Download or read book Government the Railways and the Modernization of Britain written by Charles Loft and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 40 years after its publication, the 1963 Beeching Report on British railways remains controversial for recommending the closure of a third of Britain’s railways. In this book, Charles Loft examines: why the nationalized railways were in such dire financial straits by 1963 how government work on future transport needs led to conclusions which would have cut Britain’s railways down by thousands of miles what difficulties eventually halted attempts by Conservative and Labour governments to implement these cuts. This book will be invaluable to anyone interested in how transport policy is made or how it has arrived at its current state and sheds fascinating new light on the working of government, the economy and the mood of the times under Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Wilson.

Download or read book Government the Railways and the Modernization of Britain written by Charles Loft and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work explains the background to, and politics behind, the infamous Beeching Report, which recommended the closure of a third of Britain's railways.

Download or read book Last Trains written by Charles Loft and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-27 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The debate about Dr Richard Beeching will rage until the Second Coming – and probably beyond. But in Charles Loft's careful examination of the Beeching Report, we have as fine a study as we are going to possess in the meantime." – Peter Hennessy "Loft's great strength is his judiciousness. He understands the political processes and assesses them fair-mindedly. And his verdict will, I suspect, hold up better than any of Beeching's judgements." – Matthew Engel, Financial Times "Prepare to be impressed, shocked and saddened ... This is undoubtedly one of the best books of the year – a riveting read." – Railways Illustrated "Lucid, to the point, thought-provoking at every turn, Last Trains is a volume that everyone should read before making judgements about the rail closures of the Sixties." – Heritage Railway "Thoughtful and well-researched analysis." – Edinburgh Evening News *** During the course of the 1950s England lost confidence in its rulers and convinced itself it must modernise. The failing steam-powered local railways, run by Colonel Blimp, symbolised everything that was wrong with the country – surely the future lay in motorways and high-speed express trains? Along came Dr Beeching with his diagnosis, and suddenly branch-line Britain was gone for ever. The debate about the Beeching cuts has raged ever since. In this superbly researched examination, Charles Loft exposes the political failures that bankrupted the railways and lays bare the increasing alienation of bureaucrats from the public they were trying to serve. The result is a fascinating study of a nation grappling to come to terms with modernity.

Download or read book The Privatisation of British Rail written by Sean McCartney and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-23 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The privatisation of the British railway industry was a unique political and economic event. An integrated industry was broken-up into numerous component parts and sold off to private sector interests. The result was a highly fragmented industry that was structurally unsound and operationally dysfunctional. This authoritative volume presents an enlightening portrait of an industry that is less efficient, more costly and still more dependent on state subsidy today than its nationalised predecessor. The nine chapters in this work present a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of how and why the industry has become so dysfunctional and costly, supported by detailed financial analysis and industry examples. Seven chapters comprise a series of peer-reviewed academic papers by Professor McCartney and Dr Stittle and published in leading international journals over the period 2004–2017 which analyse selected key segments of the privatised industry: where appropriate, updates are provided at the end of these chapters outlining developments since initial publication relevant to the analysis therein. Two chapters are published here for the first time: Chapter 7 reviews the performance of the freight sector, while Chapter 1 ‘bookends’ the volume by providing first, an account of how rail privatisation was conceived and implemented in the 1980s/90s, and then reviews the impact of the pandemic and the proposals of the Williams-Shapps White Paper of 2021 which, if enacted, will effectively end the Major government’s experiment. Going far beyond the usual superficial analysis of the topic, this volume will be of significant interest to researchers and advanced students of accounting, economics, business history, transport studies, as well as industry and specialised business interests in transport and privatisation.

Download or read book British Rail written by Christian Wolmar and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authoritative and fascinating history of the rise and fall of the state-owned British Rail 'Wolmar's book is impeccably organised and makes a fast, enjoyable read' THE TIMES Literary Supplement________ British Rail wasn't how we're asked to remember it . . . From ancient rolling stock to patchy service, stale sandwiches to the wrong kind of snow, British Rail - our last great state-owned organisation to be privatised - has received a terrible press. But after its controversial 1948 creation, British Rail was actually an innovative powerhouse that over five decades transformed the UK, creating one of the fastest regular rail services in the world. Award-winning journalist Christian Wolmar takes us from promise to punchline, exploring British Rail's birth into post-war austerity, the many battles and struggles to evolve what many considered to be a dinosaur, and how, at the height of its success, the service was misunderstood and unfairly maligned, ruthlessly broken up and privatised._______ Praise for Christian Wolmar 'Wolmar is the high priest of railway studies' Literary Review 'The greatest expert on British trains' Guardian 'Our most eminent transport journalist' Spectator 'If the world's railways have a laureate, it is surely Christian Wolmar' Boston Globe 'Christian Wolmar is in love with the railways. He writes constantly and passionately about them. He is their wisest, most detailed historian and a constant prophet of their rebirth . . . if you love the hum of the wheels and of history, then Christian Wolmar is your man' Observer

