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'Dick' Beeching, as he was known in the family and by his closest friends and associates, was the second of four brothers and he was born in a small terraced house in Sheerness in the Isle of Sheppey in April 1913. His father was a journalist with the Kent Messenger, his mother a schoolteacher, his maternal grandfather a dockyard worker. Shortly after Dick was born, the family moved to a slightly larger house in Maidstone, with a few feet of garden at the front, where Kenneth, who was killed in the last war, and John were born. All four boys went to the nearby Church of England School, All Saints, and, with the aid of scholarships, to Maidstone Grammar School whence Geoffrey, the eldest and Dick went on to the Imperial College of Science & Technology in London where they earned 1st class degrees in physics while the younger brothers equally distinguished themselves at Downing College, Cambridge. In the 1930s, one can understand only too well the sacrifice that had to be made by parents to support such ability, for money was very tight indeed but all four sons understood and deeply appreciated what was being done for them.
At the Grammar School three of the boys were cricketers, loved the game and played in the 1st XI. Not so Dick, he was just not interested; indeed it was a nine days wonder if he connected with the ball at all! He preferred to be out in the country, walking and talking with a friend. This was a characteristic that never left him for he always had a liking for discussion, either singly or in small groups. Nevertheless, he became a prefect, dominant in a quiet and thoughtful way but one that was not necessarily popular with boys who admired 'swashbuckle' and the charismatic leadership of the games player.
Beeching stayed on at Imperial College and gained his PhD (London) for research under Sir George Thomson. He continued in research until 1943, first at the Fuel Research Station in Greenwich and then at the Mond Nickel Laboratories in Birmingham where he was senior physicist concerned with a combination of physics, metallurgy and mechanical engineering. By 1938 he was becoming relatively affluent and married Ella Tiley, setting up home in Solihull. They had known each other from their schooldays and, although they did not have any children, they made up for it in many other ways. Ella complemented her husband perfectly, enjoying to the full the social life that came their way in later years and enabling him to relax at home. They had 46 immensely happy years together.
Although as a young man Dick is remembered as quiet but brilliant, though with a sense of fun and humour.
In the middle of 1942, at the height of the war, a committee under Sir Henry Guy recommended a recasting of the Ministry of Supply's Armament Design and Research Departments for the three fighting Services. Until then, design had depended on a design office staffed entirely by civil servants with management at all levels by officers from the Services, with the Head of the Department selected from each in rotation. Following the report, the management was now to be opened to civilians and service officers alike.
The first step was the appointment of F. E. Smith as Superintendent and Chief Engineer of Armament Design (CEAD). He had been a gunnery officer in World War 1 and as Chief Engineer of the Billingham Division of ICI he had already been closely involved with the war effort. When rearmament started in 1937, he was responsible for the design and building of government factories to make basic chemicals for explosives and for the production of high octane aviation petrol. In 1941 he was involved with the development of the Blacker Bombard (an anti-tank weapon for the Home Guard), and in March 1942 with the design and production of a shoulder weapon and projectile capable of penetrating 4in of tank armour (the PIAT). [This PIAT weapon was, according to one WWII infantryman whose life depended on it, useless against all but the smallest German tanks - ed.] Smith was, therefore, already known to Adm. Sir Harold Brown, the Chief Supply Officer of the Ministry of Supply, who had knowledge of the type of work involved.
Smith quickly appointed a number of highly qualified and experienced people from ICI and asked his friends in industry for further candidates. Among these, Dr Sykes of Firth Brown recommended a Dr Beeching, then aged 29. He was interviewed and engaged, and thus began a close understanding relationship which continued until he became involved with the railways.
Beeching was appointed to the Shell Design Section, which was short of people with a knowledge of physics and metallurgy. His rank was equivalent to that of an Army Captain, but he quickly showed his ability to analyse, fundamentally, problems of the most varied type. Soon after Smith took over as CEAD, he introduced a system for assessing, every six months, the relative abilities of the entire staff of the Drawing Office and, shortly after, a rather fuller approach to all the officer grades, civilians and Service officers. These appraisals covered both the technical and managerial aspects of the work and Beeching was always among those heading the list.
