Phillipson, Robert 174 policy arenas change 225–227 rival interests 107 ‘third order’ policy change 19–20 with/without rules 122 policy communities resource dependencies 67 Western Europe 6

INDEX

policy entrepreneurs 227 ‘third order’ change 160 ‘policy frames’ 4 policy networks policy frames 220 road/rail 64–65 policy ‘reframing’ Ministers 68 ‘third order’ policy change 224 policy sectors, Thatcher government 7 policy stability/change relationship 219 policy stakeholders, cooperative arrangements 2–4 ‘policy viruses’ 14–17 ‘policy windows’ 21, 29 policy-makers, epistemic communities 47 Portillo, Michael, Minister of State 202 ‘post-parliamentary’ thesis, policy communities ix Post-war period, policy viruses 15 Prescott, John Deputy Prime minister 192 transport policy review 1998 185–186 Treasury 187 Preston bypass 97–98 ‘frost heave’ 101 Ministry of Transport 90 Preston, J. 214 Prince Charles, transport policy 178 Pryke, R. 57 British Railways 192 National Bus Company 195 PTAs see Passenger Transport Authorities public inquiries, highways 118–119 public opinion, empty chair principle 226 public relations, Beeching, Dr Richard 52 public transport, British government 185 ‘punctuated equilibrium’ British Railways Board 51–52 USA 11 ‘push-pull’ effect, European Union 13 Radaelli, C. 17, 25 rail British government 213 privatisation Adam Smith Institute 199

249

‘hollow core’ 22 rail unions, British Transport Commission 35 Railtrack, flotation 217 Railway Development Association (RDA), line closures 41 railways basic characteristics 56 privatisation 1987–92 188–218 Watkinson, Harold 92 see also British Railways; track authorities Rayner, T. 172, 173 RCC see Roads Campaign Council RCEP see Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution RCUs see Road Construction Units RDA see Railway Development Association Reclaim the Streets group, Wanstead 162 regulation, railways 33–35, 216 Reich, R.H. 14 Reid, G.L. 38, 63 Reid, Sir Bob British Railways privatisation 201 Future Rail plan 209 The Reshaping of British Railways report 52–53, 54–55 Rhodes, R.A.W. 2, 2 Richardson, J. 231 Ridley, Nicholas, Transport Secretary 142, 195–196 Rifkind, Malcolm Transport Secretary rail privatisation 209 railways 205–206 Road Alert! group 156 Road Board, creation 71 Road Construction Units (RCUs) 112 road lobby 1900–39 70–73 advocacy coalitions 67 Ministers of Transport 89 policy communities 230 road tolls, MacGregor, John 153 roads British government 213 dust 70

250 INDEX

environmentalists 22–23, 116 expenditure 87, 100 hegemonic policy community 108–115 slowdown 123–128 private finance 142–143 MacGregor,John 153 Roads for Prosperity programme 163 traffic 139 votes 65, 100 see also trunk roads Roads Campaign Council (RCC) formation 69 German/Dutch roads 88–89 operational strategy 84 roads community, change process 137 The Roads Crusade, Aims of Industry agency 84 ‘roads doctor’ image, Watkinson, Harold 86 Roads for Prosperity programme Budget, November 1994 174 costs 163 roads lobby, environmental advocacy coalition 65 roads policy perception 107–108 popular consumerism 105 roads policy community, environmentalists 160 Robertson, Sir Brian, British Transport Commission Chairman 39 Rockman, B.A. 227 Rodgers, Bill, Transport Secretary 1976–9 107, 128 Rommetvedt, H. 5, 12 Ross Spur motorway 95 Round Table on Sustainable Development 165–166 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) 172–173 Sabatier, P.A. 18 Advocacy Coalition Framework 224 advocacy coalitions 28–29 values 68 competing interests 131 policy entrepreneurs 227

