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• If the Transport and General Workers Union goes ahead with its threat to boycott Little Chefs, other Trusthouse Forte establishments and Happy Eaters, Commercial Motor will give the union its full support.
No-one who has visited the South Mimrns service are on the M25 in a truck, only to be treated like a second class citizen, coal fail to have sympathy with the objectives of the TGWU. Truck drivers are responsible, professional men and women who keep the wheels of British commerce rolling. None of them deserves the appalling conditions they face every day on our roads. With fewer and fewer decent places for them to park, eat, drink or wash.
Something has got to give, and the TGWU is quite right when it asks MPs to ensure that every new development alongside our trunk roads and primary routes should have rest facilities for trucks and their drivers. If the French can do it so successfully, it should hardly be beyond the wit of an Englishman to follow suit.
In France, no doubt, angry drivers would already have parked their trucks en masse across autoroutes, or blocked busy streets outside the parliament buildings to protest and draw attention to the raw deal they felt they were receiving. In Britain, for some unfathomable reason, drivers seem prepared to accept the ever-worsening situation without complaint.
The TGWU's campaign is humane and sensible — this must be one of the few occasions in recent years when the union has received support from both the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association. The only problem is that words and comaraderie will never change things. Action is needed.