CLEANSING BR
THE reform of British Rail, and of Bri- tain's other publicly owned industries, is a labour of Hercules, perhaps most closely comparable to the cleansing of the Augean stables. The stables of Augeas, King of Elis, had not been mucked out for 30 years. So too with the railways, though Dr Beeching had a go, reduced the size of the problem by destroying much of the net- work, and was vilified for, his pains. Des- truction is certainly very far from being the ideal solution to British Rail's difficulties. We should much prefer to have an efficient and profitable railway, which travellers needed no bribe, or subsidy, to use, and which railwaymen could take pride in operating. But the railwaymen, or at least their leaders, are not remotely willing to accept any of the changes needed to approach this admittedly ambitious goal. Doubtless the management has failed to persuade them of the desirability of mak- ing their industry pay. In the subsidised steel and coal industries there was a similar failure on the part of the management. As a result, those industries have recently undergone long strikes. During the strikes the country discovered that though it is expensive and inconvenient for steel works and mines to stand idle, it is not unaccept- ably so. The country will come to the same conclusion about the railways: we can, for the most part, live without them. Ideas which until recently seemed the delusions of vandalistic cranks, such as the scheme propounded by Sir Alfred Sherman to concrete over the tracks (about which we printed a letter last week), will begin to seem less cranky. The Prime Minister's aversion to rail travel will start to appear prudent. Dr Beeching's reputation will begin to undergo posthumous rehabilita- tion. Even the scribbling classes, who like trains, both because you can read and write on them (imitating the hard-working Trol- lope, who wrote novels on trains) and because the poorer scribblers do not have cars, will turn against railways, recognising, the uselessness of rails without trains. But we greatly doubt whether Mr Knapp be- lieves in these dangers. If his industry resembles the Augean stables, he is the Nemean lion. Its skin was so tough that Hercules' club made no impression. So Hercules squeezed the lion to death in- stead: and squeezed, for want of unlimited sums of public money, will Mr Knapp be also.
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