Was using the name Oliver Cromwell on a loco controversial at the time?

[Ian Hargrave]

23 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

 

 

Great shot of the Crewe roof garden.Monty Don would be pleased 

[melmerby]

47 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

Don't think there has ever been a Loco named Beeching?

Don't blame Beeching, he was only doing what road builder Marples payed him to do (as Minister of Transport)

[Ian Hargrave]

1 hour ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Considering some historians portray him as a tyrant.

 

im focused more on the name deciding/decision process and the reaction to the name.

To traffic 1951…the Festival Of Britain…a time of celebration of life beginning to return to normal post war. I copped Oliver at Liverpool Street at the same time as Alfred the Great at Waterloo. There was no reaction and why would there be.Most of the population of the UK was historically and politically unaware.The Britannias were a symbol of the regeneration of the nation after the war and consequent austerity. No mass media and patchy TV coverage.

It is difficult now to have any concept of life in the early 1950’s.

[009 micro modeller]

57 minutes ago, Mark Saunders said:

Your trying to judge yesterday by the revisionist standards of today!

 

The country was not long out of the war and was still rebuilding at the time and yesterdays heroes are todays monsters.

Is this really relevant in this case though? Cromwell was already very far back in history when the locomotive was named after him, and I’m not sure that the perception of him today is that different from in the 1950s, or a lot more controversial (compared to often more recent historical figures whose legacy/reputation has become more questionable or controversial). The only particularly political aspect that I’ve ever associated with 70013 is that it was built new for a relatively recently nationalised railway, and that therefore there might have been an idea about government control on behalf of the people, or something like that, behind the choice of name (I know the logic of that doesn’t necessarily quite work, but still).

 

I think there’s a 15” gauge diesel also called Cromwell, but I can’t remember where it runs now (and it’s just the surname, so could equally be named for Thomas Cromwell).

 

36 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

 

 

As a class 47, is it named ‘Beeching’s Legacy’ because of an association with modern containerised rail freight? That strikes me as something more positive about his work that you might want to commemorate.

 

55 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

Depends on one's viewpoint - King Richard 1 led the English knights on the Crusades against the Muslims. 

Actually, that reminds me that following the Gresley duck controversy a few years ago they could have equally picked 60108 to inspire the accompanying statue. Or 60099… (And yes I know they’re racehorse names.)

 

If you think about it, there is a similar statue at Paddington with links to an appropriate locomotive name. The statue of Paddington Bear is obviously there because that’s where he’s first found in the book, but he is also a Great Bear, possibly one of the greatest literary bears of all time, and thus the statue could also be said to commemorate the only  GWR Pacific loco.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

If you think about it, there is a similar statue at Paddington with links to an appropriate locomotive name. The statue of Paddington Bear is obviously there because that’s where he’s first found in the book, but he is also a Great Bear, possibly one of the greatest literary bears of all time, and thus the statue could also be said to commemorate the only  GWR Pacific loco.

 

Pooh!

[Olive_Green1923]

On 18/04/2024 at 18:22, Jeremy Cumberland said:

 

I don't know that Oliver Cromwell has ever been actively disliked or disapporved of by the estabishment.

Apparently he has, right from the top, according to some sources.

 

Queen Elizabeth II is known to have blocked a set of commemorative stamps because he was on one of them.

 

At the Admiralty, Churchill wanted to name a battleship after him, but it was vetoed by the King.

 

And at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge (Cromwell’s Alma Mater), there is a painting of him which is hidden by curtains if a Royal visits the college.

These facts were unknown to me until recently (as a relative novice on all things Monarchy), but Iain Dale’s recent Kings & Queens book (and accompanying podcast) is very good for giving succinct explanations of the life and legacy of each monarch. The quirk, of course, is that it includes both the Cromwells, despite them not being “monarchs”.

Edited April 20 by Olive_Green1923

[Olive_Green1923]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Don't blame Beeching, he was only doing what road builder Marples payed him to do (as Minister of Transport)

It’s amazing how many political scandals get poured over in such finite detail, leading to various books, articles, TV dramas or passing references in society, yet the scandal of Marples is little known or ever discussed, yet it led to one of the biggest acts of self harm ever committed on this country, yet Beeching always carries the can for it (not completely unjustifiably though).

[PhilH]

To look at it from another angle I wouldn’t be surprised if any bored individual these days with time on their hands and access to the internet can find skeletons in the cupboard of any individual or organisation locomotives are named after. Just a shame that all their latent intellect isn’t put to better use.

 

So when you see ‘Crewe Signal Box 1938-2016’ or whatever on the side of some dirty diesel somewhere you can bet there were some nefarious goings on in that establishment….

