If ever there was any doubt that history is merely the sum of millions of tiny accidents, then April Fool's Day 2010 dispelled it for good. If there had been no leaves on the line outside Banbury; if the train from Birmingham to London had been running on time; if Sir Nicholas Winterton had got
out of his meeting a few minutes earlier. If any one of those things had been different, what kind of world might we be in?
Night was already falling when Sir Nicholas, puffing from the exertion of carrying his own briefcase, managed to push his way through the pensioners and children, past the ticket inspector, and on to the 6.30 train from Euston towards his Macclesfield constituency. It was then that the awful truth hit. "Sorry, sir," the train manager said flatly. "No first class on this service. Should have come in earlier, but it's being held at Coventry." Sir Nicholas opened his mouth to protest - but the man was already gone, engulfed in a sea of ill-dressed plebeians.
Oh, the ignominies that followed. It was not just the children with their rustling sweets, or the elderly lady across the aisle, babbling about
her grandson in Afghanistan. It was not just the cheery Scotsman crammed into the seat next to Sir Nicholas, sipping his can of Tennent's Super. It was not even the horror of the buffet trolley, with its disgracefully thin selection of fine wines and cigars.
No, the moment that would live with Sir Nicholas for ever came outside Stoke-on-Trent. The voice over the loudspeaker began: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to inform you . . ." The pallor was already spreading across his cheeks; the rest was just noise - except the words "rail replacement bus service". That was it: the last straw. Colleagues said later that when Sir Nicholas arrived at Westminster the following Monday, he seemed a new man. And when he rose at the next Prime Minister's Questions, many could hardly believe their ears. Had he really just said "renationalisation of the railways"? Had he really just announced that he was leaving parliament to campaign for “fair fares"? Had the world gone completely mad?
We all know what happened next. Many of us are still rubbing our eyes at the spectacle of Sir Nicholas receiving applause at the last RMT conference, his hand held aloft in triumph by Bob Crow. "He'll be up there with the great railwaymen of old," says the transport commentator Christian Wolmar. "Stephenson, Brunel, Winterton - the Holy Trinity of the rails."
