The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-14)

28 The Sunday Times November 14, 2021

NEWS REVIEW

Richard Beeching’s infamous report

spelt the end for Okehampton station,

which reopens next Saturday with

a two-hourly service from Exeter

Plymouth

Dartmoor

national park

Crediton

Okehampton

Exeter

St Davids

London

10 miles

one coal mine or one particular indus-

try,” Dunn says.

Yet many of the cuts were ill-advised

and isolated rural communities. Beech-

ing’s mistake, says Christian Wolmar, a

prolific writer of books on British rail-

ways, was to try to make trains profitable.

“Railways are not a normal business

and whether a railway is profitable or not

is not the criteria. The criteria is whether

it enables people to get to their jobs, car-

ries schoolchildren, helps the environ-

ment and boosts the economy.”

Today, it is this value that local council-

lors, businesses and MPs attempt to

quantify in making their case to the fund.

At present, £34 million has been pledged

for a Northumberland line connecting

Ashington and Blyth to Newcastle upon

Tyne, with arguments being made that

this would join these satellite towns to

employment centres and bring in tour-

ism. The long-neglected Portishead line

near Bristol is also under review, and

£100,000 has been put towards explor-

ing the possibility of reopening Lancash-

ire’s coastal Fleetwood-Poulton line.

Others are holding out hope that the

Okehampton reopening will eventually

lead to the reinstatement of the old Atlan-

tic Coast Express line, which would run

on to Tavistock and Plymouth, though

crumbling viaducts and new housing

developments currently litter the route.

“These lines are about serving local

communities,” Wolmar says. This placed

them at the opposite end of the spectrum

to huge new cross-country developments

like the high-speed rail line HS2 or Lon-

don’s Crossrail.

Okehampton’s long-fought case for

reviving its railway line looks increasingly

prescient given the pandemic-driven

movement of people out of cities and into

more rural areas. Although the pandemic

severely diminished rail traffic, it also

prompted speculation about the revival

of life not centred on big cities as remote

working becomes commonplace.

All eyes will be on this first test case.

The works have taken nine months of fre-

netic, round-the-clock activity by 300

workers — a spectacle that locals would

regularly gather to watch from behind

the fences of the building site.

Today, Okehampton’s town centre

feels sparsely populated, and locals com-

plain about a lack of restaurants and a

glut of charity shops and takeaways.

Many agree it could do with an injection

of activity.

“It can only be good news. It’s sure to

bring in an influx of people and tourists,

which will be good for business,” says

William Hyams, the general manager of

the 500-year-old Fountain Inn. “I think

people have really missed the railway.”

O

n June 3, 1972, the last train

chugged out of Devon’s Oke-

hampton station, watched

forlornly by the town’s

mayor, Walter Passmore,

who had lost the battle to

keep the railway open.

For a century, the Dart-

moor Line had connected

this small granite-mining

and milling town on the remote and

windswept northern edge of Dartmoor

National Park to Exeter, and from there to

London Waterloo.

It had been a lifeline between the far-

flung reaches of southwest England and

the rest of the country — shuttling in buck-

et-and-spade tourists headed on to the

rugged coastline of north Devon or down

to Cornwall, as well as moorland explor-

ers and traders. Suddenly, Okehampton

found itself cut adrift.

Now, after 50 dormant years, its rail-

way is returning to life.

New steel sleepers — 24,000 of them —

and 11 miles of new tracks wind their way

through the trees, four-carriage trains

practise running up and down the line at

55mph, workers paint cream picket fen-

ces and the bottle-green window frames

of the old station building. It is all in prep-

aration for its grand reopening on Satur-

day, when the first trainload of people

will roll in from Exeter. Five hundred tick-

ets have been sold so far; a single costs £4.

“Everyone’s thrilled,” says Jan Hazell,

78, a volunteer at the Okehampton

Museum who has lived in the town for 30

years. “It will be ideal for bringing tour-

ists,” she enthuses, with tourism an eco-

nomic mainstay of the region. Visitors

will be able to walk straight from the sta-

tion onto the mysterious expanse of Dart-

moor — the inspiration for Sir Arthur

Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervil-

les — visit the town’s medieval castle or

cycle the 11-mile Granite Way.