time 230 SACTRA see Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment Salisbury, Lord, Watkinson, Harold 87–88 Save Our Railways group 190 SCNI see Select Committee on Nationalised Industries Sebenius, J.K. 3 Second World War 73–74 Select Committee on Estimates, Ministry of Transport 101 Select Committee on Nationalised Industries (SCNI) 49–50 Serpell, David 45 Serpell Report 192–193 Settle-Carlisle line, rail privatisation 200 Sikkink, K. 13 Sir Ivan Stedeford’s Special Advisory Group see Stedeford Committee SJ see Swedish State Railway Smeed Committee 110 Smith, M. 228 Solsbury Hill, occupation 167 South Wales, Ross Spur motorway 95 Special Roads Act 1949 76 Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA) formation 132 Trunk Roads and the Generation of Traffic report 173 see also Leitch Committee Starkie, D. 78, 97 industrial traffic 93 London-Birmingham motorway 110 tea room plan 75, 95 state intervention 8 statutory objectors 126 Stedeford Committee (Sir Ivan Stedeford’s Special Advisory Group) Beeching/Stedeford conflict 48 British Transport Commission 47 subsidies, British rail services 63–64 sustainable development 148–149, 164 sustainable mobility, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 173 ‘Swampy’, protester 181 Swedish State Railway (SJ) 207

INDEX

TENs see Trans European Networks TERNs see Trans European Road Networks think tanks 198–199 ‘third order’ policy change 17–18 ‘Four Is’ 219 hegemonic policy communities 108 individuals 20–21 policy arenas 19–20 temporal factors 21–23 time 221, 230 Twyford Down 156 Thomson, A.W.J. 63–64 time, policy change 229–231 Tivey, L. 40 track authorities British Railways 215 European Commission 211 Rifkind, Malcolm 209–211 Trades Union Congress (TUC), Transport 2000 117 trades unions 58, 117 traffic flow, Watkinson, Harold 88 Traffic in Towns report 61, 115 trains, stopping vs. fast/semi-fast 56 Trans European Networks (TENs) 163– 164 Trans European Road Networks (TERNs), Britain 164 transnational action, interest groups 13 transport British policy 182 review 1998 186 sustainable development 164 Transport Act 1953, road haulage industry 34 Transport Act 1962 British Railways Board 31 Transport Users’ Consultative Committees 58 Transport and Health Study Group, Transport 2000 159–160 Transport Policy Review Unit 129 Transport Reform Group 118 Transport Round Table environmental advocacy coalition 138 Transport 2000 158 Transport Secretaries, Conservatives 160

251

Transport: The New Realism report 146 Transport Tribunal, British Transport Commission 35 Transport 2000 group formation 117 Joseph, Stephen 158 railway privatisation 190 Transport Users’ Consultative Committees (TUCCS), Transport Act 1947 39–40 Treasury 94, 211 trunk roads Budget, November 1995 178 Budget, November 1996 183 Department of Transport assessments 131 expenditure, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 173 government Consultation Paper 1997 185 government review 1995 182 MacGregor, John 161 Mawhinney, Dr Brian 170, 176 oil prices 124 Roads for Prosperity White Paper 1989 135, 143 Rodgers, Bill 128, 128 transport policy review 1998 186 Transport White Paper 1977 130 Tyme, John 106, 121, 122 Trunk Roads Act 1936 72 TUC see Trades Union Congress TUCCS see Transport Users’ Consultative Committees Twyford Down Earth First! group 152 environmental radicalism 155 M3 motorway 145–146 site occupations 137–138 unions see trades unions United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992 (Earth Summit) 149 ‘urban rooms’, traffic 115 USA, interstate highways 82

252 INDEX

vehicle emissions 145 asthma 149 Walker, Peter, Environment Secretary 114 Wanstead, civil disobedience 166 Watkinson, Harold Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation 1955–9 39, 65, 86–93 funds 94 M1 construction 103 Preston bypass 98, 101 roads expenditure 97 trunk roads programme 100 Weaver, R.K. 227 Welsby, J. 216 Wenban-Smith, Hugh, Department of Transport 182, 183 Wildavsky, A. 114 Wistrich, E. 191–192 Worcester, Marchioness of, Newbury bypass 180 World Commission on Environment and Development 1987 148 Wright, J.R. 4 Young, Sir George 178 Transport Secretary 1995–7 178–178 Zahariadis, N. 198, 202, 214

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