title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 were the first multilateral treaties that addressed the conduct of warfare and were largely based on the Lieber Code, which was signed and issued by US President Abraham Lincoln to the Union Forces of the United States on 24 April 1863, during the American Civil War. The Lieber Code was the first official comprehensive codified law that set out regulations for behavior in times of martial law; protection of civilians and civilian property and punishment of transgression; deserters, prisoners of war, hostages, and pillaging; partisans; spies; truces and prisoner exchange; parole of former rebel troops; the conditions of any armistice, and respect for human life; assassination and murder of soldiers or citizens in hostile territory; and the status of individuals engaged in a state of civil war against the government.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: As such, the code was widely regarded as the best summary of the first customary laws and customs of war in the 19th century and was welcomed and adopted by military establishments of other nations. The 1874 Brussels Declaration, which was never adopted by all major nations, listed 56 articles that drew inspiration from the Lieber Code. Much of the regulations in the Hague Conventions were borrowed heavily from the Lieber Code.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: Both conferences included negotiations concerning disarmament, the laws of war and war crimes. A major effort in both conferences was the creation of a binding international court for compulsory arbitration to settle international disputes, which was considered necessary to replace the institution of war. This effort, however, failed at both conferences; instead, a voluntary forum for arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, was established. Most of the countries present, including the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, China and Persia, favoured a process for binding international arbitration, but the provision was vetoed by a few countries, led by Germany.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: The First Hague Conference came from a proposal on 24 August 1898 by Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas and Count Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, his foreign minister, were instrumental in initiating the conference. The conference opened on 18 May 1899, the Tsar's birthday. The treaties, declarations, and final act of the conference were signed on 29 July of that year, and they entered into force on 4 September 1900. What is referred to as the Hague Convention of 1899 consisted of three main treaties and three additional declarations:


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: This convention included the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which exists to this day. The section was ratified by all major powers and many smaller powers26 signatories in all, including Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Montenegro, the Netherlands, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Siam, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: This voluminous convention contains the laws to be used in all wars on land between signatories. It specifies the treatment of prisoners of war, includes the provisions of the Geneva Convention of 1864 for the treatment of the wounded, and forbids the use of poisons, the killing of enemy combatants who have surrendered, looting of a town or place, and the attack or bombardment of undefended towns or habitations. Inhabitants of occupied territories may not be forced into military service against their own country and collective punishment is forbidden. The section was signed by all major powers listed above except China.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: This convention provides for the protection of marked hospital ships and requires them to treat the wounded and shipwrecked sailors of all belligerent parties. It too was ratified by all major powers.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: This declaration provides that, for a period of five years, in any war between signatory powers, no projectiles or explosives would be launched from balloons, "or by other new methods of a similar nature". The declaration was ratified by all the major powers mentioned above, except the United Kingdom and the United States.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: This declaration states that, in any war between signatory powers, the parties will abstain from using projectiles "the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases". Ratified by all major powers, except the United States.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: This declaration states that, in any war between signatory powers, the parties will abstain from using "bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body". This directly banned soft-point bullets (which had a partial metal jacket and an exposed tip) and "cross-tipped" bullets (which had a cross-shaped incision in their tip to aid in expansion, nicknamed "dum dums" from the Dum Dum Arsenal in India). It was ratified by all major powers, except the United States.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: The Second Hague Conference, in 1907, resulted in conventions containing only few major advancements from the 1899 Convention. However, the meeting of major powers did prefigure later 20th-century attempts at international cooperation.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: The second conference was called at the suggestion of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, but it was postponed because of the war between Russia and Japan. The Second Peace Conference was held from 15 June to 18 October 1907. The intent of the conference was to expand upon the 1899 Hague Convention by modifying some parts and adding new topics; in particular, the 1907 conference had an increased focus on naval warfare. The British attempted to secure the limitation of armaments, but these efforts were defeated by the other powers, led by Germany, which feared a British attempt to stop the growth of the German fleet. As Britain had the world's largest navy, limits on naval expansion would preserve that dominant position. Germany also rejected proposals for compulsory arbitration. However, the conference did enlarge the machinery for voluntary arbitration and established conventions regulating the collection of debts, rules of war, and the rights and obligations of neutrals.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: The treaties, declarations, and final act of the Second Conference were signed on 18 October 1907; they entered into force on 26 January 1910. The 1907 Convention consists of thirteen treaties—of which twelve were ratified and entered into force—and one declaration:


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: The Brazilian delegation was led by Ruy Barbosa, whose contributions are seen today by some analysts as essential for the defense of the principle of legal equality of nations. The British delegation included Sir Edward Fry, Sir Ernest Satow, the 11th Lord Reay (Donald James Mackay) and Sir Henry Howard as delegates, and Eyre Crowe as a technical delegate. The Russian delegation was led by Friedrich Martens. The Uruguayan delegation was led by José Batlle y Ordóñez, a defender of the idea of compulsory arbitration. With Louis Renault and Léon Bourgeois, Paul Henri d'Estournelles de Constant was a member of the French delegation for both the 1899 and 1907 delegations. He later won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1909 for his efforts. The U.S. representative, with the rank of ambassador, was former American Bar Association president U. M. Rose. The representative of the Chinese Empire was Lu Zhengxiang, who would become Prime Minister of the Republic of China in 1912.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: Though not negotiated in The Hague, the Geneva Protocol to the Hague Conventions is considered an addition to the Conventions. Signed on 17 June 1925 and entering into force on 8 February 1928, its single article permanently bans the use of all forms of chemical and biological warfare. The protocol grew out of the increasing public outcry against chemical warfare following the use of mustard gas and similar agents in World War I, and fears that chemical and biological warfare could lead to horrific consequences in any future war. The protocol has since been augmented by the Biological Weapons Convention (1972) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993).


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: Many of the rules laid down at the Hague Conventions were violated in World War I. The German invasion of Belgium, for instance, was a violation of Convention (III) of 1907, which states that hostilities must not commence without explicit warning. Poison gas was introduced and used by all major belligerents throughout the war, in violation of the Declaration (IV, 2) of 1899 and Convention (IV) of 1907, which explicitly forbade the use of "poison or poisoned weapons".


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: Writing in 1918, the German international law scholar and neo-Kantian pacifist Walther Schücking called the assemblies the "international union of Hague conferences". Schücking saw the Hague conferences as a nucleus of a future international federation that was to meet at regular intervals to administer justice and develop international law procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes, asserting that "a definite political union of the states of the world has been created with the First and Second Conferences".


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: After World War II, the judges of the military tribunal of the Trial of German Major War Criminals at Nuremberg Trials found that by 1939, the rules laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention were recognised by all civilised nations and were regarded as declaratory of the laws and customs of war. Under this post-war decision, a country did not have to have ratified the 1907 Hague Convention in order to be bound by them.


title: Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907

text: Although their contents have largely been superseded by other treaties, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 continue to stand as symbols of the need for restrictions on war and the desirability of avoiding it altogether. Since 2000, Convention (I) of 1907 on the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes has been ratified by 20 additional states.


title: BMW M1

text: The BMW M1 (model code E26) is a mid-engined sports car produced by German automotive manufacturer BMW from 1978 until 1981.


title: BMW M1

text: In the late 1970s, Italian automobile manufacturer Lamborghini entered into an agreement with BMW to build a production racing car in sufficient quantity for homologation, but conflicts arose that prompted BMW to produce the car themselves. The resulting car was sold to the public, from 1978 until 1981, as the BMW M1.


title: BMW M1

text: It is the first mid-engine BMW automobile to be mass-produced; the second is the i8 plug-in hybrid sports car.


title: BMW M1

text: The motorsport division of BMW headed by Jochen Neerpasch had been wanting to compete in motorsports using a car developed for competition racing in order to compete with arch rival Porsche in Group-5 racing, thus the development of the M1 was initiated. Neerpasch, who was head of the development program stressed that the car was to be strictly mid-engine in order to outclass its competitors. As BMW wasn't able to build 400 road going examples of the car in the required time period as stipulated by the rules, the company partnered with Lamborghini to work out the details of the car's chassis, assemble prototypes and manufacture the vehicles. The tubular steel space frame chassis was the work of Gianpaolo Dallara but soon Lamborghini's financial position and the possibility of the car's production by the Italian manufacturer became bleak and BMW reassumed control over the project in April 1978, after seven prototypes were built. The delay in production and the changes in Group 5 rules forced the company to compete in Group 4 racing with the car.


title: BMW M1

text: The M1 coupé was hand-built between 1978 and 1981 under the motorsport division of BMW as a homologation special for sports car racing. The fibre glass body was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, taking inspiration from the 1972 BMW Turbo concept car. Since the engineering of the car was still incomplete, a group of former Lamborghini engineers had founded a company named Italengineering which offered to complete the car's design. Less than 10 miles away from the Lamborghini shop, the engineering for the M1 was finished.


title: BMW M1

text: The BMW M1 is the first car to be solely developed by BMW M and employs a M88/1 petrol six-cylinder engine with Kugelfischer-Bosch mechanical fuel injection and Magneti-Marelli ignition system. The engine was developed by Paul Rosche, who was also responsible for the S14 inline-4 engine and the S70/2 V12 engine. A version of this engine was later used in the South African version of the 745i, of which 209 examples were built between 1984 and 1986, as well as the E24 M6/M635CSi and E28 M5. The engine has six separate throttle bodies, twin-cams, 4 valves per cylinder, and generates a power output of at 6,500 rpm and of torque at 5,000 rpm in the road version, giving the car a top speed of . The engine was mated to a 5-speed manual transmission made by ZF Friedrichshafen equipped with a 40% locking limited slip differential.