The train will also ease pressure on

the A30, the one main road connecting

north Devon and Cornwall to the rest of

the country, which has a reputation for

mammoth traffic jams. “It is chock-a-

block and full of grockles [outsiders] in

the summer,” says Hazell. The train, on

the other hand, is set to run every two

hours and will take about 40 minutes for

the 25-mile journey from Exeter, regard-

less of the number of grockles that decide

to travel on it.

Nestling in the trees at the top of the

town and looking out over misty moor-

land, Okehampton station could have

been pulled straight from the pages of an

Enid Blyton novel. Yet it represents a con-

servative vision for a new future: a green

alternative to the car in a climate-con-

scious era and a key pillar in the prime

minister’s levelling-up agenda.

Through a new programme aimed at

getting defunct railways up and running

— the Restoring Your Railway fund — Boris

Johnson has said he aims to “quite liter-

The train arriving on platform 1

has been delayed for 50 years

As part of levelling up, a railway in Devon is reopening. Madeleine Spence goes loco for the great branch line revival

GETTY IMAGES; ALAMY

The reopened railway line will offer

views of Dartmoor, the inspiration

for The Hound of the Baskervilles

Some 24,000

new sleepers

and 11 miles of

tracks wind

their way

through

the trees

their way

through

the trees

ally lay the tracks to more jobs, tourism

and opportunities”. Okehampton, with a

population of about 7,000, is its first ben-

eficiary, having received £40.5 million.

The fund’s main work is to review, and

in some cases reverse, the brutal pruning

of railway lines by the great villain of Brit-

ish railway history: Dr Richard Beeching.

A hard-nosed businessman, Beeching

was hired by the Tory prime minister

Harold Macmillan in 1961 to reverse the

nationalised industry’s losses of £100 mil-

lion a year. He was responsible for ear-

marking 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles

of track for closure in his infamously

ruthless 1963 Beeching Report.

While the Dartmoor Line escaped the

initial cuts, it withered as a result of other

veins in the network running dry and its

demise soon followed.

Not all Beeching cuts were brutal,

however, argues the railway historian

Tim Dunn, who presents The Architecture

the Railways Built on the Yesterday chan-

nel. Some were necessary after years of

unsustainable growth driven by

the fiercely competitive railway

companies that fuelled the Indus-

trial Revolution.

“All across the country, you

had thousands of miles of railway

track, probably built just to serve

Pentecostalism is a highly

experiential faith. Converts

must first be born again, and

then filled with the Holy

Spirit.

Believers will have a direct

experience of the presence of

God, often demonstrated by

speaking in tongues. The

name comes from Pentecost:

in the Bible this is when the

Holy Spirit came to the

apostles 50 days after Jesus’s

death and gave them the

ability to speak in tongues, so

that they could go out to

foreign lands and make

converts to the faith.

Pentecostals have long

specialised in addressing the

specific needs of their

followers in any given society

— who, from the outset, have

seen themselves as

downtrodden and

discriminated against.

“We were the last ones

they bothered saving,” one

Gypsy convert told me after

church one day last

December. Importantly, the

faith promises reward not

just in the afterlife, but

an improvement in the

here and now. People

not only want to feel God,

but they also want to feel

good. Services I have

attended have lasted from

anything from one to 12

hours.

Over the last few

decades, the movement

has turned into a

commercial and

multimedia

leviathan.

Churches,

some the

size of airports, are central to

its mission; they offer music

classes, speed-dating events

and addiction cures. And the

faith’s link with political

power is becoming ever more

obvious.

With its broad, devoted

base, Pentecostalism is

wooed by those seeking

election and popularity. It

now seems to have become

the theological wing of the

nationalist movements led by

Donald Trump, Jair

Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor

Orban in Hungary and

Rodrigo Duterte in the

Philippines, who all had early

and significant Pentecostal

support on the way to power.

