Albert Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield

Albert Stanley and his daughter Marian at the reopening of the City and South London Railway (1924)

Albert Henry Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield (born August 8, 1874 in New Normanton at Derby as Albert Henry Knattriess , † November 4, 1948 in London ) was a British manager and politician ( Conservative Party ). From 1910 to 1933 he was managing director, later chairman, of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) and from 1933 to 1947 chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board . In these functions, he made a significant contribution to the development of local public transport in the greater London area. From 1916 to 1920 he was a member of the House of Commons and, until 1919, also President of the Board of Trade .

biography

Career as a manager

Stanley's father worked as a coachbuilder for the Pullman Company . In 1880 the family emigrated to Detroit in the United States , where a Pullman factory was located. In the 1890s, Knattriess's family name was changed to Stanley. In 1888, Stanley began working for the Detroit Street Railways Company horse-drawn tram operation. At the age of 17 he was entrusted with the planning of vehicle schedules and timetables . In 1894 he already held a leading position. Stanley served as a Navy reservist on the USS Yosemite in 1898 during the Spanish-American War . In 1903 he moved to New Jersey to work as the general manager of the trams division of the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey . From January 1907 he was managing director of the entire company.

Just a month later, Stanley was named managing director of Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), a holding company founded by Charles Tyson Yerkes that operated four underground lines in London. Since most of the UERL's financial resources and technical facilities came from the USA, Stanley was considered the ideal person. His job was to consolidate the finances that got out of hand. He achieved this through better cooperation between the individual holding companies and improved marketing, while Chairman Edgar Speyer renegotiated the debt repayment.

From 1908 Stanley was a member of the Board of Directors . Together with advertising manager Frank Pick , he created the “Underground” trademark, and also introduced a uniform tariff system, which the competition also joined. Consolidation progressed with the takeover of the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) bus company in 1912 and the Central London Railway and City and South London Railway subway companies in 1913. There were also holdings in the London United Tramways and Metropolitan Electric Tramways tram companies as well as the takeover of the bus manufacturer AEC . For his services in transportation, Stanley was promoted to Knight Bachelor in 1914 .

Political activity

In 1915, after the outbreak of World War I , Stanley was given the post of director general in the Transportation Department of the Department of Munitions. Prime Minister David Lloyd George named him President of the Board of Trade in December 1916 . Stanley ran for a by-election in the Ashton-under-Lyne constituency that same month and was elected unopposed to the House of Commons. In the general election of 1918 TF Lister, the president of the Association of Dismissed Sailors and Soldiers, ran against him, but could not endanger him.

Stanley set up several specialized departments to control the output of various war industries. He also reorganized the structure of the Board of Trade. Despite previous successes with unions, his negotiations did not produce any noteworthy results. In May 1919 he resigned as President of the Board of Trade and in January 1920 as an MP. At the end of 1920 he was raised to hereditary peer as Baron Ashfield , of Southwell in the County of Nottingham , with which a seat in the House of Lords was connected.

Return to traffic management

Stanley returned to the UERL, was again active as managing director and also took over the chairmanship of the board of directors. Small bus companies began to compete with the UERL, which had a negative impact on the profitability of the entire holding. Stanley tried from 1923 to convince the government to regulate local public transport in the London area. He strove to protect the UERL from competition, while the Labor Party wanted to place the entire transport system under state control. After numerous unsuccessful attempts, Parliament decided at the end of 1930 as a compromise to create the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB). This public company was supposed to take control of all underground, bus and tram lines in the Greater London area. The LPTB began operating on July 1, 1933, and Stanley also led the new organization as chairman.

In the 1930s and - only briefly interrupted by the Second World War - in the 1940s, the subway network was again able to expand significantly. The reorganization of local public transport by the Labor government of Clement Attlee envisaged the complete nationalization of the LPTB on January 1, 1948. Ashfield resigned in late October 1947 and moved to the new British Transport Commission , which took over the operation of all nationalized transport companies. A little over twelve months later, he passed away at the age of 74.

Web links

• Sir Albert Stanley at Hansard (English)
• Theo Barker: Stanley, Albert Henry, Baron Ashfield (1874–1948). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Volume 52: Spruce – Strakosch. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861402-0 , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2011

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Crew of the USS Yosemite. Spanish-American War Centennial website, accessed June 1, 2011 . 
2. ^ Christian Wolmar : The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever . Atlantic Books, London 2005, ISBN 1-84354-023-1 , pp. 196-197 .
3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 28854, HMSO, London, July 31, 1914, p. 5963 ( PDF , accessed October 1, 2013, English).
4. ^ Christian Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. P. 325.
5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 29865, HMSO, London, December 15, 1916, p. 12225 ( PDF , accessed October 1, 2013, English).
6. ^ Christian Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. Pp. 259-266.