title: BMW M1

text: The M1 has an unassisted rack and pinion steering, double-wishbone suspension system with adjustable coil springs and Bilstein gas filled dampers. The road car had softer suspension bushings to have better ride quality and tractability.


title: BMW M1

text: The ventilated brakes of the car measured at the front and at the rear and were constructed from steel. The M1 used special Campagnolo alloy wheels measuring 7x16-inches at the front and 8x16-inches at the rear fitted with Pirelli P7 tyres (having sizes of 205/55 VR15 at the front and 225/50 VR15s at the rear).


title: BMW M1

text: The M1 has a half-leather and half-cloth interior. Its motorsport roots meant that the car had a basic interior layout with many parts sourced from other BMW models. The interior had amenities such as air conditioning, power windows and a stereo but had unadjustable seats and only had a left-hand-drive configuration.


title: BMW M1

text: The fibre glass body of the M1 was manufactured by Italian firm Italina Resina which was located in Modena, Italy. The chassis was manufactured by another Modenese firm, Marchesi. The body of the car was completed by Italdesign at their manufacturing facility located in Turin along with the interior.


title: BMW M1

text: German specialist manufacturer Baur where final assembly took place by hand. The hand-built M88/1 engines were supplied by BMW from Munich to be installed in the cars. The completed cars were shipped to BMW Motorsport in Munich for final inspection and delivery. Only 453 production cars were built, making it one of BMW's rarest models. Out of the 453, 399 were road going units while 53 were made for motorsport.


title: BMW M1

text: The M1 had various successes in motorsports. In 2004, "Sports Car International" placed the car at number ten on their list of top sports cars of the 1970s.


title: BMW M1

text: In 1979 the head of BMW Motorsport, Jochen Neerpasch, devised a one-make championship using racing modified M1s. The series was created to aid BMW in building enough cars to enter the group 4 classification in the World Championship for Makes. The new series, known as the "Procar BMW M1 Championship", served as a support series for Formula One, and included many Formula One drivers in identical cars.


title: BMW M1

text: The series ran for two years, with Niki Lauda winning the 1979 season, and Nelson Piquet the 1980 season. After BMW met the standards for group 4, the Procars were used by various teams in the world championship as well as other national series.


title: BMW M1

text: The M1 was also campaigned at the 24 Hours of Le Mans from 1981 to 1986 where it proved competitive. The car was classified as a Group B car for Le Mans purposes, as Group B was also planned for GT class for road races, but were instead eclipsed by Group C prototypes.


title: BMW M1

text: A M1 Pro Car was also converted to Group B rally spec by BMW France for the 1982 season. The car was campaigned for the 1983 season as well before the car was entered solely by the Motul privateer racing team for the 1984 season. The 1984 season proved to be the most successful for the M1 as former ERC champion Bernard Béguin won back-to-back at Rallye de La Baule and Rallye de Lorraine that season, and even claimed an outright ERC podium at Rally d’Antibes four months later. The car was not campaigned further after 1984.


title: BMW M1

text: In April 2008, BMW unveiled the M1 Homage concept, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the M1. The concept vehicle uses a mid-engine layout that borrows styling cues from both the original M1 and the BMW Turbo show car.


title: BMW M1

text: The M1 Homage concept was first shown to the public at the of 2008. The design was penned by BMW's in-house design team, inspired by both the original M1 and the BMW Turbo concept designed by Paul Bracq. The BMW Turbo had many technical and advanced innovations from BMW that were part of the inspiration of the M1 Homage concept. The front of the car differs the most from the other parts of the car. The front sports double head lights which are not the same as pop-up type that are on the original M1, but the usual trademark of the kidney grilles is present. The M1 Homage also incorporates the double badge on the back of the car like the original M1. There are no photos of the interior of the car or of the car in action, nor have the specifications of the car been released as the car was meant only to be a design exercise.


title: BMW M1

text: After the M1, BMW designed some mid engined concept cars but none of them inspired a production car until 2013, when the Vision EfficientDynamics concept led to the production of the i8. The BMW i8 is based on the Vision EfficientDynamics concept, which is a range-extender electric car with a three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine. The production car was designed by Benoit Jacob. Series production of customer vehicles began in April 2014. It is also the first mass-produced mid-engine BMW automobile since the M1.


title: BMW M1

text: The Vision M Next is a plug-in hybrid concept sports car that was showcased in June 2019. The design is partially inspired from the M1, such as louvered rear windows and BMW roundels positioned inside the taillamps. It is powered by the "Power PHEV" drivetrain system that offers the choice between all-wheel-drive and rear-wheel-drive, with either all-electric propulsion or the power of a turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine. The total system output is claimed at . It also has a claimed 0 to acceleration time of 3 seconds and top speed of . The maximum range when driving in all-electric mode is claimed to be .


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Night of the Living Dead is a zombie horror media franchise created by George A. Romero beginning with the 1968 film, "Night of the Living Dead" directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo. The franchise predominantly centers on different groups of people attempting to survive during the outbreak and evolution of a zombie apocalypse. The latest installment of the series, "Survival of the Dead" was released in 2009 with a sequel, "Twilight of the Dead", in development. This would be the first film in the series not directed by George Romero, who died on July 16, 2017.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: After "Night of the Living Dead"s initial success, the two creators split in disagreement regarding where the series should head, and since the film was in the public domain, each were able to do what they liked with the continuity of their projects. Romero went on to direct five additional "Dead" films, while Russo branched into literary territory, writing "Return of the Living Dead", which was later loosely adapted into a film of the same name and would have its own franchise, and "Escape of the Living Dead".


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Labeled ""Trilogy of the Dead"" until "Land of the Dead", each film is laden with social commentary on topics ranging from racism to consumerism. The films are not produced as direct follow-ups from one another and their only continuation is the theme of the epidemic of the living dead. This situation advances with each film, showing the world in a worsening state, but each film is independent of its predecessor. This is exemplified by the fact that each movie is set within the era it is filmed, with "Land of the Dead" being set in modern times with current (as of 2005) technology such as game consoles, flatscreen televisions, and cell phones. The fifth film does not continue the depiction of progress, but shows events at the very beginning of a zombie outbreak, similar to the first film. The films portray how different people react to the same phenomenon, ranging from citizens to police to army officials and to citizens again. Each takes place in a world worsened since its previous appearance, the number of zombies ever increasing and the living perpetually endangered, but with each entry being a standalone film that is not directly continuing global events from the previous.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Romero does not consider any of his "Dead" films sequels since none of the major characters or story continue from one film to the next. The two exceptions are Tom Savini's character of Blades who becomes a zombie in "Dawn of the Dead" who would be seen again years later in "Land of the Dead" and the military officer (Alan van Sprang) who robs the main characters in "Diary of the Dead" and goes on to become a protagonist in "Survival of the Dead".


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: The plot of the film follows Ben (Duane Jones), Barbra Cole (Judith O'Dea), and five others, who are trapped in a rural farmhouse in Pennsylvania and attempt to survive the night while the house is being attacked by mysteriously reanimated corpses, known as ghouls or zombies.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Following the scenario set up in "Night of the Living Dead", the United States (and possibly the entire world) has been devastated by a phenomenon which reanimates recently deceased human beings as flesh-eating zombies. Despite efforts by the US Government and local civil authorities to control the situation, society has effectively collapsed and the remaining survivors seek refuge. Protagonists Roger (Scott Reiniger) and Peter (Ken Foree), two former SWAT members, join with Stephen (David Emge) and Francine (Gaylen Ross), a helicopter pilot and his girlfriend planning on leaving the city, and take refuge in an enclosed shopping-mall.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Some time after the events of "Dawn of the Dead", zombies have overrun the world, and an underground army missile bunker near the Everglades holds part of a military-supported scientific team assigned to study the zombie phenomenon in the hopes of finding a way of stopping or reversing the process. Dwindling supplies, loss of communication with other survivor enclaves, and an apparent lack of progress in the experiments have already caused loss of cohesion among the scientists and soldiers. Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), the lead scientist on the project, has been secretly using the recently deceased soldiers in his experiments, trying to prove his theory that the zombies can eventually be domesticated.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Years after the events of the previous film, many of the living have fled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a feudal-like government has taken hold. Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) rules the city with overwhelming firepower. "Big Daddy" (Eugene Clark), an unusually intelligent zombie, directs his fellow zombies to use firearms against the human defenses, and later leads the zombies in an assault on the human city, with the result that the electric fence that kept the zombies out now keeps the humans trapped inside.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Taking place during the initial outbreak of a zombie pandemic, "Diary of the Dead" follows a band of film students making a horror movie who decide to record the events in documentary-style as they themselves are chased down by zombies.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: Taking place shortly after the events of "Diary of the Dead", the film follows the actions of former Colonel and current Sergeant "Nicotine" Crockett (Alan van Sprang), who, after a failed raid, deserts his post with Kenny (Eric Woolfe), Francisco (Stefano Colacitti) and Tomboy (Athena Karkanis) and finds the existence of an island run by two families while fighting over the fact whether zombies should be kept alive or killed.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: In the 2010s, Romero was dissatisfied with his series ending with "Diary of the Dead" and "Survival of the Dead". He penned a film treatment with co-writer Paolo Zelati depicting a conclusion to the series that explains the fate of the zombie protagonists from "Land of the Dead" and an ending where humanity has become virtually extinct. Romero had written the beginning of the script, but the project was stalled when Romero died of lung cancer in 2017.


