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Clearing Houses Conference closes down
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Page 31
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• The National Conference of Road Transport Clearing Houses has entered into voluntary liquidation. The members endorsed a resolution to this effect, on the recommendation of the national council, at a general meeting held on March 26.
All business has ceased from the former offices in Trafalgar Square.
In his report of the year 196869 the national chairman, Mr. S. Marsh, Transmotors Ltd., Newcastle-upon-Tyne, said: "There have been several meetings of your national council since we last met at the annual general meeting in June 1968, although in that period only one area meeting was convened and that was so poorly attended as to preclude repetition of the effort.
"It being essential that an organization such as this has strong grass roots, the poSition of your national council has not been an enviable one, lacking the stimulus of area resolutions and the cross-fertilization of ideas, aims and objects normally enhanced thereby. This falling-off in attendance has been part of a continuing pattern over the past 4/5 years.
"The application of the guillotine to Parliamentary Committee debate on the Transport Bill and the somewhat brutal annulment of the work of the House of Lords have emphasized all too clearly that Whitehall knows best' and that we shall all do what they say.
"In terms of the road transport industry, a grave blow was delivered to the principle of national co-ordination by the interference of the Prices and Incomes Board in 1966. Their widely publicized campaign against the function of national trade organizations has had a direct result in the fragmentation of efforts to recoup costs inflicted by the other elements of Government. Similarly, national wages agreements with the unions have suffered from frag ation resulting in what has been desd as 'a rash of unrelated local agrees to raise pay, often with only lip-service to productivity'. So localized are these iments that even the areas of the Natio;onference cover too much territory to a co-ordination influence.
our National Council has searched for in which service to members might be tively broadened but the very constitution e conference imposes severe limitations ocedure.
'ding up
eying regard to all these factors, it was ed in National Council at a meeting held ,lovember 21 1968 to wind up the ties of the Conference at the end of the nt subscription year, being March 31 I, and that renewal subscriptions be neither invited nor accepted from that date.
"I wish to make it quite clear that this measure is not dictated by financial reasons. Certainly administrative costs have escalated over the past 4/5 years. Had the other circumstances been more encouraging, the raising of funds compatible with rising expenditure would have been achieved by the logical process of increasing membership subscriptions.
"We have been indebted to Mr. Steve Eastmead, national hon. treasurer, for many years, during which long spell of office the Conference has never lacked essential funds, I pay inadequate but heartfelt tribute to him."
Mr. Marsh also paid tribute to the Conference's secretary, Mr. H. C. F. Squire, Mr. Harold Benjamin, solicitor, Mr. Malcolm Reid, auditor, and he personally thanked the president, Mr. R. W. Elliott, MP, "for the many ways he has sought to help us".