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BOOK REVIEW
| Tim Strangleman, Work Identity at the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail Industry, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2004. pp. xviii + 204. $186.00 cloth.
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| Tim Strangleman commences his study of the British railways through half a century of nationalisation, followed by a return to privatisation, with a cautionary tale of a British Rail employee, Clive Groome, who began as a cleaner of steam locomotives in the 1960s. As any railway man of that era would know, this was the bottom rung of the promotional ladder that led eventually to being a locomotive engine driver, but by the time Groome became a driver, steam had given way to diesels and electrics. Concerned that the mind-deadening monotony of driving an electric commuter train could jeopardise the safety of both driver and passengers, and frustrated by increasing management interference, Groome left the industry, forming his own consultancy, which trained would-be locomotive drivers in 'footplate lore'. He provided training and refresher courses to drivers employed by British Rail and its privatised successors, even running courses for 'middle and senior managers [of many companies], on team-building based on the cooperative relationship of footplate legend' (pp. 1–2). The story exemplifies some themes of this excellent study – change, its cost, and ultimately adaptation – in the context of British rail from post-World War II to the present day. |
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Strangleman establishes the context of British Rail's move from nationalisation to privatisation; then he discusses the development of a 'railway culture', before examining the pros and cons of nationalisation, the trends to 'commercialisation and privatisation' following Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979, the 'brave new world' of the privatised railway that emerged up to 2001, and lastly a reflection on 'nostalgia for nationalisation'. Unlike in Australia, where private railways were in a minority, compared with the vast mileage of rail funded and run by colonial/State governments, private railway companies flourished in Britain for over a century (1830–1947). Yet, as Strangleman shows, 'state intervention' already existed: the construction and operation of each line required parliamentary approval, and legislation was passed preventing companies 'from exploiting a de facto monopoly where there was no effective competition', including preventing companies from merging with one another in the late nineteenth century. The State also regulated working hours and safety devices. Lastly, it backed the concentration of railways post World War I, when some 120 companies were grouped into four regionally-based companies: Great Western Railway, Southern Railway, London Midland and Scottish Railway, and London North Eastern Railway (pp. 17–18). |
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With regard to railway nationalisation, Strangleman asks, 'to what extent did fundamental change really occur' when the four large private rail companies were merged to form British Railways [BR], itself part of a larger organisation, the British Transport Commission [BTC]? Many of the new BR senior management, who were simply transferred from the private companies, had been hostile to nationalisation. For example, the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, appointed Eustace Missenden as Chair of the Rail Executive, despite his connections with the Conservative Party (pp. 44–46). Consequently, there was not a radical shift in the culture of the leadership. Indeed, Strangleman argues (p. 50), that 'becoming a "railwayman"' was as fundamental to management as it was to 'drivers, guards or signal workers'. |
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Secondly, BR started and continued on a poor financial footing. The government went into debt to generously compensate former shareholders, a financially disastrous decision. Furthermore, the government was committed to providing an affordable public service, rather than a making a profit. Subsidies to cover the costs of uneconomic services created further debts (p. 48). |
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Initially, however, the railway rank and file and some social commentators saw nationalisation as an extremely positive and progressive step. Strangleman quotes a number of sources, including railwaymen and the historian, Norman McKillop, to demonstrate the feelings of optimism that abounded around 1950, with some workers anticipating a raise in pay and improved conditions. Yet, the decline of the rail industry had already begun. The period 1848–79, Strangleman argues, far from becoming a new golden age of rail, saw 'wholesale rationalisation and closure, massive job reduction and a decline in the collective status of railway employment both for the workforce itself ... [and] outside commentators' (pp. 102–3). Not only was this the end of the steam era – which in itself spawned a nostalgic perception that drivers suffered a 'loss of respect' with the advent of dieselisation (eg pp. 96–7) – but it was also the end of the era of permanency of occupation. The decline was largely blamed on nationalisation and the reduced 'calibre' of the railway worker – the latter linked with the introduction to Britain of 'non-white New Commonwealth labour' (p. 88) – rather than, Strangleman suggests, the economic circumstances and profit-seeking attitudes that resulted in the drastic rail closures of the 'Beeching era' (1961–65). |
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The last three chapters consider the return to privatisation post 1979 and its outcomes. Margaret Thatcher claimed that 'to be nationalised ... was an industry's admission of failure' (p. 110), while some of her Conservative colleagues very readily laid the blame for all of BR's ills at the feet of workers and their unions. The 1980s saw a strong management emphasis on 'productivity', which included the introduction of a flexible rostering system of shifts ranging from seven to nine hours in duration that threatened the guaranteed eight-hour day of drivers. The Associated Society of Locomotive Steam Enginemen and Firemen (ASLEF) claimed victory in this dispute, but management asserted that adhering to the eight-hour day was 'an anachronistic barrier to modern practices' (p. 112; my emphasis). Nevertheless, the Thatcher government initially rejected railway privatisation, and it was only after the passing of the Railways Act 1993, that denationalisation occurred (pp. 116 ff). By 1 May 1997, when Labour returned to government, the whole of BR had been sold off to private companies. |
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Privatisation introduced a major culture change during the 1990s, partly instigated by a mass exodus of senior staff, with possibly some 40,000 redundancies occurring. According to Strangleman, major consequences of the workforce being almost halved included: rationalisation and fragmentation of work, loss of skills and training, lost contracts, a decline in safety standards as evidenced by several fatal rail crashes, and a wholesale abandonment of the 'railway culture' shared by blue and white collar workers prior to this period (pp. 139 ff). Strangleman concludes (p. 170) that privatisation has been 'a costly failure' because the industry still requires a massive public subsidy, and funding is now even more 'wasteful' than under nationalisation. |
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| Curtin University of Technology |
BOBBIE OLIVER | |
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