title: Night of the Living Dead (film series)

text: It was announced in April 2021 that the film had been put back into development under the supervision of Suzanne Romero, with Zelati finishing the script with screenwriters Joe Knetter and Robert L. Lucas. Suzanne told "The Hollywood Reporter", "This is the film he wanted to make. And while someone else will carry the torch as the director, it is very much a George A. Romero film."


title: Ä

text: Ä (lower case ä) is a character that represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.


title: Ä

text: The letter Ä occurs as an independent letter in the Finnish, Swedish, Skolt Sami, Karelian, Estonian, Luxembourgish, North Frisian, Saterlandic, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Rotuman, Slovak, Tatar, Kazakh, Gagauz, German, and Turkmen alphabets, where it represents a vowel sound. In Finnish, Kazakh, Turkmen and Tatar, this is always ; in Swedish and Estonian, regional variation, as well as the letter's position in a word, allows for either or . In German and Slovak "Ä" stands for (or the archaic but correct ). In the romanization of Nanjing Mandarin, "Ä" stands for .


title: Ä

text: In the Nordic countries, the vowel sound was originally written as "Æ" when Christianisation caused the former Vikings to start using the Latin alphabet around A.D. 1100. The letter Ä arose in German and later in Swedish from originally writing the E in AE on top of the A, which with time became simplified as two dots. In the Icelandic, Faroese, Danish and Norwegian alphabets, "Æ" is still used instead of Ä.


title: Ä

text: Finnish adopted the Swedish alphabet during the 700 years that Finland was part of Sweden. Although the phenomenon of Germanic umlaut does not exist in Finnish, the phoneme does. Estonian gained the letter through high and extensive exposure to German, with Low German throughout centuries of effective Baltic German rule, and to Swedish, during the 160 years of Estonia as a part of the Swedish Empire until 1721.


title: Ä

text: In Emilian-Romagnol ä is used to represent , occurring in some Emilian dialects, e.g. Bolognese "well" and "people".


title: Ä

text: Under Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's suggestions to modify the Kazakh Latin alphabet, it will represent the IPA //, and the Cyrillic Ә is to be replaced by this letter, the replacement letter was Á in the 2018 proposal.


title: Ä

text: Ӓ is used in some alphabets invented in the 19th century which are based on the Cyrillic script. These include Mari, Altay and the Keräşen Tatar alphabet.


title: Ä

text: A similar glyph, A with umlaut, appears in the German alphabet. It represents the umlauted form of "a" ( when short), resulting in (or for many speakers) in the case of the long and in the case of the short . In German, it is called (pronounced ) or . Referring to the glyph as is an uncommon practice, and would be ambiguous, as that term also refers to Germanic a-mutation. The digraph is used for the fronting diphthong (otherwise spelled with ) when it acts as the umlauted form of the backing diphthong (spelled ); compare "Baum" 'tree' with "Bäume" 'trees'. In German dictionaries, the letter is collated together with "A", while in German phonebooks the letter is collated as "AE". The letter also occurs in some languages which have adopted German names or spellings, but is not a part of these languages' alphabets. It has recently been introduced in revivalist Ulster-Scots writing.


title: Ä

text: In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as US-ASCII, Ä is frequently replaced with the two-letter combination "Ae".


title: Ä

text: Historically A-diaeresis was written as an "A" with two dots above the letter. A-umlaut was written as an "A" with a small "e" written above (Aͤ aͤ): this minute "e" degenerated to two vertical bars in medieval handwriting


title: Ä

text: Æ, a highly similar ligature evolving from the same origin as "Ä", evolved in the Icelandic, Danish and Norwegian alphabets. The Æ ligature was also common in Old English, but had largely disappeared in Middle English.


title: Ä

text: In modern typography there was insufficient space on typewriters and later computer keyboards to allow for both A-diaeresis (also representing "Ä") and A-umlaut. Since they looked near-identical the two glyphs were combined, which was also done in computer character encodings such as ISO 8859-1. As a result, there was no way to differentiate between the different characters. Unicode theoretically provides a solution, but recommends it only for highly specialized applications.


title: Ä

text: Ä is also used to represent the (the schwa sign) in situations where the glyph is unavailable, as used in the Tatar and Azeri languages. Turkmen started to use Ä officially instead of the schwa from 1993 onwards.


title: SS Californian

text: SS "Californian" was a British Leyland Line steamship. It is thought to have been the only ship to see the "Titanic", or at least its rockets, during the sinking, but despite being the closest ship in the area, the crew took no action to assist. The United States Senate inquiry and British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry into the sinking both concluded that the "Californian" could have saved many or all of the lives that were lost, had a prompt response been mounted to the" Titanic" distress rockets. The U.S. Senate inquiry was particularly critical of the vessel's captain, Stanley Lord, calling his inaction during the disaster "reprehensible".


title: SS Californian

text: Despite this criticism, no formal charges were ever brought against Lord and his crew for their inaction. Lord disputed the findings and would spend the rest of his life trying to clear his name. In 1992, the UK Government's Marine Accident Investigation Branch re-examined the case and while condemning the inaction of the "Californian" and Captain Lord, also concluded that due to the limited time available, "the effect of "Californian" taking proper action would have been no more than to place on her the task actually carried out by "Carpathia", that is the rescue of those who escaped... [no] reasonably probable action by Captain Lord could have led to a different outcome of the tragedy".


title: SS Californian

text: "Californian" was later sunk on 9 November 1915, by the German submarines and , in the Eastern Mediterranean during World War I.


title: SS Californian

text: "Californian" was a British steamship owned by the Leyland Line, part of J.P. Morgan's International Mercantile Marine Co. She was constructed by the Caledon Shipbuilding & Engineering Company in Dundee, Scotland, and was the largest ship built in Dundee up to that time. The ship was built to the maximum dimensions that were allowed to moor and outfit her in the Dundee Docks. The ship's size and importance to the local shipbuilding industry meant that there was a lot of local interest in her construction as it progressed. There were also some problems – when both of the ship's boilers were being transported through the streets from a foundry to the shipyard the weight of them (carried on a wheeled bogie) caused considerable damage to the city's roads, as well as breaking a number of underground water pipes. Later when a crane was being used to rig a spar on one of the "Californian" four masts, the spar became tangled in nearby telephone wires and severed them.


title: SS Californian

text: She was designed primarily to transport cotton, but also had the capacity to carry 47 passengers and 55 crew members. The primary clientele was those passengers with too limited the means to travel on board large liners. By offering them comfortable cabins at an affordable prices (£10 per crossing in the direction Liverpool — Boston, £50 in the opposite direction), Leyland Line was able to secure some profits this way. Nonetheless, the ship was still primarily a freighter, as evidenced by her massive bunkers. She was named "Californian" according to a tradition specific to the company which gave its ships the name of one of the 46 states of the United States at the time. She measured 6,223 tons, was long, at her beam, and had a triple expansion steam engine powered by two double-ended boilers. Her average full speed was .


title: SS Californian

text: The accommodation of most of the fifty or so crew members was located below the foredeck. They stayed there in cabins designed for four to eight people that were quite uncomfortable, poorly ventilated and lighted. In all, the crew included the captain, four officers, a radio operator, and 49 crew members (sailors, drivers, trimmers, etc.). The cabins were located in the superstructure. The officers of the crew resided on the starboard side and the passengers on the port side. The facilities for passengers corresponded to the second class of most ships of the time. Although the cabins were not of high quality, they remained comfortable and had electric lighting, which was not the case on all contemporary ships. The passengers of the "Californian" also had at their disposal a smoking room on the upper starboard deck, decorated with oak panels and linoleum, a novelty at the turn of the century. The dining room was also decorated and comfortable.


title: SS Californian

text: "Californian" was launched on 26 November 1901 and completed her sea trials on 23 January 1902. From 31 January 1902 to 3 March 1902, she made her maiden voyage from Dundee to New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Subsequently, she made transatlantic crossings, generally carrying around thirty passengers in addition to her cargo. In 1902, she was chartered by the Dominion Line for five crossings to Portland, Oregon. She then returned to the Leyland Line service to serve the southern United States. From 1901 to 1911, she was commanded successively by four captains before being finally put under the command of Stanley Lord. By his young age (he obtained his captain's certificate at 24, a very early age compared to many of his colleagues) and by his spirit of initiative and his skills, Lord indeed promised to become a major captain in the British merchant fleet.


title: SS Californian

text: Between late 1911 and early 1912, "Californian" had a Marconi wireless apparatus installed in a refitted cabin. Her first radio operator was Cyril Furmstone Evans.


title: SS Californian

text: On March 30, 1912, the "Californian" made a stopover in London on a trip to New Orleans during which she had to face a storm which damaged part of her cotton cargo. Stanley Lord, who had commanded "Californian" since 27 March 1911, was her captain when she left the Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool, England on 5 April 1912 on her way to Boston, Massachusetts. She was not carrying any passengers on this voyage. On the navigation bridge, Lord was accompanied by three officers and an apprentice: George Stewart (second in command or chief officer), Herbert Stone (second officer), Charles Groves (third officer) and apprentice James Gibson.


title: SS Californian

text: The first week of the crossing was uneventful. On Sunday 14 April at 18:30 ship's time, "Californian" only wireless operator, Cyril Furmstone Evans (born 1892 in Croydon, Surrey, United Kingdom), signalled to the "Antillian" that three large icebergs were five miles to the south. "Titanic" wireless operator Harold Bride also received the warning and delivered it to the ship's bridge a few minutes later.


