You've had a revolution.” President Truman told George VI. “Oh no, we don't have those here.” replied the King. Railways might not have been uppermost in the minds of either of these heads of state in July 1945, but the new Government about to be formed at Westminster was committed by its manifesto to the public ownership of ‘the means of production, distribution and exchange’. While the existing ‘Big Four’ railway companies (Great Western, Southern, London Midland & Scottish and London & North Eastern) were not slow to mount a propaganda campaign stressing how important their independence was to them, Labour's huge overall majority in Parliament suggested that the general public did not share that view. Or did it? Perhaps the Parliamentary majority of 146 was a false indicator of the voters’ wishes. Polling data, both then and later, signalled that the public's priorities lay elsewhere and that a People's Railway was not one of them.
Unlike two previous Labour administrations, this one would govern with a substantial, in fact overwhelming, Commons majority. Its commitment to public ownership encompassed a wide range of enterprises and utilities, from the Bank of England to Thomas Cook's Travel Agency, all about to become national assets. Obviously, this included transport; for the first time, Britain's railways would be run for the benefit of the public, with no dividends for shareholders. The railways were soon to join docks and canals, inshore shipping, bus and haulage services and railway hotels, in a body to be known as the British Transport Commission (BTC). Not the least of the changes to be brought about concerned the status of railway employees. No longer would they be categorised as ‘railway servants’ but as employees of this new People's Railway. After all, railwaymen and women were ‘people’ too.
The UK had been one of the few major nations without a state-owned railway network in 1947; almost all major Continental countries had nationalised systems, while there were a few with a mixture of publicly-owned lines and examples of private enterprise. The biggest international exception was, of course, the United States, with its plethora of commercial companies, while Canada had both public and privat networks. Britain's railway was going to be entirely publicly-owned, the Labour manifesto being quite explicit about this – and causing considerable nervousness even among many of the party's leaders, former Transport Minister Herbert Morrison in particular, who feared that their programme was too extreme for many of their supporters. To a certain extent Morrison would be proved correct; a desire for public ownership proved not to be the principal reason people voted Labour in 1945, as subsequent Gallup polling would confirm. It would be safer to say that Labour's policy of nationalisation did not actually deter voters, who were more focused on the need for increased social measures, such as implementing the best-selling Beveridge Report and welcoming the free health service promised by Labour. Five years later, a Conservative manifesto promising ‘to stop nationalisation here and now’ very nearly brought about the complete loss of the Government's majority. So public ownership was not that close to voters’ hearts.
‘British Railways’ was born as a brand on Trafalgar Day 1947. That's according to the official archives, but nobody seems to have told staff at the nation's great stations; when members of the public phoned for timetable information some ten weeks later on New Year's Day 1948 – the first day of the nationalised railway system called British Railways – the telephonists answered ‘Railway Executive’.
Three months after the first meeting of the BTC, which took place on 13th August, announced on 27th November 1947 that “On January 1, 1948, the railways will pass into the ownership of the British Transport Commission. They will become ‘British