Evangélicos were a huge

part of Bolsonaro’s rise and

continuing support, so much

so that the leader travelled to

Israel to be dunked in the

River Jordan early in his

presidential campaign.

Critically, many of his football

supporters are non-white,

helping black voters look

beyond Bolsonaro’s history of

racist remarks.

The burgeoning of

Pentecostalism runs counter

to the idea that the world is

rapidly becoming godless.

Pentecostals have changed

the born-again narrative from

one of liberation to

conquering. It is a muscle-

bound view of the world,

where Jesus is more Marvel

hero than meek and mild.

The footballers help.

Fully realised, political

Pentecostalism wants to take

nations back for God by any

means necessary; a

dictatorship of the faithful,

going into battle against

anyone who doesn’t believe,

or is unwilling to submit.

Beyond Belief: How

Pentecostal Christianity Is

Taking Over the World by Elle

Hardy is published by Hurst

on November 30

Pope-like central figure or

central administration to

hold it back, it has collected

some 600 million followers.

In 1980, only 6 per cent of

the world’s Christians were

Pentecostal; today, that figure

stands at more than a quarter.

It’s predicted that by 2050,

one billion people — or one in

ten — will be part of the

movement. There are an

estimated 17,000 Pentecostal

churches in the UK, or about

one congregation for every

two pubs in England.

Rival denominations —

even other religions — are

taking on

Pentecostal

practices to stem

the tide of converts.

Pentecostalism — as

the celebrity

endorsements might

suggest — is a highly

personalised,

consumer-driven,

even capitalist way of

“doing church”.

A branch of

evangelicalism,

Pentecostalists in

Oklahoma, top,

are part of a

rapidly growing

worldwide

movement that

has won over

sports stars

including

Tyson Fury,

left, Bukayo

Saka, right,

and Roberto

Firmino, who

hugged his

wife after the

baptism, above

O

n a recent Sunday

evening at London’s

Dominion Theatre, I

joined thousands of

impeccably dressed,

distressingly attractive

twentysomethings milling in

the glow of a huge “Welcome

Home” sign projected onto

the stage. This wholesome

and diverse crowd looked as

though they could be a

casting call for a Christmas

commercial, but clutching

their Miracle Meal pre-filled

communion cups and wafer

sets, they were there for

something more meaningful.

If you want to spot a

Premier League footballer in

London, a service run by a

Hillsong megachurch, of

which there are now 12 in

Britain, should be your first

port of call. They are a

snapshot of a huge and

growing faith movement: an

estimated 35,000 people in

the world each day are

converting to Pentecostal

Christianity, of which

Australia’s Hillsong is a

leading international brand.

In January last year,

Liverpool’s Brazilian striker

Roberto Firmino was born

again in his swimming pool

with goalkeeper Alisson

Becker weeping alongside

him. “I gave you my failures

and I will give you victories

too,” the striker wrote

afterwards on Instagram. “My

greatest title is your love,

Jesus ... The old things have

passed away; behold, new

things have appeared.”

The England stars Bukayo

Saka, Marcus Rashford and

Raheem Sterling were all

raised in the faith.

The world heavyweight

champion Tyson Fury is part

of the church, which has a

strong presence in British

traveller and Gypsy

communities. “I’m a believer

in the Lord Jesus Christ,” Fury

told Sky Sports News in 2015.

“I’ll say it no matter how

many people it offends. I’ll

say it.” South African rugby

captain Siya Kolisi and US

basketball star Kevin Durant

are also believers. So are the

pop star Justin Bieber and

rapper Kanye West.

I’ve spent the

past couple of years

travelling the world

investigating the

rise of Pentecostal

Christianity, and it’s

a story as remarkable

as any great Anfield

comeback.

Growing from a

spontaneous outpouring

of faith at a small church

in downtown Los Angeles

in 1906, Pentecostal

Christianity might just be

the fastest-growing

religion on Earth. With no

Boosted by the support of Premier

League stars, the burgeoning faith is

predicted to have a billion believers by

2050. Elle Hardy follows the faithful

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JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

Jesus saves, Pentecostalism

scores and the crowds go wild