The Power of Railways.
‘There’s a train coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord’
Railways are empire builders, city builders and people assemblers. Once electrified, with power from carbon neutral sources, they are the ultimate green transport: no CO2 emissions, no diesel particulates, no pollution from rubber tyre particles and, with regenerative braking, little brake dust. They are still growing across the world, especially in China which has built more than 28,000 miles of new high-speed railways. As Curtis Mayfield’s great song attests, railways bring people together and change their lives.
In 2011 Government considered a review of potential World Heritage Sites, including the Liverpool and Manchester railway terminal in Manchester. The proposal was not successful, but the Review concluded, correctly, that from the launch of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway there was universal recognition of the benefits of the railway:
‘The railway was to become the single most important technological, social and economic force that shaped the nineteenth century, global in its impact and in the advantages it conferred on humankind. The railway unified the markets of the world, spanned continents and forged nations. It became the first form of transport accessible to the common people… the evolution of land transport from its pre-industrial form into the era of cheap mass transport for people and goods was the key to worldwide industrialisation and urbanisation’.
The Liverpool and Manchester’s opening on 15 September 1830 was an astonishingly international event, hosting a grouping of European aristocrats not seen since the Congress of Vienna. They mixed with their British counterparts, including the First Duke of Wellington, four future Prime Ministers and Sir Henry Brougham, later to become the Lord Chancellor. There were six Earls, two Marquises, and six Viscounts, as well as celebrities like the actress Fanny Kemble and the computer pioneer Charles Babbage.
From Russia came Count Pavel Nikolaievich Demidov, owner of extensive mines and iron works, as well as Yefim and Miron Cherepanov, two engineers who were common serfs, and later came to study the railway in depth. From Hungary came Count Lajos Batthyany do Nemetujvar, a future Prime Minister. From the USA came Francis Barber Ogden, the US Consul in Liverpool. All were welcomed with Handel’s chorus ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’.
Amongst the working people there was surely a large contingent from overseas. Some labourers on the railway came from the local area, but many more were from Ireland. Gangs of Irish navvies had first come to Britain to build canals and docks. Many would later emigrate to America to work on the Baltimore and Ohio, one of the early railways. A contemporary witness saw them as:
‘The finest workmen in Europe, who dig out twenty-five yards of heavy clay a day… these dissolute men exert themselves so violently in their work that I have seen many powerful muscular men with blood oozing out of their eyes and nostrils’.
There is a darker side to this story. The railway’s main cargo was cotton, taking bales of raw cotton to Manchester for spinning and weaving, and returning finished cotton cloth to be exported throughout the world. Those who worked long hours in the Manchester mills (including children) were paid a pittance, living in squalid and polluted surroundings. The cotton itself was produced in America by slave labour.
The imperialist connection explains the very high construction quality of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. In its now electrified form, the railway is in intensive use today, carrying trains of much greater weight and providing a journey time of a little over 30 minutes between the two cities, on a straight and level formation otherwise seen only in new high-speed railways. It is by far the most direct and fastest route between the two cities (any new line would have a longer journey time). The Liverpool and Manchester cost £19,355 for each mile of construction. This was twice the cost per mile of the Baltimore to Ohio and twelve times the cost of the Charleston to Hamburg, both in America. In large part this reflected the sheer wealth of the Liverpool promoters, who had been enriched by colonial riches and the slave trade. John Gladstone, one member of the railway’s provisional committee, owned 2,508 slaves. Others made money from trading rather than owning slaves.
It was not a one-sided story. Henry Booth, the railway’s key promoter, was opposed to the slave trade. The railway technology itself (and the key engineers responsible) came from the North East of England, a region which owed its wealth and its engineering prowess to coal mining. The evidence shows that there were few, if any, slave holders in the North East.
We can celebrate achievement as we expose the past. This was simply a profound technological breakthrough. Danny Boyle’s memorable opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics paid tribute to the eclectic symbols of Britain’s creative achievement: the boat race, punk rock, maypoles, Edward Elgar, village greens, cricket, William Shakespeare and the National Health Service. Pride of place was given to one great phenomenon, with the village green set transformed into industrial Britain, maypoles replaced by towering smoking chimneys, villagers replaced by the toiling urban masses, starring Kenneth Branagh as the railway engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Britain’s industrial society, with railways to the forefront, changed the world. It was forged in large part not by elites and experts, but by ordinary people in ordinary provincial places. The opening of the railway in 1830 was rightly the cause of international pride and celebration. The celebration of its bicentenary in 2030 can be just as remarkable and just as proud.