At the end of the war, Smith returned to ICI as Technical Director and was replaced as CEAD by Cdr Steuart Mitchell RN (who had been Head of the Gun Design Section) with Beeching as his deputy. Beeching continued his analytical work over a wider field, including AA guns and small arms, with striking results, some of which are only now, in the 1980s, being adopted; for example, the reduction by some 30% in calibre of standard small arms.
Beeching's promotion, at the age of 33, to the post of Deputy Chief Engineer with a rank equivalent to that of a Brigadier was the remarkable appointment of an emerging and very remarkable man. The Armament Design Establishment was staffed by professional engineers but it must be remembered that Beeching was a physicist, not an engineer, and his impact at senior level on these very experienced and rather hard-boiled practical engineers was fascinating.
Beeching refused absolutely to accept a Service demand for any weapon design that sprang from tradition. His physicist's mind fearlessly questioned and probed the fundamentals and paid little attention to custom and tradition. At first his appointment was rather ridiculed, but the ridicule changed first to sheer awe, then to fascination and finally to great enthusiasm for the approach to engineering problems of a physicist with a very great intellect. These, in fact, are largely the words of Sir Steuart Mitchell, his chief, who could understand his brilliance as a thinker, a planner and a man who delighted in solving the near impossible.
Mitchell and Beeching were to achieve a great rapport, to be renewed years later when Beeching asked his former chief, recently retired, to join him at Marylebone to reorganise the railway workshops. The two men had one perennial argument which caused a great deal of amusement to others then and in later years. Beeching was completely sold on Einstein's distortion of time and the Theory of Relativity. Mitchell, small, wiry and tough, had been a midshipman in the Grand Fleet in 1918, ultimately becoming a gunnery expert and Inspector of Naval Ordnance, and was an intensely practical man. For this particular purpose, he knew little of Einstein and cared less, so that Beeching's arguments were countered by a derision and dogmatism that effectively undermined the normal bland calmness, discussion and dissection to produce heated, fierce and involved argument that got the good Doctor absolutely nowhere at all! After years of fruitless endeavour, he was forced to admit that there might just be some small element of doubt.
In 1948, Beeching joined ICI as Personal Technical Assistant to his old chief, now Sir Ewart Smith and who was Technical Director on the Main Board. Beeching was in this post for about 18 months and during this time was mainly concerned with analysing the size and type of orders in relation to production lines for products as diverse as paints, leathercloth and zip fasteners, in conjunction with the Divisional staff involved. These analyses led to a significant reduction in production costs. In addition, he helped to improve the system of rail transport of raw or finished materials in bulk. During this period Beeching was moved about to jobs of increasing importance, mostly of an analytical kind, but he always preferred to work on his own, and opted not to appoint staff to be trained in his methods. After this introduction to the company's activities and organisation, he was transferred to the Fibre Division for Terylene production and in 1953 was sent to Canada to take overall responsibility for the construction and operation of a Terylene plant in Ontario.
He was now 40, and his team of engineers and managers found him quiet but determined and utterly brilliant. One of this team was the Resident Engineer, Leslie Norfolk, who remained a friend for the rest of Beeching's life and found him absolutely straight, absolutely honest and very amusing, though at times pretty sardonic, gently smiling in matters of importance and capable of being relentless in an extremely firm but civil manner. In close business association he did not always inspire affection of a personal nature. Nevertheless, however developed the mutual understanding and warmth might be, if the subordinate let him down, he was for the high jump. Beeching had become a great delegator: he would say precisely what he required but did not tell people how to do it. But if the man to whom he had delegated a job did not measure up, he would want to know why and, if the reasons were entirely within the control of the individual, Beeching would take the hard decision without hesitation. And if he made a mistake - and this was rare - he would never duck from under, always taking the full responsibility.
