CHANNEL TUNNEL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 2, 2 July 1938, Page 8

CHANNEL TUNNEL

HISTORY OF THE SCHEME

Already statements are appearing that, as the result of increased cordiality, the Channel Tunnel scheme may be revived and carried through, says the "Manchester* Guardian." It is now quite venerable. When Granville was Foreign Secretary in 1872 he was favourable to the idea, and in 1874 his successor, Lord Derby, was of the same mind. In the following year Hawkshaw drew up plans and the French Minister of Public Works introduced a Bill into the Chamber. Financial difficulties followed and nothing much was heard of the plan till 1881, when Sir Edward Watkin began his long advocacy, dreaming of a direct route from Manchester to the Continent. He made borings near Dover, and the Prince of Wales went down and inspected the work in March, 1882. He, like many other civilians, was in favour of the tunnel. But the Board of Trade obtained an injunction against Watkin safeguarding the rights of the Crown on the foreshore.

In 1883 a private Bill was brought in which would have overridden the injunction, but Lord Lansdowne, chairman of a Joint Committee, was outvoted in his approval. Watkin kept pegging away. Mr. Gladstone was generally in favour, but Chamberlain fell out with Watkin and eventually the remarkable spectacle of the Duke of Cambridge and Wolseley in agreement against the proposal on military grounds and an alarmist article in the "Nineteenth Century" killed the scheme. Bright and others who had supported it were converted by the menace of an armament scare and perhaps conscription, and, in point of fact, we were more than once in sight of war with France in the 1880's.