Edited April 18 by PhilH

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Ian Hargrave said:

It is difficult now to have any concept of life in the early 1950’s.

I can. I had a ration book.☹️

Coal (on ration) was just black dust.

Many things were in short supply, even when not rationed.

etc. etc.

[bécasse]

19 minutes ago, Olive_Green1923 said:

It’s amazing how many political scandals get poured over in such finite detail, leading to various books, articles, TV dramas or passing references in society, yet the scandal of Marples is little known or ever discussed, yet it led to one of the biggest acts of self harm ever committed on this country, yet Beeching always carries the can for it (not completely unjustifiably though).

In 1964 I worked as a vacation student at a Consulting Engineers based in Westminster (as many were at the time). They specialised in work associated with road traffic, indeed I was taken on to help with traffic counts, and their two major clients were the Greater London Council and the Department of Transport. I was therefore somewhat puzzled by continued comments from engineers to the effect that they were just popping over to Marples Ridgeway for a couple of hours to discuss something they were working on. Eventually the penny dropped and I realised that they were actually heading to the DoT in Marsham Street which they thought of as being a branch office of Marples Ridgeway. Interestingly, the lads weren't a bunch of radicals and probably some at least voted Conservative, and yet they clearly considered the DoT to be furthering the commercial interests of its Minister. Once his moral values became public knowledge it is clear that they were right.

[Morello Cherry]

TBH - I don't think that it was seen as at all controversial. The Britannia names are a mix of things - people, places, things.

 

The choice of names is far less political than say the choices of names made during WW1 ie Czar of Russia. And let's not forget that the LNWR had Napoleon running around for a while.

 

There was a big thing for pagents around this time - just looking at the programme where I live from the 1950s it includes a scene about the civil war and another scene about the Monmouth rebellion, the general drive was the long arc narrative of historical continuity - hence why you get Boudica through to C20 figures in what is effectively the 'celebrate Britain class'.

 

I'd also suggest that there was actually after 1945 (potentially reflect a broader shift left in UK politics) away from naming things after members of the royal family. Pre-1939 you couldn't move for engines named after obscure members of the aristocracy. There was no loco named after Elizabeth II. I tend to think that the first post-1945 loco to be named after a member of the aristocracy is probably 47712 in 1981 and then 47541 in 1982.

 

I'd also suggest that the positive view of Cromwell in the war and post-war period is more connected to parliamentarianism in the context of opposition authoritarianism, and a narrative of Britain not slipping into dictatorship in the interwar period when many other states did. ie Cromwell as a defender of parliament, creator of the new model army etc etc is seen as a good thing in this period, and less seen as a regicide, genocide in Ireland etc etc

 

I'd suggest that in 1951 there was probably far more public hostility to the person after whom 70044 was named than to 70013.

 

I'd also add that there is this bizarre idea that only in recent years have people started finding historical figures controversial - pretty much all three Edwards I, II and III have been controversial for several hundred years. Edward II since the last 1500s. Various Henrys, Johns, Richards and Georges have been subject to criticism at the time and subsequently. I find it hard to imagine that any schoolchild of the 1930s would not have known about John II and the Wash etc etc

 

2 hours ago, Olive_Green1923 said:

Indeed he has, right from the top.

 

Queen Elizabeth II is known to have blocked a set of commemorative stamps because he was on one of them.

 

At the Admiralty, Churchill wanted to name a battleship after him, but it was vetoed by the King.

 

And at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge (Cromwell’s Alma Mater), there is a painting of him which is hidden by curtains if a Royal visits the college.

These facts were unknown to me until recently (as a relative novice on all things Monarchy), but Iain Dale’s recent Kings & Queens book (and accompanying podcast) is very good for giving succinct explanations of the life and legacy of each monarch. The quirk, of course, is that it includes both the Cromwells, despite them not being “monarchs”.

 

I think I'd want stronger  footnotes than Ian Dale for some of those claims as they really don't ring true. The Churchill and the Navy story seems to rely on one source which has absolutely terrible referencing and sourcing.

 

Ironic really give that there were Cromwell tanks in WW2 and Cromwell was the code word for invasion imminent. I really don't think that there was any negativity surrounding Cromwell in this period.

 

 

[pete_mcfarlane]

I'd say the the most interesting Britannia naming is 70044 Earl Haig. This was the 1950s when he was still (mostly) seen as a national hero, before his reputation was comprehensibility (and not entirely rightly) trashed by historians in the sixties. Nowadays most people just see him as Geoffrey Palmer with a dustpan and brush in Blackadder. 

