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« on: April 20, 2022, 09:55:25 PM »
I worked as a Driver for Chesterfield Borough Transport from 1979 until 1990.
In 1985 (?) at the opening of the Inner Relief Road, we held a protest at the Government's proposals to deregulate bus companies, citing the National Bus Company as monopolising public transport. This was followed later by a huge demonstration through Central London.
My claim to fame was creating a banner reading ' Chesterfield Transport - Born Of Social Need 1897 - Killed By Tory Greed 1987' which attracted some media attention in London.
The National Bus Company was a nationalised bus company that operated in England and Wales between 1969 and 1988. NBC did not run buses itself, but was the owner of a number of regional subsidiary bus operating companies. Sound familiar?
Privatisation happened, with CBT staff buying out the Council owned bus company for the princely sum of £800 per employee, (the first company in the UK to do so)
Brian Souter was born in the Scottish city of Perth. His father was a bus driver and as a child Brian often travelled on bus routes with his father.
Using his father's redundancy money, with his sister Ann Gloag and his brother-in-law Robin Gloag established the Stagecoach Group in 1980, running buses from Dundee to London.
Following the deregulation of bus services in Great Britain, expansion continued, and in the late 1980s Stagecoach acquired National Bus Company subsidiaries in Cumberland and Hampshire, and the East Midlands, Ribble, Southdown and United Counties companies. Stagecoach also bought bus operations in Scotland, Newcastle and London, with Manchester being added a few years later.
The chances of CBC buying back the bus operation in Chesterfield, would be non existent.