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British Bus Story The Sixties Turbulent Times by Alan Townsin Hard Cover
The British Bus Story - The Sixties - Turbulent Times by Alan Townsin
Hard Cover
96 pages
Copyright 1985
CONTENTS
Introduction 4
1. A deceptive calm 6
2. Traffic in towns, none in the country 12
3. Cutting the overheads15
4. A political upheaval19
5. Aftermath of the Act24
6. Manoeuvrings among the manufacturers32
7. High hopes for the single-decker37
8. The double-decker at bay52
9. The one-man double-decker66
10. A change of role for coaches 75
11. Bodybuilders - retreat from the south-east80
12. A framework for change89
Index94
Bibliography and acknowledgements96
INTRODUCTION
There is a distinct pattern of upheaval which has occurred every other decade in the British bus industry. Thus the late 'forties, the late 'sixties and, it seems, the mid to late 'eighties are seen as times of change, largely of a politically- inspired nature. Nationalisation is perhaps the word that best sums up what the trend was in both the 'forties and 'sixties, though in neither case was it carried through to the extent or in the manner widely expected at the outset.
Now, 20 years or so later, the process is being reversed, a fact which makes renewed study of what happened in the mid and later 'sixties particularly topical. It sometimes seems almost like looking in a mirror.
In fact, the seeds of some form of revolution were already being carried by the wind of change which I used as the title of the previous volume in this series. The vicious circle of falling traffic, higher costs and hence higher fares, worsening service and thus an even greater fall in traffic had been turning long enough to have done appreciable damage by the beginning of the 'sixties. The usual answer to a fall in competitive ability, improved productivity, was largely ruled out for the bus industry. Indeed, services were often getting slower as the increased use of cars which had drawn passengers from public transport created more congestion and delay for the buses and hence the passengers who remained.
One of the few measures that could be taken was the wider adoption of one-man operation (there was no reference in those days to 'one-person' operation) which, in theory, could cut the numbers of road staff by half and costs by something approaching that. At the end of the 'fifties o-m-o it was common, though by no means universal, on single-deck services, but the trade unions were resisting its extension.
Quite apart from the incoming Labour Government's intention of continuing where its predecessor of the same political colour had had to leave off in 1951, there was a sense of gathering crisis by the mid2sixties. If one form of radical solution had not been proposed by the redoubtable Mrs Barbara Castle, in what was to be the Transport Act of 1968, it seems inevitable that urgent steps of some form would have had to be taken by a Minister of Transport of any persuasion.
Indeed, looking back, it is noteworthy how one-man operation became an essential part of the new order; provision for o-m-o was to be a requirement on any bus eligible for the new bus grant, for example. This at least began to provide means of relieving the growing staff shortages caused by road staff departing for more lucrative employment. The more enlightened trade union leaders also saw it as a way of improving drivers' pay, though the deals struck cut severely into the operating savings that had been hoped for, while ill-thought-out drivers' hours changes worsened the staff shortage problem again.
Costs were also to rise as a result of the greater complexity of the buses required and much had to be learned on the need to adopt different maintenance methods. Fleet engineers had to contend with remarkable swings in vehicle policy. At one period it seemed that the one-man- operated single-decker would largely supplant the double-decker, even in cities, yet only a couple of years later the latter was once again set to maintain its dominant position.
The main manufacturers were slow to respond to these fast-moving changes, perhaps because they were preoccupied by the succession of mergers which transformed the manufacturing industry. At the beginning of the decade, the main British bus makers were only marginally connected with the car industry as well as having virtually no connection with each other. Before the end, there was almost a monopoly among bus-builders, linked in what was later to prove a near-fatal way to a car industry rapidly slipping into serious financial trouble.
The coach industry, both operating and manufacturing, followed a slightly different course. It was not so directly involved in the political changes, though the original intention was undoubtedly one of virtual strangulation of express services, and the spread of motorways enabled far more ambitious trips to be undertaken. Almost unnoticed by the politicians, it was laying the foundation of later expansion. The main manufacturers involved at that date had not been so much involved in the merger-mania, though the days of dominance of the lightweight coach were dwindling under the tougher operating conditions of fast long-distance journeys.
Overall, the 'sixties were a remarkable decade. At the end, there were new and strange-seeming names on the buses in and around Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but this was the only visible tip of an iceberg of change that put all but a small proportion of buses into public ownership of one form or another. If the more visible changes were to become evident in the 'seventies, this book is intended to explain how deeply the decisions of the 'sixties had gone.
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