title: SS Californian

text: "Californian" encountered a large ice field at 22:20 ship's time, and Captain Lord decided to stop the ship and wait until morning before proceeding further. Before leaving the bridge, he thought he saw a ship's light away to the eastward but could not be sure it was not just a rising star. Lord continued to the engineers' cabins and met with the chief, whom he told about his plans for stopping. As they were talking, they saw a ship's lights approaching. Lord asked Evans if he knew of any ships in the area, and Evans responded: "only the "Titanic"." Lord asked Evans to inform her that "Californian" was stopped and surrounded by ice. Lord ordered Evans to warn all other ships in the area, which he did.


title: SS Californian

text: "Titanic" on-duty wireless operator, Jack Phillips, was busy clearing a backlog of passengers' trivial messages with the wireless station at Cape Race, Newfoundland, away, at the time. Evans's message that SS "Californian" was stopped and surrounded by ice was heard very strongly on "Titanic" due to the relative proximity of the two ships and drowned out a separate message Phillips had been in the process of receiving from Cape Race, bringing Phillips to rebuke Evans: "Shut up, shut up! I am busy; I am working Cape Race!". Philips never passed this message to the bridge, but in his defence, Evans had not prefixed the message with the letters, "MSG", which stood for Master Service Gram, as was customary for all messages intended for the bridge. A little bit later Evans, feeling that he had done his duty despite Philips's rude rejection of the message, switched off his wireless equipment and went to bed. One hour and 10 minutes later, at 23:40, "Titanic" hit an iceberg. Shortly after midnight, she transmitted her first distress call.


title: SS Californian

text: Third Officer Charles Groves of the "Californian" testified to the British inquiry that at 23:10 ship's time, he had seen the lights of another ship come into view 10 or 12 miles away, 3.5 points above "Californian" starboard beam. At about 23:30, Groves went below to inform Lord. The latter suggested that the ship be contacted by Morse lamp, which was tried, but no reply was seen. To Groves, she was clearly a large liner, as she had multiple decks brightly lit. The ship finally seemed to stop and extinguish her deck lights at 23:40, the same time "Titanic" stopped her engines. At the British inquiry, Groves agreed that if the ship he saw had turned two points to port, it would have concealed her deck lights.


title: SS Californian

text: Slightly after midnight, Second Officer Herbert Stone took watch from Groves. He testified that he, too, observed the ship, judging it to be about five miles away. He tried signalling her with the Morse lamp, also without success. Apprentice officer James Gibson, who had been doing the Morse signalling, testified that at 00:55, Stone told him he had observed five rockets in the sky above the nearby ship. Stone testified that he had informed Captain Lord, although the British inquiry did not ask whether or not he communicated the number. Lord asked if the rockets had been a company signal, but Stone did not know. Lord and Stone both testified that Stone reported they were not distress signals. Lord ordered Stone to tell him if anything about the ship changed, to keep signalling it with the Morse lamp, but did not order that it be contacted by wireless.


title: SS Californian

text: Gibson testified that Stone had expressed unease to him about the situation: "A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing", Stone said. "She looks very queer out of the water—her lights look queer." Gibson observed, "She looks rather to have a big side out of the water", and he agreed that "everything was not all right with her"; that it was "a case of some kind of distress". Stone, however, under questioning by the British inquiry which became more and more incredulous, testified repeatedly that he did not think at the time that the rockets could have been distress signals, and that the possibility did not occur to him until he learned the "Titanic" had sunk.


title: SS Californian

text: By 02:00, the ship appeared to be leaving the area. A few minutes later, Gibson informed Captain Lord as such and that eight white rockets had been seen. Lord asked whether he was sure of the colour. Gibson said yes and left.


title: SS Californian

text: At 02:20, "Titanic" sank. At 03:40, Stone and Gibson, still sharing the middle watch, spotted rockets to the south. They did not see the ship that was firing them, but at about this same time RMS "Carpathia" was coming quickly from the southeast, firing rockets to let "Titanic" know that help was on the way. At 04:16, Chief Officer George F. Stewart relieved Stone, and almost immediately noticed, coming into view from the south, a brilliantly-lit, four-masted steamship with one funnel; "Carpathia" arrived on the scene shortly after 04:00.


title: SS Californian

text: Captain Lord woke up at 04:30 and went out on deck to decide how to proceed past the ice to the west. He sent Stewart to wake Evans and find out what happened to the ship they had seen to the south. They subsequently learned from the "Frankfurt" that the "Titanic" had sunk overnight. Lord ordered the ship underway. "Californian" course took her west, slowly passing through the ice field, after which she turned south. "Californian" was sighted at 06:00 by steaming from the north. "Californian" actually passed the "Carpathia" to the east, then turned, and headed northeast back towards the rescue ship, arriving at 08:30.


title: SS Californian

text: "Carpathia" was just finishing picking up the last of "Titanic" survivors. After communicating with "Californian", "Carpathia" left the area, leaving "Californian" to search for any other survivors. However, "Californian" only found scattered wreckage, empty lifeboats, and corpses, and continued on its route to America. Upon arrival, several key crew members, including Lord and Evans, were summoned to give evidence at the American inquiry. Evans also gave evidence at the British inquiry into the tragedy. Like others involved in the disaster, he was offered large sums of money from newspapers for his story, but he refused it.


title: SS Californian

text: As public knowledge grew of the "Titanic" disaster, questions soon arose about how the disaster occurred, as well as if and how it could have been prevented.


title: SS Californian

text: A United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of the RMS "Titanic" started on 19 April 1912, the day "Californian" arrived unnoticed in Boston. Initially, the world was unaware of her and her part in the "Titanic" disaster. On 22 April, the inquiry discovered that a ship near "Titanic" had failed to respond to the distress signals. The identity of the ship was unknown.


title: SS Californian

text: The next day, a small newspaper in New England, "The Clinton Daily Item", printed a shocking story claiming that "Californian" had refused aid to "Titanic". The source for the story was "Californian" carpenter, James McGregor, who stated that he had been close enough to see "Titanic" lights and distress rockets. On the same day, the "Boston American" printed a story sourced by "Californian"s assistant engineer, Ernest Gill, which essentially told the same story as the "Daily Item".


title: SS Californian

text: Captain Lord also spoke with several Boston area newspapers but gave conflicting accounts. In a "Boston Traveller" article dated 19 April, Lord claimed that his ship was 30 miles from "Titanic", but in a "Boston Post" article dated 24 April, he claimed 20 miles. Lord told the "Boston Globe" that his ship had spent three hours steaming around the wreck site trying to render assistance, but Third Officer Grove later stated that the search ended after two hours, at 10:40. When reporters asked Lord about his exact position the night of the disaster, he refused to respond, calling such information "state secrets".


title: SS Californian

text: After the newspaper revelations on 23 April, the U.S. Senate inquiry issued subpoenas for multiple members of the crew, including Gill and Lord. During his testimony, Gill repeated his claims. Lord's testimony was conflicting and changing. For example, he detailed three totally different ice conditions. He admitted knowing about the rockets (after telling Boston newspapers that his ship had not seen any rockets) but insisted that they were not distress rockets, and they were not fired from "Titanic" but a small steamship, the so-called "third ship" of the night. Yet the testimony of Captain J. Knapp, U.S. Navy, and a part of the Navy Hydrographer's Office, made clear that "Titanic" and "Californian" were in sight of each other, and no third vessel had been in the area.


title: SS Californian

text: The so-called "scrap log" of "Californian" also came under question. This is a log wherein all daily pertinent information is entered before being approved by the captain and entered into the official log. Company policy of International Mercantile Marine Co., the parent of both Leyland Line and the White Star Line, required scrap logs to be destroyed daily. The official log mentioned neither a nearby ship nor rockets. At the British inquiry, Stone was not asked to recall the notations he had actually written in the scrap log, during his bridge-watch between midnight and 4:00 on 15 April.


title: SS Californian

text: On 2 May, the British Court of Formal Investigation began. Again, Lord gave conflicting, changing, and evasive testimony. By contrast, Captain Arthur Rostron of "Carpathia", at each inquiry, gave consistent and forthright testimony. During the British Inquiry, Rostron was asked to confirm an affidavit he had made to the United States Inquiry. Among the other things in his affidavit, he confirmed that "It was daylight at about 4.20 a.m. At 5 o'clock it was light enough to see all around the horizon. We then saw two steamships to the northwards, perhaps 7 or 8 miles distant. Neither of them was "Californian"."


title: SS Californian

text: During the inquiry, the crew of "Californian", like Captain Lord, gave conflicting testimonies. Most notably, Lord said he was not told that the nearby ship had disappeared, contradicting testimony from James Gibson who said he reported it, and Lord had acknowledged him.


title: SS Californian

text: Also during the inquiries, "Titanic" survivors recalled seeing the lights of another ship after "Titanic" had hit the iceberg. To "Titanic"s Fourth Officer Boxhall, the other ship appeared to be off "Titanic"s bow, five miles (8 km) away and heading in her direction. Just like "Californian" officers, Boxhall attempted signaling the ship with a Morse lamp, but received no response. However, "Titanic" lookout Frederick Fleet, who was in the crow's nest when the iceberg was sighted and remained there for another forty minutes, testified at the US inquiry that he did not see the lights of another ship while in the crow's nest. He only saw a light later after leaving the ship on a lifeboat.


