Playing at Trains
Page 58
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
WHAT is beyond our comprehension frightens us. less if we can persuade ourselves that some of its characteristics are familiar. Road operators can more easily face the opposition of Governments and civil servants when they believe it is motivated by malevolence. It is somehow better to be the victim of a warm emotion than of a cold theory. The belief that the bureaucrat hates the haulier often seems the most
likely explanation of the facts. Restriction of road users has become the almost automatic official response to every transport problem.
An alternative explanation is that the individual bureaucrat has no feeling one way or the other. His decisions have their roots, not in his own nassions, but in his department's policy, which in its turn can often be traced back to a White Paper, or to the accepted dictum of an expert whose very name is half forgotten.
Examples of the continuity of civil service thought, and of the suspect assumptions on which it is often based, may be found in many of the volumes giving the history of the second world war on the civil front, and perhaps in none better than the most recent addition to the series, written by Mr. C. I. Savage and dealing with inland transport Those hauliers, or their reptesentatives, who were told so forcibly at the beginning of the war by officials of the Ministry of Transport that all long-distance goods transport would have to go by rail may continue to believe in the malignity of the civil service. Mr. Savage would no doubt have other reasons. The switch from road to rail was the official policy, and not just a personal vendetta. The opinions that moulded the policy, says Mr. Savage, were rarely put down in so many words; "nor indeed do we find them closely analysed." Their effect was perhaps even more powerful because they were indeterminate.
. Surplus Capacity According to Mr: Savage, many people in the late 1930s held the view that the British railway system had a large surplus capacity, readily available in time of war, and that road transport services were ample. if not more than sufficient to meet existing needs. " If it should become necessary to cut down road transport services in war-time, it followed that the traffic could be transferred without difficulty to the railways."
Partly responsible were the findings of committees that had the task of assessing the role to be played by road and rail in war-time. One such body, known as the Heacilam Committee, made an attempt to estimate the capacity of the railways to handle extra traffic from the West Coast ports. figures obtained separately from each port were added together. On the strength of this calculation, the committee decided that the railways could move from the ports more than 4+ times the volume of traffic they, were accustomed to handling at that time.
It seems almost incredible that this kind of arithmetic could have been accepted so readily and so generally. Experience was soon to show up the flaws in the reasoning, but some illusions remain powerful in spite of shocks. Faith in the railways has recently been backed by large loans and advances that will be irretrievably c16 lost unless fulfilment backs the promise of the recent memorandum from the British Transport Commission to the Minister of Transport.
Before the war, the railways played their part in influencing public opinion by what Mr. Savage calls their cheerful view" that they could manage whatever traffic was offered them, and under whatever cir cumstances it had to be carried. He quotes some extremely optimistic advice given in 1937 by Sir Herbert Walker, a former chairman of the railway executive committee, advice that was implicitly accepted by the Ministry of Transport and by the Committee of Imperial
Defence. •
The resources and reserves _ of railway carrying capacity in times of emergency would be found to be 'immense ' and certainly equal to any strain thrown upon
them. . He could suggest no physical or operating question which in his opinion needed special attention, apart from the protection of vulnerable points, including generating stations."
Sober Account With opinions such as this forming the basis of Government policy, it was inevitable that one of the first actions taken when war broke out was to restrict road transport. The natural reason, or excuse, was to save fuel, but-even Mr. Savage's sober account does not altogether disguise the initial enthusiasm with which the authorities hurried to put their theories into actual practice.
The lesson of the war should have been that even a small reduction in the work of road operators can have a serious effect upon the national economy. Whether even now the lesson has been learned is open to doubt. When the situation in the Middle East became serious, the first, almost the instinctive, reaction of the Government was to coerce trade and industry into using rail, particularly for long-distance traffic.
For this reaction, little-justification can be found in , Mr. Savage's book. The Headlam Committee reported 20 years ago, but their soul goes marching on. Perhaps there is something to be said in favour of those hauliers who, in their tussles with bureaucracy, insist on making the argument personal rather than objective.
An Outsider The typical civil servant likes facts, figures and certainty. These he can get in much greater measure from the railways than from road transport., On the first day of September, 1939, the principal British railways were brought under control. There may have been many civil servants who welcomed the chance of playing at trains. From this point of view, the haulier was an unwanted intruder, an outsider.
Mr. Savage's history traces the successive steps taken to bring road. haulage under complete control. The emergency road transport organization, with its districts, sub-districts and groups, remained in being throughout the war to administer fuel rationing under the control of the regional transport commissioners. Zoning schemes and rationalization kept the trader in check, and from 1943 onwards long-distance road haulage was entirely in the hands of the road haulage organization, in many ways the forerunner of nationalization.