The railway interest
Encyclopedia
The railway interest was the name given in the 19th century to the Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

 and MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

s in the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 parliament who held directorships or senior administrative posts in railway companies. They could be relied upon to vote in the interest of the railways when legislation aimed at controlling the companies' actions was proposed, and to persuade their fellow members, most of whom will have been railway shareholders, to follow suit. While the monopoly position of railways in inland transport remained unchallenged, the influence of the railway interest in resisting rates' control and safety improvements was a continuing concern both to free-trade liberals and to the aristocracy/landed-gentry with a dependence on farming. The 'interest' was particularly strong as divisions
Division (vote)
In parliamentary procedure, a division of the assembly is a voting method in which the members of the assembly take a rising vote or go to different parts of the chamber, literally dividing into groups indicating a vote in favour of or in opposition to a motion on the floor...

 were often not whipped
Whip (politics)
A whip is an official in a political party whose primary purpose is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. Whips are a party's "enforcers", who typically offer inducements and threaten punishments for party members to ensure that they vote according to the official party policy...

 on party lines until the end of the century.

'Railway members' of the House of Commons were listed in some early editions of Bradshaw
George Bradshaw
George Bradshaw was an English cartographer, printer and publisher. He is best known for developing the most successful and longest published series of combined railway timetables.-Biography:...

's Almanack, directory and shareholder's guides from 1847, and both Lords and MPs who were railway directors were listed continuously there from 1858 to 1923. Geoffrey Alderman shows that from 1868 to 1879 the number of MPs holding railway directorships was between 106 and 132 (out of 640 seats) that is, roughly up to a fifth of the house. This fell somewhat in 1880-1891 to 78-108, fell again in the 1890s to 65-79 and later in first decade of the 1900s to 34-50, which effectively saw the end of the interest's influence during the Liberal administration of 1906-1910.

Source

  • Alderman, Geoffrey, The railway interest, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1973, ISBN 0-7185-1111-5
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