Download or read book British Railways in Transition written by Derek H. Aldcroft and published by Springer. This book was released on 1968-06-18 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Winds of Change written by Peter Hennessy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following Never Again and Having It So Good, the third part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy 'By far the best study of early Sixties Britain ... so much fun, yet still shrewd and important' The Times, Books of the Year Harold Macmillan famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to sweep away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a Third World War. In Winds of Change we see Macmillan gradually working out his 'grand design' - how to be part of both a tight transatlantic alliance and Europe, dealing with his fellow geostrategists Kennedy and de Gaulle. The centre of the book is 1963 - the year of the Profumo Crisis, the Great Train Robbery, the satire boom, de Gaulle's veto of Britain's first application to join the EEC, the fall of Macmillan and the unexpected succession to the premiership of Alec Douglas-Home. Then, in 1964, the battle of what Hennessy calls the tweedy aristocrat and the tweedy meritocrat - Harold Wilson, who would end 13 years of Conservative rule and usher in a new era. As in his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy. No historian knows the by-ways as well the highways of the archives so well, and no one conveys the flavour of the period so engagingly. The early sixties live again in these pages.

Download or read book Sir Harry Parkes British Representative in Japan 1865 83 written by Gordon Daniels and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book British Owned Railways in Argentina written by Winthrop R. Wright and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the nineteenth century, British-owned railways grew under the protection of an Argentine ruling elite that considered railways both instruments and symbols of progress. Under this program of support for foreign enterprise, Argentina had by 1914 built the largest railway network in Latin America. During the first decades of the twentieth century, the railways were successful in following a policy of calculated disregard for Argentine interests in general. However, following the end of World War I, the British economic empire began to decline and Argentine economic nationalism grew. A number of popularistic political movements incorporated economic nationalism into their platforms, and even among the ruling elite there were signs of increasing nationalistic sentiment. Although most studies of economic nationalism have emphasized the importance of the middle-class Radical party in the rise of xenophobia, Winthrop R. Wright's study shows that antiforeign economic nationalism was not entirely a reaction to the conservative elite. Between 1932 and 1938 the nationalistic programs of General Agustin Justo's government—basically a conservative regime—led the British interests to decide to sell their holdings. The British govemment had arrived at a position of supporting the economic withdrawal of the large British-owned firms long before Juan D. Perón appeared on the political scene. Perón combined traditional Argentine economic nationalism with his own scheme to gain power over all elements in Argentina. His solution to the railway problem, although more dramatically executed, did not differ greatly from that of the conservative Justo. Perón purchased the railways outright in 1947–1948, but his use of nationalism was in reality covering his own inability to outbargain Britain and the United States following the conclusion of World War II.

Download or read book Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil 1850 1914 written by Richard Graham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1968-07-02 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a detailed study of British influence in Brazil as a theme within the larger story of modernization. The British were involved at key points in the initial stages of modernization. Their hold upon the import-export economy tended to slow down industrialization, and there were other areas in which their presence acted as a brake upon Brazilian modernization. But the British also fostered change. British railways provided primary stimulus to the growth of coffee exports, and since the British did not monopolize coffee production, a large proportion of the profits remained in Brazilian hands for other uses. Furthermore, the burgeoning coffee economy shattered traditional economic, social and political relationships, opening up the way for other areas of growth. The British role was not confined to economic development. They also contributed to the growth of 'a modern world-view'. Spencerianism and the idea of progress, for instance, were not exotic and meaningless imports, but an integral part of the transformation Brazil was experiencing.

Download or read book Finding a Role written by Brian Harrison and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1970 the 'cold war' was still cold, Northern Ireland's troubles were escalating, the UK's relations with the EEC were unclear, and corporatist approaches to the economy precariously persisted. By 1990 Communism was crumbling world-wide, Thatcher's economic revolution had occurred, terrorism in Northern Ireland was waning, 'multi-culturalism' was in place, family structures were changing fast, and British political institutions had become controversial. Seven analytic chapters pursue these changes and accumulate rich detail on changes in international relations, landscape and townscape, social framework, family and welfare structures, economic policies and realities, intellect and culture, politics and government. The concluding chapter ranges chronologically even more widely to bring out the interaction of past and present, then asks how far the UK had by 1990 identified its world role. Like Harrison's Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (2009) - the immediately preceding volume in this series - Finding a Role? includes a full chronological table and an ample index of names and themes. This, the first thorough, wide-ranging, and synoptic study of the UK so far published on this period, has two overriding aims: to show how British institutions evolved, but also to illuminate changes in the British people: their hopes and fears, values and enjoyments, failures and achievements. It therefore equips its readers to understand events since 1990, and so to decide for themselves where the UK should now be going.