 

 

 

 

[The Johnster]

My personal view is that the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside parliament is a travesty; he is after all famous for dissolving parliaments with the aid of groups of armed men...  He was certainly no saint, there being very little in the way of the promised parliamentary democracy when he was in charge, and being guilty of what were even at the time considered heinous war crimes against Irish civilians.  He was so bad that the country chucked the opportunity of democratic rule and invited the Stuarts back, and that bunch were a series of arrogant, deluded, and vainglorious spenders of public money dedicated to the principle of Divine Right of Kings.  One can see why the royals don't have much time for him; my view is that nobody else should either.

 

But the same can be said of many of those who have had locos named after them; among the Kings, I would point out Henry 1 (off at a gallop to secure the treasury at Winchester before Rufus had hit the ground, highly suspect), Richard 1 (another parliament square densizen, spent 28 days of his entire life in England, and bankrupted the country in order to bankroll his Crusader adventures and his ransom), John (dealt a bad hand by Richard but hardly on the side of the angels, murdered Arthur of Brittany and reneged on Magna Carta at the first opportunity, as did most of the Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs following him), Edward 1 (I'm Welsh, so I'm biased, but he made a mess of Scotland as well, and expelled the Jews along with murdering hundreds of them because they'd lent money to his enemy Llewelyn ap Gruffudd, and to himself for the Scottish wars so that he didn't have to pay them back; one of Cromwell's more liberal decisions was to allow them back), or any of the Stuarts.  Bloody Mary speaks for herself, but Elizabeth 1 was another psychotic tyrant and religious maniac, overfond of the block and a close pen pal of her contemporary psychopath and son-murderer Ivan Grosny; they practically invented the secret police state between them.  Richard II was probably murdered on the orders of the usurper Henry IV, and either Richard III (crookback Dick) or Henry VII had the princes in the tower, only kids, terminated with extreme prejudice.

 

John of Gaunt was a self-serving and highly corrupt regent who provoked the peasant's revolt and led the cabal of barons that profited from Magna Carta, Robin Hood was an outlaw, and Dick Turpin was a murderous highwayman.  The Black Prince was little more than a brigand thug, running a vicious campaign of rapine and slaughter in France, largely for personal profit, and from an English perspective 'Owen Glendower' was a traitorous rebel.  Rob Roy McGregor was a cattle thief, and Henry Hotspur as a rebel traitor as well as an accomplished reaver.  Winston Churchill (again, I'm biased, family from Tonypandy) was a superb war leader, but racist, somewhat right wing, a drunk, and prone to excusing treason from the Master of Sempell (shoulda been shot like the treacherous traitorous dog he was) because they were mates.  David Lloyd George had a penchant for wives other than his own.  We might as well have had a loco called Hugh Despenser...

 

Incidentally, not all the Britannias named for people were named for British people; Flying Dutchman certainly wasn't and the Iron Duke was Irish.

[Engineer]

The Metropolitan Railway's twenty Metropolitan-Vickers electric locomotives received names from 1927 onwards, all with a common theme of connections to Metropolitan Railway territory.  

 

Loco 2 was the fifth to leave the factory (in early 1922) and was the first of the locos to be a new build without re-using major components from the precursor locos.  When names were assigned it was named Oliver Cromwell.  

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/photographs/item/1998-88883

 

During the Second World War and subsequent years the loco livery was changed to suit the times and all nameplates were removed.  

 

In the 1950s, the remaining members of the fleet were overhauled, repainted and fitted with new nameplates.  Loco 2 became unique because it received a completely new name, Thomas Lord, and the sporting connection was reinforced by adding small plaques with crossed cricket bats.

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/photographs/item/1998-62852
 

Edited April 19 by Engineer
Use of English

[Morello Cherry]

50 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

I'd say the the most interesting Britannia naming is 70044 Earl Haig. This was the 1950s when he was still (mostly) seen as a national hero, before his reputation was comprehensibility (and not entirely rightly) trashed by historians in the sixties. Nowadays most people just see him as Geoffrey Palmer with a dustpan and brush in Blackadder. 

 

 

 

 

 

That just isn't true. He was being criticised in the 1930s. Whatever you may think of them - Lloyd George's memoirs were 1936, Liddell Hart's was developing his critique from 1930 onwards.

[br2975]

6 hours ago, APOLLO said:

King John was a right so and so,  !! 

 

 

Henry VIII also, one of England’s most famous monarchs was a foul-tempered, gluttonous, bloodthirsty tyrant who, as well as ordering the executions of two of the women who had the misfortune to marry him, had an estimated 57,000 people executed during his 36-year reign.

 

 

Any more "Bad 'uns", not neccesarily Kings ?

