CLARION CALL
Page 67
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ROMANTIC fancies have a hard time of it nowadays, what with Freud, television and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If there are still damsels in distress,.it is because they like things that way. The hero who comes to save the lady ends by rescuing the dragon. When the knight in shining armour comes back with the girl, her family have already given up her room to a lodger.
Ever since the Ivory Tower was set up, there have been people prepared to speculate about what goes on inside. The game became a serious pursuit after the Conservatives announced that they were going to make some changes. A pathetic picture was drawn, usually by the Socialists, of the British Transport Commission ruthlessly deprived of their dream of a perfectly. integrated. system. Their grief was said to be increased by the pillage of one of the few elements in the undertaking that made a profit.
What have seldom been canvassed are the opinions of the comparatively small number of people who run the Commission. They were told at the outset that they must seek after integration. As loyal servants, they joined in the hunt and tried to look as if they were enjoying it. If a poll were taken of what they really thought about integration, it has never been published. When the official policy was changed by the Transport Act, 1953, they at least made a pretence of welcoming competition.
British Road Services were in the best position of all to disguise their true feelings. They were told to carve up their organization into job lots and offer them for sale. They were entitled to protest and seek public sympathy. For the most part they kept a creditably stiff upper lip, modelling themselves on the members of the aristocracy waiting their turn for the guillotine. So well did they comport themselves that, even now, a publication as staid and balanced as The Times Review of Industry can refer, with a brief flicker of something almost like anguish, to " the upset of the ill-timed and ill-advised attempt at denationalization."
Miscellaneous Assortment
A possible reason why B.R.S. have not complained is that they have nothing to complain about. Through no fault of their own they were compelled to take over far more vehicles than they needed and a miscellaneous assortment of property. Many of the vehicles were sold or left unused; much of the property was of no value to B.R.S. although it had been ideally suited to the previous owners. It was little-hardship to the Commission to be forced to sell equipment they would rather not have had in the first place. When due allowance is made for natural prejudice, there remains a good deal of strength in the widespread complaints among purchasers of transport units about the quality of the vehicles that were sold back.
In the later stages, B.R.S. may have had ta disgorge what they would rather have kept, but this part of the process did not last very long before the Government themselves put the shutters up. If it were possible to have a. sincere expression of opinion, it might.well be found that•B.R.S. were more than pleased with denationalization.
What is also noteworthy is that they have made no attempt at a measure of integration with the railways on a voluntary basis: The opportunity has been there in practice if not in theory. The 1953 Act changed the duty of the Commission so as to make it no longer an obligation to pursue integration, but did not expressly forbid the pursuit.
Since the compulsion has been .lifted, there seems to be no great enthusiasm underneath, and this may indicate in .a negative sense of what the Commission are thinking. Expression of Opinion is likely to be less inhibited once the Ivory Tower has been left behind. Mr. A. J. White, former assistant general manager of British Railways' .Eastern Region, recently retired after 45 years' service and now aets in an advisory capacity. He has now expressed the view that voluntary co-ordination of road" and rail transport is better than competition in order to prevent the railways dying of starvation and road transport of
strangulation. His explanation of the present lack of co-ordination between the two forms of transport is that legislation and public opinion have usually acted to drive them apart.
Reducing Congestion
Mr. White gives the advice, by now not very novel, that "much of the heavy freight traffic now on the roads" should be taken back by the railways. Without producing any evidence for the assertion, he claims that his proposal would please the ordinary citizen by reducing road congestion, making road conditions more pleasant for the motorist and contributing to road safety.
A body of opinion that Mr. White dignifies with the title of "economic experts" is said to buttress the uninformed opinion of the ordinary citizen by pointing out that for some tasks the railways are indispensable, and that "as railways cannot live on the proceeds of those tasks alone, they should be enabled to retain enough traffic to ensure their continued existence." After plainly demanding special treatment for the railways, Mr. White completes our bafflement by expressing the belief that "in fair competition modernized railways can certainly be operated profitably."
This final clarion call is more the kind of language nom being spoken within the Ivory Tower itself. There are fewer of the ambiguities in which Mr. White indulges. A particularly spirited approach to the transport problem conies from Mr. J. Hancock, commercial officer, Eastern Region, in a contribution to British Transport Review.
His theme is "Modernization: What salesmen want" and he describes as " all-important" the task of selling British Railways during the next 10 years in competition with other forms of transport.
On one point of great interest to hauliers My. Hancock is not completely clear. "Modernization of, charging has gone a long way and has now asSunned a flexibility which
is . encouraging," he says. Many haulier believe the Process has gone much too far and that excessive ,ratecutting by the railways in order to get traffic they particularly want is having a depressing effect upon -rates in general and alSo upon the already sombre financial future of the Commission.
. Mr. Hancock seems oblivious of the danger. He refers with obvious satisfaction to the arrangements now possible as a result of greater freedom under the 1953 Act. " The order of the day," with certain exceptions, he describes as "complete flexibility coupled with enterprise." In rates negotiations the salesmen "often have to be guided by the form of charge the trader wants." "Nor need we hesitate to adopt the old-fashioned method of throwing a sprat to catch a mackerel." Any haulier will warn Mr. Hancock of the consequences of this way of thinking.