title: SS Californian

text: "Titanic"s Captain Edward Smith had felt the ship was close enough that he ordered the first lifeboats launched on the port side to row over to the ship, drop off the passengers, and come back to "Titanic" for more. Moreover, lifeboat occupants reported the other ship's lights were seen from the lifeboats throughout the night; one lifeboat rowed towards them but never seemed to get any closer.


title: SS Californian

text: Both the American and British inquires found that "Californian" must have been closer than the claimed by Captain Lord, and that each ship was visible from the other. Indeed, when "Carpathia" arrived at the wreck site, a vessel was clearly seen to the north; this was later identified as "Californian". Both inquiries concluded that Captain Lord had failed to provide proper assistance to "Titanic", the British Inquiry concluding further "Californian"s responding to "Titanic"s rockets and going to assist "… might have saved many if not all of the lives that were lost".


title: SS Californian

text: In the months and years following the disaster, numerous preventive safety measures were enacted. The United States passed the Radio Act of 1912, which required 24-hour radio watch on all ships in case of an emergency. The first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea formed a treaty that also required 24-hour radio monitoring and standardized the use of distress rockets.


title: SS Californian

text: Despite the criticisms of Lord's conduct, no formal charges were ever brought against him. As a result, he had no right of appeal against the inquiry's findings. The issue was not considered again until the publication of Walter Lord's (unrelated to Captain Lord) book "A Night to Remember" in 1955 and the release of the 1958 film of the same name prompted Lord to seek a re-hearing of the inquiry relating to his ship, to counter the allegations made in the book and his portrayal in the film. Petitions presented to the UK Government in 1965 and 1968 by the Mercantile Marine Service Association (MMSA), a union to which Captain Lord belonged, failed to get the matter re-examined. However, when the wreck of the "Titanic" was discovered by Ballard's expedition in 1985, it was found to be 13 miles from its reported position (the location accepted by both inquiries), so the Board of Trade ordered a re-examination.


title: SS Californian

text: The British Government's Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) concluded its reappraisal of evidence in 1992. The conclusions were those of Deputy Chief Inspector, James de Coverly, stating: "What is significant, however, is that no ship was seen by the "Titanic" until well after the collision… watch was maintained with officers on the bridge and seamen in the crow's nest, and with their ship in grave danger the lookout for another vessel which could come to their help must have been most anxious and keen. It is in my view inconceivable that the "Californian" or any other ship was within the visible horizon of the "Titanic" during that period; it equally follows that the "Titanic" can't have been within the "Californian's" horizon." The report went on: "More probably, in my view, the ship seen by "Californian" was another, unidentified, vessel."


title: SS Californian

text: The original investigator of the 1992 reappraisal was a Captain Barnett, who unlike de Coverly, concluded "that the "Titanic" "was" seen by the "Californian" and indeed kept under observation from 23:00 or soon after on 14 April until she sank... [based on] the evidence from Captain Lord and the two watch officers, Mr. Grove and Mr. Stone". It was after Barnett's original report was submitted that Captain de Coverly was given the task of further examination. Both Barnett and de Coverly had concluded that "Titanic" rockets had been seen and that Stone and Lord had not responded appropriately to signals of distress.


title: SS Californian

text: The 1992 MAIB report concluded that Captain Lord and his crew's actions "fell far short of what was needed". The report did concede that even if "proper action had been taken", "Californian" could not have arrived on the scene until "well after the sinking". It also noted that when he did know of "Titanic" distress, Lord twice took his ship across an ice field to help search for survivors. Captain Lord's chief defender, union attorney, Leslie Harrison, who had led the fight to have the "Californian" incident re-examined by the British government, called the dual conclusions of the report "an admission of failure to achieve the purpose of the reappraisal".


title: SS Californian

text: The 1992 report by the MAIB was published just months after their publication of another controversial report, on the subject of the "Marchioness" disaster of 1989. This report had led to questions over the evidence-gathering, conduct and judgements of the MAIB.


title: SS Californian

text: Author Paul Lee accused Captain Lord of an "inability or unwillingness to adjust to an entirely new situation". Although Lord had stopped his ship upon encountering ice, the British inquiry concluded that if "Californian" had acted upon the rockets and pushed through the ice, the "Californian" "might have saved many, if not all, of the lives that were lost". The U.S Senate inquiry was also critical of Lord's inaction, the final report stating that "such conduct, whether arising from indifference or gross carelessness, is most reprehensible, and places upon the commander the "Californian" a grave responsibility".


title: SS Californian

text: Senator William Alden Smith, in a speech to the U.S. Senate inquiry, said: "the failure of Capt. Lord to arouse the wireless operator on his ship, who could have easily ascertained the name of the vessel in distress and reached her in time to avert loss of life, places a tremendous responsibility upon this officer from which it will be very difficult for him to escape". Author Daniel Allen Butler wrote: "The crime of Stanley Lord was not that he may have ignored the "Titanic's" rockets, but that he unquestionably ignored "someone's" cry for help."


title: SS Californian

text: Others have suggested that, considering all the circumstances, there was actually little if anything the "Californian" could have done to prevent or reduce the loss of life. Allegations have been made that trade unions defending Captain Lord succeeded in influencing the reports from the official investigations before they were available to the public. Williams and Kamps wrote in "Titanic and the Californian": "Bearing [the] distance in mind, and recalling that a mere fifty-five minutes had elapsed from the time Captain Lord was first informed about the rockets to the moment the "Titanic" slipped beneath the waves, it would have been nothing short of a miracle for Lord to bring his ship to the "Titanic" and effect a rescue in such a short space of time."


title: SS Californian

text: "Titanic" historian Tim Maltin theorized that the "Californian"'s inaction was the result of a cold water mirage, or superior mirage, arising from differences in air temperature over the warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the colder waters of the Labrador Current. Maltin suggested that this would cause a superior refraction, superimposing and stretching and distorting the edge of the sea and lifting images of objects, distorting their appearance. This would explain why the "Titanic"'s morse lamp was believed to be a flickering oil lamp on the mast of a much smaller ship, and why Capt. Lord thought the "Titanic" was a different vessel. If correct, Maltin's theory may further explain why the "Titanic"'s lookouts did not spot the iceberg earlier.


title: SS Californian

text: Cyril Evans continued his service with the Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company and its successor companies (Eastern Telegraph Company and Cable & Wireless: the later part of his career was spent as manager for Cable and Wireless on the West Indian island of St Lucia) for the rest of his life. He also served at sea in World War I and World War II, running mobile telecommunications for the British Army in North Africa and then Italy. He married and raised a family. In the film "A Night to Remember", Evans was portrayed by Geoffrey Bayldon.


title: SS Californian

text: On 2 July 1913, "Californian" was docked in Veracruz when a fire erupted in her 3 and 4 holds, sustaining serious damage to herself and her cargo.


title: SS Californian

text: "Californian" continued in normal commercial service until World War I, when the British government took control of her. She was responsible for transporting equipments and troops for the Allies mired in the Battle of Gallipoli.


title: SS Californian

text: On 9 November 1915, while en route from Salonica to Marseilles, she was torpedoed by the German U-boat . While she was under tow by a French patrol boat, she was torpedoed again, and, around 7:45 am, she sank in 10–13,000 feet of water, approximately south-southwest of Cape Matapan, Greece by , killing one person (fireman Richard John Harding) and injuring two others. To date, "Californian"s wreck remains undiscovered. "Californian" went down less than from where , "Titanic"s sister ship, would be sunk by a mine just over a year later.


title: SS Californian

text: The involvement of the "Californian" in the sinking of the "Titanic" is examined in the 2012 BBC TV drama "SOS""The Titanic Inquiry". The drama tells the story of the original British Inquiry into the sinking of "Titanic", which decided, using the facts that were available at the time, whether the "Californian" was in near enough proximity to the vessel to rescue some, if not all, of the 1,500 lives lost.


title: SS Californian

text: The 2016 novel "The Midnight Watch" by David Dyer explores the Titanic tragedy from the perspective of the crew of the "Californian." The narrative centres around a fictional American reporter who tries to uncover what really happened on board the "Californian" that fateful night.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a British former politician. As a member of the Labour Party, he served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1983 until 1992, and Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Kinnock was considered as being on the soft left of the Labour Party.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Born and raised in South Wales, Kinnock was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1970 general election. He became the Labour Party’s shadow education minister after the Conservatives won power in the 1979 general election. After the party under Michael Foot suffered a landslide defeat to Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 election, Kinnock was elected Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition. During his tenure as leader, Kinnock proceeded to fight the party's left wing, especially Militant tendency, and he opposed NUM leader Arthur Scargill's methods in the 1984–85 miners' strike. He led the party during most of the Thatcher administration, which included its third successive election defeat when Thatcher won the 1987 general election. Although Thatcher had won another landslide, Labour regained sufficient seats for Kinnock to remain Leader of the Opposition following the election.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock led the Labour Party to a surprise fourth consecutive defeat at the 1992 general election, despite the party being ahead of John Major’s Conservative government in most opinion polls, which had predicted either a narrow Labour victory or a hung parliament. Shortly afterwards, he resigned as Leader of the Labour Party, being succeeded in the ensuing leadership election by John Smith. He left the House of Commons in 1995 to become a European Commissioner. He went on to become the Vice-President of the European Commission under Romano Prodi from 1999–2004, before being elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Kinnock in 2005. Until the summer of 2009, he was also Chairman of the British Council and President of Cardiff University.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales. His father, Gordon Herbert Kinnock was a former coal miner who later worked as a labourer; and his mother Mary Kinnock (née Howells) was a district nurse. Gordon died of a heart attack in November 1971 aged 64; Mary died the following month aged 61.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In 1953, at eleven years old, Kinnock began his secondary education at Lewis School, Pengam, which he later criticised for its record on caning. He went on to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff (now Cardiff University), where he graduated in 1965 with a degree in Industrial Relations and History. The following year, Kinnock obtained a postgraduate diploma in education. Between August 1966 and May 1970, he worked as a tutor for a Workers' Educational Association (WEA).


title: Neil Kinnock

text: He has been married to Glenys Kinnock since 1967. They have two children – son Stephen Kinnock (born January 1970, now a Labour MP), and daughter Rachel Kinnock (born 1971).