Download or read book Erasing the Binary Distinction of Developed and Underdeveloped written by Vinay Bahl and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-06 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the binary distinction of developed and underdeveloped in the categorization of any country while proposing to erase this binary with a yardstick of parity. Through a sample comparative historical study focusing on the question of the emergence of the large-scale steel industry (1880-1914) of four chosen countries, two considered "developed" (Imperial UK and Post-colonial Imperial USA) and two considered "underdeveloped" (Imperial Russia and Colonial India), it is shown how this yardstick of parity can be applied without the categorization of societies as either developed or underdeveloped. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan)

Download or read book Britain and the Americas 3 volumes written by Will Kaufman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 1228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive encyclopedia covering the close ties between Britain and the whole of the Americas, examining Britain's cultural and political legacy to the nations of the New World. From Vikings to redcoats, from the Beatles to the war in Iraq, Britain and the Americas examines Britain's cultural and political legacy to the nations of the Americas. This comprehensive survey also traces how the Americas have in turn influenced contemporary Britain from the Americanization of language and politics to the impact of music and migration from the West Indies. Complete with an extensive introduction and a chronology of key events, this three-volume encyclopedia contains introductory essays focusing on the four prime areas of British Atlantic engagement—Canada, the Caribbean, the United States, and Latin America. Students of a wide range of disciplines, as well as the lay reader, will appreciate this exhaustive survey, which traces the common themes of British policy and influence throughout the Americas and highlights how Britain has in turn benefited from the influence of American democracy, technology, culture and politics.

Download or read book British Railways in Argentina 1857 1914 written by Colin M. Lewis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lewis examines the complex combinations of British and Argentine forces involved in the rapid development of modern Argentina after its former pastoral and parochial socio-economic structure was superseded by the formation of a modern republic, which was largely financed by external sources and made it one of the most dynamic and prosperous countries of the mid and late 19th century. His work demonstrates the conflicting, often contradictory, expectations of the parties concerned, and how these divergent expectations and preconceptions were successfully harmonised and evolved.

Download or read book British Jews and Imperial Service written by Stephanie M. Chasin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the devastating WWI, three Jews headed the most valuable territory in the British Empire in addition to a strategically important new addition. Edwin Montagu held the position of Secretary of State for India, Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading) was the newly appointed Viceroy of India, and Herbert Samuel arrived in Jerusalem as the first High Commissioner of Palestine. Their appointments came at a time of great upheaval as Indian nationalists clamoured for independence, pan-Islamists fought to keep the defeated Ottoman Empire intact and the sultan in Constantinople, and Zionists sought to build on the wartime promise by the British government to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine in face of opposition by Palestinians and pan-Islamists. The task of tackling these issues was made all the more difficult by accusations that Jews were not loyal to the British Empire and its goals, a view promoted by the appearance of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in English translation. This book follows this web of divisive imperial politics, and nationalist and pan-Islamist aspirations in India and Palestine, through the lives and work of these three men whose efforts were coloured by the post-war fear of a declining empire that was being corroded from within.

Download or read book Britain s Economic Growth 1920 1966 written by A.J. Youngson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Youngson's book is an ubiased review of Britain's past experience and present difficulties. Few sacred cows are spared. There is no pretence that fundamental problems were resolved at the time of its first publication in 1967. Many econmic historians fail in their assessment of Britian's economic prospects as there is a tendency to look only at recent events to explain current problems. Youngson saw that this was short sighted. An economy, like an airliner, cannot suddenly change its course; it is subject to persistent forces and tendencies; it is powerfully affected by what has happened in the recent and sometimes in the not so recent past. Therefore to understand the problems of today we must know somthing of how persistent they are , and about what solutions have already been tried. This book provides a thorough examination of Britain's economic growth from 1920-1966 and contextualises Britain's situation within its true historical perspective. This book was first published in 1967.

Download or read book Economic History of Transport in Britain written by Christopher Savage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 2005, Economic History of Transport Britain is a valuable contribution to the field of Economic History.