French Resistance

FRENCH RESISTENCE
A True Story from My Family Archive

For six years, Europe had been off limits to tourists, but by the late 1940’s, wealthy Americans were eager to embark on the 20^th Century equivalent of the Grand Tour. Two American millionaires (they’d be multi-billionaires these days) decided to take their wives on a three-month-long tour of European capital cities starting in London. After a couple of weeks, they set off on the European leg of their tour.

Naturally at that time, they made the crossing to and from the Continent by ferry. Unfortunately, on both occasions the sea was rough and the journey quite uncomfortable. The Americans wondered why there was no bridge or tunnel; it was, after all, a very narrow strip of water. They resolved to do something to remedy this unsatisfactory situation so, on their return to London, began making enquiries.

They soon learned that a famous tunnel engineer had just set up his own firm of consulting engineers in Upper Grosvenor Street, Mayfair. Brian Colquohoun had been site engineer for the Mersey Tunnel; so, our would-be entrepreneurs contacted him. Brian Colquohoun had head-hunted my father, Ian Aitken to be one of the original partners in his new firm and gave my father the task of preparing a feasibility study for a bridge or tunnel to connect Britain with France. His report was presented to their clients in a few months.

Firstly, my father ruled out a bridge since the English Channel was one of the busiest waterways in the world and a bridge posed many, many problems. Not so a tunnel. His study proposed a route from Folkestone to a site near Calais; he also proposed not one but three parallel tunnels, one for trains to France, one for trains from France and a maintenance tunnel between them. The cost of the project was an estimated £4 million and he estimated that the work could be completed in four years.

As a child, I loved visiting my father at work so I could inspect the scale model of the terminal at Folkestone. This model sat on a large round table in his office and showed the entry point for vehicles. They would pass through Customs then each vehicle would be measured and a computer would assign that vehicle to a specific wagon on the train. The platform had a zig-zag edge so that each bogie of the train could swivel into a gap in the platform; this allowed vehicles to drive straight into the wagon before the bogie swivelled back in line with the track.

My father’s report was presented to the two Americans who were proposing to finance this project, not as a work of philanthropy for cash-starved Britain, but as a money-making venture. The tolls they proposed to charge would soon pay off their investment then make them even richer. But …

My father’s report also informed his clients that the rights to build a bridge or tunnel between this country and France were vested in the Suez Canal Company; that company was jointly owned by the French and British Governments. Both parliaments would have to approve the project. There was no difficulty as far as the British Parliament was concerned but …

President de Gaulle was no friend to Britain. Our country had gone to war to free his country (among others) and had even offered de Gaulle refuge in London. None of that mattered where this project was concerned; there was no way he would allow such a highly prestigious project to be handled by a British firm of engineers, with the consequence that this fascinating project was stillborn. Nevertheless, many of the proposals in that feasibility study ended up in the design of the Chunnel – when it eventually it got not off but under the ground!

My father didn’t live to see that happen; he died in 1987. But I often wonder, had there not been such adamant resistance from the French, whether his design might not have been the one constructed. Had that happened, all those toll-charges would have ended up on the other side of the Atlantic in American pockets!

Frances Aitken,