2-847-752 - Historic England Archive/Heritage Images

A crowd of people gathered to watch the inauguration ceremony of the first section of the London to Yorkshire Motorway (the M1), at Slip End near Luton. At the inauguration ceremony, Harold Watkinson set a bronze seal into a concrete inauguration slab and set off a klaxon as a signal to the drivers of the excavating machines to begin work. The ceremony was attended by Sir John William Laing and Sir John Maurice Laing. Among the guests were also representatives of the five counties which the road was to pass through.