Before mass motorisation - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 64

measure - national or local - which potentially interferes with this freedom is
subject to formal procedures which enable it to be challenged and scrutinised
before a decision is made.
• Scarcely less important is the right to own and drive a motor vehicle on a public
road network, much of which was not designed for this purpose. Public 'acceptance'
of this was gained at the beginning of the 20th century when the motor car was
little more than an expensive plaything enjoyed by a small social elite. The
freedoms and status it conferred on its owners established it as an aspirational
good which has underpinned its extraordinary development ever since. The
inter-war years in particular witnessed momentous struggles between motorists
and other groups concerning the regulations which should govern this potentially
lethal and environmentally damaging vehicle. The clash between individual and
collective interests is a source of almost unparalleled contentiousness which
plagues deliberations over transport policy and planning to this day.
In this chapter we deal firstly with the development of transport networks before
the advent of the motor car (4.2 and 4.3) and then with different types of measure
introduced during the inter-war years to accommodate the rapidly developing new
mode (4.4 to 4.6). In the final two sections (4.7 and 4.8) we report the radical
initiatives in nationalisation taken by the post-war Labour Government in the fields
of public transport (passenger and freight) and development rights - the latter itself
partly prompted by the emerging effects of motorisation.
4.2 Early improvements to roads and waterways
The maze of roads that is the nation's highway system have been selectively improved
over centuries and have been classified, managed and signed to form the unified
network we use today. We have to make a very deliberate effort to recognise that
it was not always like this. National roads and national policies are a comparatively
recent phenomenon, excluding the few long-distance routes that have survived from
the military occupation by the Romans. Roads and other forms of transport grew from
very local beginnings.
State involvement in transport can be traced back to the Highways Act of 1555
which aimed to ensure the maintenance of roads in each parish in place of the previous
manorial system. Every householder was required to provide four days a year unpaid
labour for the repair of roads in his parish under the supervision of a local surveyor
chosen from within the community. Later legislation allowed for those who could
afford it to make a payment (with which to hire labour) in place of their own due - the
forerunner of the modern system of local council taxes.
Use of the term 'road' invites misconceptions of modern engineered routes with
waterproof surfaces. Until about 1750 roads were what they had always been - dirt
tracks - whose use by wheeled carts, if possible at all, was very much dependent on
the vagaries of local geology and recent weather. In order to prevent excessive damage
Parliament had passed a succession of Acts to limit the weight of wagon loads and to
prevent the use of narrow, rut-inducing wheels.
In the face of difficult overland travel, bulk goods were moved instead by coastal
shipping supplemented by estuaries and navigable rivers penetrating inland. River
improvements were made during the 17th and 18th centuries using Acts of Parliament
to overcome objections from landowners fearful of incursions into their protected local