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In June 1969, he won the Labour Party nomination for Bedwellty in South Wales, which became Islwyn for the 1983 general election. He was first elected to the House of Commons on 18 June 1970, and became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in October 1978. Upon his becoming an MP, his father said "Remember Neil, MP stands not just for Member of Parliament, but also for Man of Principle."


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In the 1975 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Communities, Kinnock campaigned for Britain to leave the Common Market.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Following Labour's defeat at the 1979 general election, James Callaghan appointed Kinnock to the Shadow cabinet as education spokesman. His ambition was noted by other MPs, and David Owen's opposition to the changes to the electoral college was thought to be motivated by the realisation that they would favour Kinnock's succession. Kinnock remained as education spokesman following the resignation of Callaghan as Leader of the Labour Party and the election of Michael Foot as his successor in late 1980.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In 1981, while still serving as Labour's education spokesman, Kinnock was alleged to have effectively scuppered Tony Benn's attempt to replace Denis Healey as Labour's Deputy Leader by first supporting the candidacy of the more traditionalist Tribunite John Silkin and then urging Silkin supporters to abstain on the second, run-off, ballot.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock was known as a left-winger, and gained prominence for his attacks on Margaret Thatcher's handling of the Falklands War in 1982, although it was in fact this conflict which saw support for the Conservative government increase, and contribute to its landslide re-election the following year.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Following Labour's landslide defeat at the 1983 general election, Michael Foot resigned as Leader of the Labour Party aged 69, and from the outset; it was expected that the much younger Kinnock would succeed him. He was finally elected as Labour Party leader on 2 October 1983, with 71% of the vote, and Roy Hattersley was elected as his deputy; their prospective partnership was considered to be a "dream ticket".


title: Neil Kinnock

text: His first period as party leader between the 1983 and 1987 general elections was dominated by his struggle with the hard-left Militant tendency, then still a dominant force in the party. Kinnock was determined to move the party's political standing to a centrist position, in order to improve its chances of winning a future general election. Although Kinnock had come from the Tribune left-wing of the party, he parted company with many of his former allies following his appointment to the Shadow Cabinet.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: The Labour Party was also threatened by the rise of the Social Democratic Party/Liberal Alliance, which pulled out more centrist adherents. On a broader perspective, the traditional Labour voter was disappearing in the face of de-industrialisation that the Conservative government had accepted since 1979. Kinnock focused on modernising the party, and upgrading its technical skills such as use of the media and keeping track of voters, while at the same time battling the Militants. Under his leadership, the Labour Party abandoned unpopular old positions, especially the nationalisation of certain industries, although this process was not completed until future party leader Tony Blair revamped Clause IV in the party's manifesto in 1995. He stressed economic growth, which had a much broader appeal to the middle-class than the idea of redistributing wealth to benefit the poor. He accepted membership in the European Economic Community, whereas the party had pledged immediate withdrawal from it under Michael Foot. He discarded the rhetoric of class warfare.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: All this meant that Kinnock had made plenty of enemies on the left-wing of the party by the time he was elected as leader, though a substantial number of former Bennites gave him strong support. He was almost immediately in serious difficulty as a result of Arthur Scargill's decision to lead his union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) into a national strike (in opposition to pit closures) without a nationwide ballot. The NUM was widely regarded as the labour movement's praetorian guard and the strike convulsed the Labour movement. Kinnock supported the aim of the strike – which he dubbed the "case for coal" – but, as an MP from a mining area, was bitterly critical of the tactics employed. When heckled at a Labour Party rally for referring to the killing of David Wilkie as "an outrage", Kinnock lost his temper and accused the hecklers of "living like parasites off the struggle of the miners" and implied that Scargill had lied to the striking miners. In 1985, he made his criticisms public in a speech to Labour's conference:


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In 2004, Kinnock said of Scargill, "Oh I detest him. I did then, I do now, and it's mutual. He hates me as well. And I'd much prefer to have his savage hatred than even the merest hint of friendship from that man."


title: Neil Kinnock

text: The strike's defeat early in the year, and the bad publicity associated with the entryism practised by the Trotskyist Militant group were the immediate context for the 1985 Labour Party conference. Earlier in the year, left-wing councils had protested at Government restriction of their budgets by refusing to set budgets, resulting in a budget crisis in the Militant-dominated Liverpool City Council. Kinnock attacked Militant and their conduct in a speech delivered at the conference:


title: Neil Kinnock

text: One Liverpool MP, Eric Heffer, a member of the NEC left the conference stage in disgust at Kinnock's comments. In June 1986, the Labour Party finally expelled the deputy leader of Liverpool council, the high-profile Militant supporter Derek Hatton, who was found guilty of "manipulating the rules of the district Labour party". By 1986, the party's position appeared to strengthen further with excellent local election results and a thorough rebranding of the party under the direction of Kinnock's director of communications Peter Mandelson, as well as seizing the Fulham seat in West London from the Conservatives at an April by-election. Labour, now sporting a continental social democratic style emblem of a rose (replacing the party's first logo, the Liberty logo), appeared to be able to run the governing Conservatives close, but Margaret Thatcher did not let Labour's makeover go unchallenged.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: The Conservatives' 1986 conference was well-managed, and effectively relaunched the Conservatives as a party of radical free-market economic liberalism. Labour suffered from a persistent image of extremism, especially as Kinnock's campaign to root out Militant dragged on as figures on the hard left of the party tried to stop its progress. Opinion polls showed that voters favoured retaining the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons, (Labour's policy, supported by Kinnock, was of unilateral nuclear disarmament), and believed that the Conservatives would be better than Labour at defending the country.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In early 1987, Labour lost a by-election in Greenwich to the SDP's Rosie Barnes. As a result, Labour faced the 1987 general election in some danger of finishing third in the popular vote, with the Conservatives once again expected to secure a comfortable victory. In secret, Labour's aim was to secure second place in order to remain as Official Opposition.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Mandelson and his team had revolutionised Labour's communications – a transformation symbolised by a party election broadcast popularly known as "Kinnock: The Movie". This was directed by Hugh Hudson and featured Kinnock's 1985 conference speech, and shots of him and his wife Glenys walking on the Great Orme in Llandudno (so emphasising his appeal as a family man and associating him with images of Wales away from the coal mining communities where he grew up), and a speech to that year's Welsh Labour Party conference asking why he was the "first Kinnock in a thousand generations" to go to university.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: On polling day, Labour easily took second place, but with only a 31% share of the vote to the SDP-Liberal Alliance's 22%. Labour was still more than ten percentage points behind the Conservatives, who retained a three-figure majority in the House of Commons. However, the Conservative government's majority had come down from 144 seats in 1983 to 102. Significantly, Labour had gained twenty seats at the election.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Labour won extra seats in Scotland, Wales and Northern England, but lost ground particularly in Southern England and London, where the Conservatives still dominated. The Conservatives also regained the Fulham seat which it had lost to Labour at a by-election just over a year earlier.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: A few months after the general election, Kinnock gained brief attention in the United States in August 1987 when it was discovered that then-US Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (and future 46th President) plagiarised one of Kinnock's speeches during his 1988 presidential campaign in a speech at a Democratic Party debate in Iowa. This led to Biden's withdrawal of his presidential campaign. The two men met after the incident, forming a lasting friendship.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: The second period of Kinnock's leadership was dominated by his drive to reform the party's policies to gain office. This began with an exercise dubbed the policy review, the most high-profile aspect of which was a series of consultations with the public known as "Labour Listens" in the autumn of 1987.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Following Labour Listens, the party went on, in 1988, to produce a new statement of aims and values—meant to supplement and supplant the formulation of Clause IV of the party's constitution (though, crucially, this was not actually replaced until 1995 under the leadership of Tony Blair) and was closely modelled on Anthony Crosland's social-democratic thinking—emphasising equality rather than public ownership. At the same time, the Labour Party's commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament was dropped, and reforms of Party Conference and the National Executive meant that local parties lost much of their ability to influence policy.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In 1988, Kinnock was challenged by Tony Benn for the party leadership. Later many identified this as a particularly low period in Kinnock's leadership — as he appeared mired in internal battles after five years of leadership with the Conservatives still dominating the scene, and being ahead in the opinion polls. In the end, though, Kinnock won a decisive victory over Benn and would soon enjoy a substantial rise in support.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: The policy review — reporting in 1989 —coincided with Labour's move ahead in the polls as the poll tax row was destroying Conservative support, and Labour won big victories in local council elections as well as several parliamentary by-elections during 1989 and 1990. Labour overtook the Conservatives at the 1989 European elections, winning 40% of the vote; the first time Labour had finished in first place at a national election in fifteen years.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In December 1989, Kinnock abandoned the Labour policy on closed shops—a decision seen by many as a move away from traditional socialist policies to a more European-wide agenda, and also a move to rid the party of its image of being run by trade unions.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Michael Heseltine challenged Thatcher's leadership and she resigned on 28 November 1990 to be succeeded by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major. Kinnock greeted Thatcher's resignation by describing it as "very good news" and demanded an immediate general election.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Public reaction to Major's elevation was highly positive. A new Prime Minister and the fact that Kinnock was now the longest-serving current leader of a major party reduced the impact of calls for "Time for a Change". Neil Kinnock's showing in the opinion polls dipped; before Thatcher's resignation, Labour had been up to 10 points ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls (an Ipsos MORI poll in April 1990 had actually shown Labour as being more than 20 points ahead of the Conservatives), but many opinion polls were actually showing the Conservatives with a higher amount of support than Labour, in spite of the deepening recession.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: By now Militant had finally been routed in the party, and their two MPs were expelled at the end of 1991, in addition to a number of supporters. The majority in the group were now disenchanted with entryism, and chose to function outside Labour's ranks, forming the Socialist Party.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In the three years leading up to the 1992 general election, Labour had consistently topped the opinion polls, with 1991 seeing the Conservatives (rejuvenated by the arrival of a new leader with John Major the previous November) snatch the lead from Labour more than once before Labour regained it. The rise in Conservative support came in spite of the economic recession and sharp rise in unemployment which affected Britain in 1991. Since Major's election as Leader of the Conservative Party (and becoming Prime Minister), Kinnock had spent the end of 1990 and most of 1991 putting pressure on Major to call a general election that year, but Major had held out and by the autumn he had insisted that there would be no general election in 1991.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Labour had gained four seats from the Conservatives in by-elections since the 1987 general election, having initially suffered disappointing results in some by-elections, namely a loss of the Govan constituency in Glasgow to the Scottish National Party in November 1988. However, by the end of 1991, the Conservative majority still stood at 88 seats and Labour needed to win more than ninety new seats to gain an overall majority, although there was still the hope of forming a minority or coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority. In the run-up to the election, held on 9 April 1992, most opinion polls had suggested that the election would result in either a hung parliament or a small Labour majority.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: At the 1992 general election, Labour made considerable progress – reducing the Conservatives' majority to just 21 seats. It came as a shock to many when the Conservatives won a majority, but the 'triumphalism' perceived by some observers of a Labour Party rally in Sheffield (together with Kinnock's performance on the podium) may have helped put floating voters off. Although internal polls suggested no impact, while public polls suggested a decline in support had already occurred, most of those directly involved in the campaign believe that the rally only came to widespread attention after the electoral defeat itself, with Kinnock himself changing his mind to a rejection of its negative impact over time. In an essay exploring why Kinnock never became Prime Minister, Steve Richards notes that the impact of the rally on the 1992 election "acquired a mythological status as fatal event" after Labour's defeat. He further argues that this explanation is "a red herring" and that the same result would have happened without the rally.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: On the day of the general election, "The Sun" newspaper ran a front page featuring Kinnock with the headline 'If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.' In his resignation speech, Kinnock blamed "The Sun" for Labour losing the election, along with other right-wing media sections who had backed the Conservatives in the run-up to the election. The following day's headline in "The Sun" was 'It's The Sun Wot Won It', which Rupert Murdoch - many years later, at his April 2012 appearance before the Leveson Inquiry - stated was both 'tasteless and wrong' and led to the editor Kelvin MacKenzie receiving a reprimand.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: The Labour-supporting "Daily Mirror" had backed Kinnock for the 1987 general election and did so again in 1992. Less expected was the "Financial Times" backing Kinnock at the 1992 general election.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock himself later claimed to have half-expected his defeat at the 1992 general election and proceeded to turn himself into a media personality, hosting a chat show on BBC Wales and twice appearing on the topical panel show "Have I Got News for You" within a year of the defeat. Many years later, he returned to appear as a guest host of the programme.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock announced his resignation as Leader of the Labour Party on 13 April 1992, ending nearly a decade in the role. John Smith, previously Shadow Chancellor, was elected on 18 July as his successor.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: He remains on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research, which he helped set up in the 1980s.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock was an enthusiastic supporter of Ed Miliband's campaign for the Leadership of the Labour Party in 2010, and was reported as telling activists, when Miliband won, "We've got our party back" – although Miliband, like Kinnock, failed to lead the party back into government, and resigned after the Conservatives were re-elected with a small majority in 2015. Labour received their lowest seat tally under Miliband since the 1987 general election; when Kinnock was leader at that time.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In 2011, he participated in the Welsh family history television programme "Coming Home" where he discovered hitherto unknown information about his family.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock was appointed one of the UK's two members of the European Commission, which he served first as Transport Commissioner under President Jacques Santer, in early-1995; marking the end of his 25 years in the House of Commons. This came less than a year following the death of his successor, John Smith and the election of Tony Blair as the party's new leader.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: He was obliged to resign as part of the forced, collective resignation of the Commission in 1999. He was re-appointed to the Commission under new President Romano Prodi. He now became one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Commission, with responsibility for Administrative Reform and the Audit, Linguistics and Logistics Directorates General. His term of office as a Commissioner was due to expire on 30 October 2004, but was delayed owing to the withdrawal of the new Commissioners. During this second term of office on the Commission, he was responsible for introducing new staff regulations for EU officials, a significant feature of which was substantial salary cuts for everyone employed after 1 May 2004, reduced pension prospects for many others, and gradually worsening employment conditions. This made him disliked by many EU staff members, although the pressure on budgets that largely drove these changes had actually been imposed on the Commission from above by the Member States in Council.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In February 2004, it was announced that with effect from 1 November 2004, Kinnock would become head of the British Council. Coincidentally, at the same time, his son Stephen became head of the British Council branch in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the end of October, it was announced that he would become a Member of the House of Lords (intending to be a working peer), when he was able to leave his EU responsibilities. In 1977, he had remained in the House of Commons, with Dennis Skinner, while other MPs walked to the Lords to hear the Queen's speech opening the new parliament. He had dismissed going to the Lords in recent interviews. Kinnock explained his change of attitude, despite the continuing presence of ninety hereditary peers and appointment by patronage, by asserting that the Lords was a good base for campaigning.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: He was introduced to the House of Lords on 31 January 2005, after being created, on 28 January, Baron Kinnock, of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent. On assuming his seat, he stated; "I accepted the kind invitation to enter the House of Lords as a working peer for practical political reasons." When his peerage was first announced, he said, "It will give me the opportunity... to contribute to the national debate on issues like higher education, research, Europe and foreign policy."


title: Neil Kinnock

text: His peerage meant that the Labour and Conservative parties were equal in numbers in the upper house of Parliament (subsequently the number of Labour members overtook the number of Conservative members for many years). Kinnock was a long-time critic of the House of Lords, and his acceptance of a peerage led him to be accused of hypocrisy, by Will Self, among others.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In the build up to the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum, the Labour government was in favour of devolution for Wales. Kinnock was one of just six MPs in South Wales who campaigned against devolution, and personally backed an amendment to the Wales Act stating that devolution would require not only a simple majority, but also the backing of 40% of the entire electorate. He later clarified that he supports devolution in principle, but found the proposed settlement at the time as failing to address the economic disparities in the UK, particularly following the closure of coal mines in Wales


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock has often referred to himself as a "unionist" and has stated that "between the mid-sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century Wales had practically no history at all, and even before that it was the history of rural brigands who have been ennobled by being called princes".


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Lord Kinnock strongly opposed Brexit. In 2018, Kinnock stated, “The truth is that we can either take the increasingly plain risks and costs of leaving the EU or have the stability, growth and revenues vital for crucial public services like the NHS and social care. Recognising that, we should stop Brexit to save the NHS – or, at very least, mitigate the damage by seeking European Economic Area membership.”


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock met Glenys Kinnock (née Parry) in the early 1960s whilst studying at University College, Cardiff, where they were known as "the power and the glory" (Glenys being the power), and they married on 25 March 1967. His wife was the UK's Minister for Africa and the United Nations from 2009–2010, and a Labour Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1994–2009. When she was made a life peer in 2009, they became one of the few couples both to hold titles in their own right. Previously living together in Peterston-super-Ely, a village near the western outskirts of Cardiff, in 2008 they relocated to Tufnell Park, London, to be closer to their daughter and grandchildren.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: They have a son, Stephen and a daughter, Rachel. Neil Kinnock, through his son Stephen, is also the father-in-law of Helle Thorning-Schmidt who was Prime Minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: On 26 April 2006, Kinnock was given a six-month driving ban after being found guilty of two speeding offences along the M4 motorway, west of London.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Lord Kinnock is a Cardiff City F.C. fan and regularly attends matches. He is also a follower of rugby union and supports London Welsh RFC at club level, regularly attending Wales games.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: He was portrayed by both Chris Barrie and Steve Coogan in the satirical TV programme "Spitting Image", and by Euan Cuthbertson in the Scottish film "In Search of La Che".


title: Neil Kinnock

text: In 2014, Lord Kinnock was painted by artist Edward Sutcliffe. The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition that year.


title: Neil Kinnock

text: Kinnock has been described as an agnostic and an atheist. Like his wife, he is a Patron of Humanists UK.


title: London Overground

text: London Overground (also known simply as the Overground) is a suburban rail network serving London and its environs. Established in 2007 to take over Silverlink Metro routes, it now serves a large part of Greater London as well as the home county of Hertfordshire, with 113 stations on nine different routes.