In Canada he would chair meetings of his team who, after the manner of engineers and managers, would have their say, all of them forcefully, all of them convinced they were right, all basically in disagreement. Beeching would sit there, smoking a pipe, silent, unmoving, listening, maybe twinkling gently and would then, at the appropriate moment, call a halt. 'Right, gentlemen, we are going to do it this way...'. And that was that, no further argument. But his view was never a consensus, rather a product of his mind which rarely coincided with any of the views expressed. The trouble was that he was almost always right!
Leslie Norfolk would go to him with a serious difficulty and Beeching would listen with care. He would then reply with a smile: 'You've certainly got problems, Leslie, good day!' or maybe, 'Right, let's allow events to unfold'. Instant management was not his forte, and he rarely wanted an immediate solution to a problem. He knew that his staff were competent people, each responsible in his own field, and if there was no obvious route forward he would take the decision as he saw it. It was this and other great qualities that inspired loyalty and affection and his basic strength was that, given suitable technical backing and provided he had the facts, he was prepared to take a risk, however unorthodox and controversial.
On his return to England in 1955, he became Chairman of the Metals Division on Sir Ewart Smith's recommendation. He was by no means universally welcomed, but those who worked with him quickly recognised a talent that was particularly needed in what had become a rather traditional Division and who came to regard his performance as Chairman as a great stimulus. And so, within two years, in 1957 he was made Technical Director on the main ICI Board and to relieve Sir Ewart Smith who had also been a deputy Chairman since 1954. His analytical powers had become more formidable than ever and, in a lifetime of experience, Sir Ewart had never found anybody to touch him in this respect. But he was not necessarily the supreme manager for he had not yet been truly exposed to the industrial rough and tumble; nor had he, in his most senior positions in ICI, discovered and brought on many young men. His predecessor as Technical Director was outstanding in this capacity, so that comparison was not easy. It can fairly be said, therefore, that the development and management of people.
Yet again, in 1960, fate was to intervene. Sir Ewart Smith, who had retired in 1959, was asked by Ernest Marples to serve on the Stedeford group to consider the parlous loss-making condition of the British Transport Commission. Sir Ewart declined, being fully occupied with other matters but, understanding Beeching so very well, strongly recommended him with his great ability to analyse problems of this kind.
Beeching impressed Stedeford and all those closely involved with his analytical examination of witnesses, time and again asking the crucial questions and gaining a mastery of the subject in an extraordinarily short time. But whereas on the Royal Commission on Quarter Sessions and Assizes he was Chairman and held a commanding position, in the Stedeford group he had to use his great powers of persuasion to get the group to conclude a report based on his thinking. At the same time, Ernest Marples, faced with a desperate situation and being a man of action, saw at once that Beeching was a potential chairman big enough to solve the problems of the railway and to prescribe the remedy.
On 15 March 1961 Ernest Marples announced in the House of Commons that Beeching would be the first Chairman of the British Railways Board from 1 June. The Board was the successor to the British Transport Commission, which was broken up by the Transport Act 1962. Beeching would receive the same yearly salary that he was earning at ICI, the controversial sum of £24,000 (over £490,000 in 2016 currency), £10,000 more than Sir Brian Robertson, the last chairman of the British Transport Commission, £14,000 more than Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and two-and-a-half times higher than the salary of any head of a nationalised industry at the time. Beeching was given a leave of absence for five years by ICI in order to carry out this task.
At that time the Government was seeking outside talent to sort out the huge problems of the railway network. There was widespread concern at the time that, despite substantial investment in the 1955 Modernisation Plan, the railways continued to haemorrhage losses - from £15.6m in 1956 to £42m in 1960. Passenger and goods traffic was also declining in the face of increased competition from the roads; by 1960, one in nine families owned a car. It would be Beeching's task to find a way of returning the industry to profitability as soon as possible.