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

What about 6024 King Edward I

aka

'Longshanks'

and

"The Hammer of the Scots" 

also

invader and conqueror of The Welsh

and, amongst other things, responsible for 

the Edict of Expulsion, a royal decree issued on 18 July 1290 expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England, the first time a European state is known to have permanently banned their presence.

[Olive_Green1923]

1 hour ago, Morello Cherry said:

think I'd want stronger  footnotes than Ian Dale for some of those claims as they really don't ring true. The Churchill and the Navy story seems to rely on one source which has absolutely terrible referencing and sourcing.

Iain Dale is technically not the source. He just edits the book and hosts the podcast. The source is the historian Miranda Malins, who specialises in the life of Cromwell and who wrote the chapter on him in the book. As mentioned, I’m personally not a monarchy buff, but by coincidence had recently read the chapter and listened to the podcast, and therefore learnt much about him which I never knew, including the supposed facts I flagged earlier re: his reputation amongst the establishment.

Edited April 19 by Olive_Green1923

[jjb1970]

Cromwell's rather controversial place in history isn't a modern phenomenon, the way he has been remembered and thought of has been a bit of a roller coaster since his own lifetime in England and very negative in Ireland. 

 

As with most of these things the debate tends to get polarized between hagiography and seeing him as the prototype for a naughty national socialist from Austria. He was a remarkable man of prodigious political and military skills but both sides of the ledger should be considered. In that sense he's no different to other major political figures (with vanishingly few exceptions).

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, br2975 said:

.

What about 6024 King Edward I

aka

'Longshanks'

and

"The Hammer of the Scots" 

also

invader and conqueror of The Welsh

and, amongst other things, responsible for 

the Edict of Expulsion, a royal decree issued on 18 July 1290 expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England, the first time a European state is known to have permanently banned their presence.

 

He also banned them from the professions, and made them wear identifying Star of David badges, which were also painted on their homes and businesses.  Sound familiar?

Edited April 19 by The Johnster

[OnTheBranchline]

1 hour ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

That just isn't true. He was being criticised in the 1930s. Whatever you may think of them - Lloyd George's memoirs were 1936, Liddell Hart's was developing his critique from 1930 onwards.

The less said about Basil Liddell Hart, the better…

[jjb1970]

Just now, OnTheBranchline said:

The less said about Basil Liddell Hart, the better…

 

Look on the brightside, his fellow armoured war pioneer JFC Fuller was full on bat turd bonkers, but still had a few good ideas.

[The Johnster]

2 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

Cromwell's rather controversial place in history isn't a modern phenomenon,

 

No, indeed; don't forget that at the time of his death a large stone was placed over his grave, and it was said that this was to ensure that the b*gger stayed down where he was put; nobody wanted him back!  When the monarchy was restored, one of Charles II's first actions was to have him dug up and his decaying corpse publicly put on trial for treason and regicide.  The slant of my school history lessons was that he was instrumental in the development of our modern constitutional monarchy and parliamernary democracy, which is arguably true but I would argue that this was never his intention; that was to overthrow the monarchy permanently in the interests of preventing it become aligned to the cause of Catholicism, at a time when the definition of a good British subject was his allegience to and support of the Protestant cause.

[jjb1970]

7 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

 

 

I note that there has never been a locomotive named after the Duke of Cumberland. His statue in Cavendish Square, London, was removed in 1868, so reviled had he become in the century or so since his death. We have a Prince William (47798), but that is named after someone else entirely. There is also a 7¼ inch miniature locomotive design "Sweet William", based in the 5 inch "Sweet Pea", which might ultimately be said to be derived from "Butcher" Cumberland, but the naming of the flower after him is disputed.

 

He got a sauce named after him instead. Ham with Cumberland sauce was a staple of P&O cooks (along with brown Windsor soup). I once commented that I had lived in what had been Cumberland all my life at that point and never seen Cumberland sauce so it was pointed out it was named after the Duke, not the county.

[jjb1970]

One of the most hagiographic biographies of Cromwell is God's Englishman by Christopher Hill. This is interesting as to many on the left of the political spectrum Cromwell is akin to evil incarnate yet Hill was a Communist. His book presents an excellent counter argument to the detractors, far more eloquently than most on the Cromwell supporter side. Not saying his views were correct but if trying to form an opinion of the man all sides of the debate should be considered.  Despite his political baggage Hill's works on 17th century English history remain invaluable in my view.

[DCB]

1 hour ago, OnTheBranchline said:

The less said about Basil Liddell Hart, the better…

Why?   He and Fuller,  potentially saved millions of lives by inventing Blitzkreig  in place of WW1 style trench warfare.