THE ‘BIG FOUR’ FUDGE

The ‘Big Four’ was the name used to describe the country’s four largest railway companies that were created on January 1, 1923 and lasted until full scale rail nationalisation in 1947. These were the Great Western Railway (GWR), London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), Southern Railway (SR) covering much of the rail network which had grown to almost 20,000 miles of track. This reorganisation has often been viewed as a classic British ‘fudge’, designed to pre-empt growing calls for state ownership, not least from the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), while ensuring ongoing dividends for shareholders, despite initial hostility to the plan. The railways had been taken into government control at the outbreak of World War One but were returned to the original owners in 1921, three years after the war had ended. Despite the trauma of the First World War, which had created staff, locomotive and rolling stock shortages, many of the largest companies were financially healthy, unlike the exhausted ‘Big Four’ after World War Two. This was because when the railways came under state control in 1914 it was managed by the Railway Executive Committee which was made up of leading general railway managers. One of its first acts was to guarantee revenues for shareholders at 1913 levels, a very successful year, with no mention of how rail workers or rail infrastructure would fair for the duration of the conflict. NUR general secretary James Henry Thomas, a serving MP for Derby, raised this “one-side arrangement” in the House of Commons but was brushed aside directly by the Liberal Prime Minister Asquith. As a result, the NUR spent the war fighting for wages to keep up with rampant inflation. The war also saw the growing influence of District Councils and Vigilance Committees made up of men and increasingly women, who had been accepted into membership in 1915, angry at rampant profiteering. An NUR Special General Meeting (SGM) in November 1917 in Leicester discussed ‘After War Matters’ and drew up a national programme for the post-war period including rail nationalisation which was presented to the government at the end of hostilities. This was initially received favourably leaving the RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2023 :: RMTnews 22 THE ‘BIG FOUR’ FUDGE One hundred years ago over 120 railway companies were merged into four new entities to avert nationalisation ANTI-UNION: Tory leader Andrew Bonar Law blocked railway nationalisation and was part of the aggressively anti-trade union coalition government led by Liberal leader Lloyd George that tried to slash rail workers’ wages which led to the great railway strike of 1919.