title: London Overground

text: The Overground forms part of the United Kingdom's National Rail network but it is under the concession control and branding of Transport for London. Operation has been contracted to Arriva Rail London since 2016. TfL assigned orange as a mode-specific colour for the Overground in branding and publicity including the roundel, on the Tube map, trains and stations.


title: London Overground

text: Rail services in Great Britain are mostly run under franchises operated by private train operating companies, marketed together as National Rail.


title: London Overground

text: The concept of developing a network of orbital services around London goes back to the independently produced Ringrail proposals in the early 1970s. Some of these were evaluated in the London Rail Study of 1974 (the Barren Report) and Barren suggested consideration of a North London Network of orbital services, based on a later suggestion by the Ringrail Group, which involved using many existing rail routes, rather than the new construction suggested in earlier drafts of the Ringrail Plan.


title: London Overground

text: The proposal from Barren was for several overlapping services mainly using the North London line, generally at 20-minute intervals. The suggested routes followed the original North London line service from Broad Street to Richmond, new services from Barking to Clapham Junction, and a third service from Ealing Broadway to North Woolwich. However, the Wilson government's continuing antipathy to the railways, along with British Rail's management's lack of interest in minor local train services, meant that few of these initiatives were carried forward.


title: London Overground

text: In 1979, the then Greater London Council (GLC) decided to sponsor an improved service from Camden Road, on the North London line, to North Woolwich, opening up a previously freight-only line between Dalston and Stratford and linking it to an improved Stratford – North Woolwich service. This was given the marketing name "Crosstown Linkline", and operated with basic two-car diesel multiple units.


title: London Overground

text: The next initiative came from the GLC in 1984, when the government supported the Broadgate development that would entail the demolition of Broad Street station. The closure process was convoluted because of problems in making alternative arrangements for the North London line, and the remaining services operating from Watford Junction to the City. These eventually ran to and from Liverpool Street via a new section of track, the Graham Road Curve.


title: London Overground

text: British Rail replaced the existing three-car electric trains (built 1957) with slightly newer but shorter two-car electric trains (built 1959), leading to overcrowding. In 1988, by reorganising and reducing services on the Great Northern routes from Moorgate, about 18 relatively modern dual-voltage electric trains were transferred to operate the North London and Watford services, from both Euston and Liverpool Street.


title: London Overground

text: Several voluntary sector groups, the Railway Development Society (RDS, later Railfuture), Transport 2000's then London groups, and the Capital Transport Campaign, launched a series of leaflets and briefings promoting a concept called Outer Circle. This name had once been used for a semi-circular service from Broad Street to Mansion House, which ceased during World War I.


title: London Overground

text: The pamphlets and briefings, first issued in 1997, initially suggested a route from Clapham Junction to the Greenwich Peninsula, intended to improve access from south London to the Millennium Dome. However, this was thwarted by architect Richard Rogers who considered that a railway route on a viaduct could cause "community severance", and so the Victorian brick viaduct was demolished. Nothing further happened to develop this network until after the new Greater London Authority (GLA) was launched in 2000. But the lobbying discreetly continued, with a series of short briefings published by one RDS member based in North London. Mayoral and GLA candidates were approached to discuss the viability of the Outer Circle concept. The principle was widely supported and was adopted into the first Mayor's Transport Plan, published in 2001.


title: London Overground

text: Meanwhile, a pilot scheme was launched in 2003 to bring several National Rail local services, mainly in South London, operated by Connex South Eastern, Southern and South West Trains under the ON – Overground Network brand. TfL introduced consistent information displays, station signage and maps on the selected routes in South London. Although this pilot was primarily an exercise in branding, some service improvements were introduced, and it was the first instance of the newly created TfL having a visible influence over National Rail services. The pilot scheme was later dropped.


title: London Overground

text: In January 2004 the Department for Transport (DfT) announced a review of the rail industry in Great Britain. As part of that review, TfL proposed a "London Regional Rail Authority" to give TfL regulatory powers over rail services in and around Greater London.


title: London Overground

text: A result of this consultation was agreement by the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, to transfer the Silverlink Metro services from DfT to TfL control.


title: London Overground

text: Silverlink had two areas of operation: Silverlink County regional services from to , , and ; and Silverlink Metro within the London urban area. When the franchise was split up in 2007, County services were taken over by the London Midland franchise, and the Metro services came under TfL control. TfL decided to let this franchise as a management contract, with TfL taking the revenue risk.


title: London Overground

text: On 20 February 2006, the DfT announced that TfL would take over management of services then provided by Silverlink Metro. Tenders were invited to operate the service under the provisional name of the North London Railway. On 5 September 2006, London Overground branding was announced, and it was confirmed that the extended East London line would be included.


title: London Overground

text: On 25 June 2007 a statutory instrument was laid before parliament to exclude the ex-Silverlink metro lines from the franchising process which enabled them to be operated as a concession.


title: London Overground

text: On 11 November 2007, TfL took over the North London Railway routes from Silverlink Metro. The following day there was an official launch ceremony at Hampstead Heath station with the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone; there was also a later media event on the bay platform at Willesden Junction.


title: London Overground

text: The launch was accompanied by a marketing campaign entitled "London's new train set", with posters and leaflets carrying an image of model railway packaging containing new Overground trains, tracks and staff.


title: London Overground

text: At the launch, TfL undertook to revamp the routes by improving service frequencies and station facilities, staffing all stations, introducing new rolling stock and allowing Oyster pay as you go throughout the network from the outset.


title: London Overground

text: After the takeover, all stations were "deep-cleaned", and Silverlink branding removed. Station signage was replaced with Overground-branded signs using TfL's corporate New Johnston typeface.


title: London Overground

text: On 15 April 2009 the North London line trains at Stratford moved to new high-level platforms 1 and 2 from low-level platforms 1 and 2, which were needed for the Docklands Light Railway's Stratford International service. The new platforms 1 and 2 are an island platform with step-free access to platform 12 and subway links to platforms 3–11.


title: London Overground

text: On 27 September 2009, Imperial Wharf station opened on the West London line, between West Brompton and .


title: London Overground

text: On 27 April 2010, the East London line became part of the London Overground network when the Phase 1 extension was completed. The former London Underground line was extended northwards, mostly along the former Broad Street viaduct of the North London line, to the re-opened , and southwards to and West Croydon.


title: London Overground

text: Operations began with a limited preview service between Dalston Junction and New Cross/New Cross Gate, with full operation between Dalston Junction and West Croydon/Crystal Palace on 23 May. On 28 February 2011, the line between Dalston Junction and Highbury & Islington was opened. In attendance were the Mayor of London and London Underground's Managing Director. TfL announced in November 2010 that ridership was ahead of forecast at 92,000 a day, and that patronage at Surrey Quays had "gone through the roof".


title: London Overground

text: The incorporation of the East London line into the Overground network has added substantial sections of line in tunnel, including the historic Thames Tunnel, the oldest tunnel under a navigable river in the world. A peculiarity is that at the London Overground runs below the London Underground (though there are other parts of the network where this occurs, e.g. the Watford Junction to Euston route between Kenton and South Kenton – shared with the Bakerloo line – passes under the Metropolitan line between Northwick Park and Preston Road).


title: London Overground

text: The next addition opened on 9 December 2012, from to via the South London line, calling at , , , and . The extension uses an alignment between Surrey Quays and just north of that had been disused since 1911; new track was laid after some major civil engineering works. Passive provision has also been made for a new station at , to be constructed when funding becomes fully available. This was put on hold in 2009, although a suitable station 'foundation structure' has been built to facilitate completion in the future.


title: London Overground

text: Funding for the railway rebuilding project was secured in February 2009, including £64 million from the DfT and £15 million from TfL, and construction began in May 2011.


title: London Overground

text: The route passes over both and stations without stopping, and this lack of interchange stations was criticised by local politicians during the planning phase of the project. No stations are planned at these locations as the line is on high railway arches, making the cost of any station construction prohibitive.


title: London Overground

text: On 31 May 2015 the Liverpool Street to Enfield Town, Cheshunt (via Seven Sisters) and Chingford services, as well as the Romford to Upminster service, were transferred from Greater Anglia to TfL to become part of the London Overground network.


title: London Overground

text: The initial network, service levels and timetables were a continuation of Silverlink Metro services, a set of routes primarily built and electrified by the North London and London & North Western railway companies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As the Overground name implies, the majority of the network is above ground, and it mostly consists of railway lines that connect areas outside Central London, with a considerable portion of the network in Zone 2. The network also uses in central London, the southern terminus of the Watford DC line.


title: London Overground

text: The network interchanges with the Bakerloo, Central, District, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee, Northern, Circle, Metropolitan and Victoria tube lines, and also with the Docklands Light Railway, Tramlink and Elizabeth line networks. The Overground lines appear on Tube maps issued by TfL, and a separate map of the system is available.


title: London Overground

text: Much of London Overground passes through less affluent areas, and is seen as contributing to their regeneration. The North London and Gospel Oak to Barking lines were previously considered by the Transport Committee of the London Assembly to be neglected and not developed to their full potential.


title: London Overground

text: Battersea Park railway station is served by an infrequent parliamentary train service from , which terminates at Battersea Park instead of . Since the reorganization of services into the London Overground network, this has been the only service to use the link from platform 2 at Battersea Park to .


title: London Overground

text: Highbury & Islington to New Cross, Clapham Junction, Crystal Palace and West Croydon services are served by New Cross Gate TMD.