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What song the sirens sang
ULYSSES stuffed the ears of his sailors with wax and made them bind him to the mast when they were passing the land of the Sirens. In this way he was able to hear their ravishing song but was prevented from leaping into the, sea to join them and thus bring about his own destruction.
Transport trade associations over the past year have followed his example. They must have been charmed by the encouragement from the Conservative party and in particular the pledge to repeal quantity licensing but they have staunchly resisted the temptation to link themselves with the party. They have not contributed to party funds and they have rationed the number of political speakers at their.meetings.
This has not spared them from the occasional accusation that they are doing all the things they carefully refrain from doing. The Labour MP or trade union leader who says so confidently that the Road Haulage Association keeps the Conservative party going may believe he is speaking the truth because to him it would seem the natural action to take.
In the USA there is not the same anxiety shown by transport organizations for disengagement from party politics. A group has been formed with the title of Transportation Volunteers for Nixon-Agnew and although the American transport associations are not directly concerned there is no indication that they disapprove.
No great issue •
There is no great issue such as the Transport Act to divide the Republican presidential candidate from his rivals. What the volunteers may have in mind is his support for a Bill which would have increased the permitted width and weights of lorries on interstate highways. After an encouraging start the Bill ran into trouble and there now seems no hope that it will be passed in the present session.
Of course, what happens in Britain is not a very reliable guide to the American scene. The Bill had the support of Mr. Alan Boyd, TransportationSecretary, who was appointed by the Democratic President, Mr. Johnson. Moreover, the main opposition has been stimulated by a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Fred Schwengel, largely on the grounds that the American Trucking Associations had made payments to a number of Democrats on the Public Works Committees. To confuse the issue further one of the alleged payments was also to a Republican Senator, one of the sponsors of the Bill.
An article in the New York Times charts the course of events since the Bill "breezed almost unnoticed through the Senate last spring". It may have seemed an innocuous measure—and perhaps indeed it was—since it did not seek to compel any of the individual States to change their present size and weight limits but merely to raise the limits within which any change would be permitted. It would have given the States greater freedom and less Federal control.
The present limits were set in 1956 and supporters of the Bill believe that many of the States would take advantage of the opportunity to allow bigger and heavier lorries. The ATA in its journal Transport Topics—and here at least we are on familiar ground—speaks of a need for "an increase in productivity at a time when economists are warning that more production per man-hour constitutes the best hope of allaying the nation's most pressing economic problem—inflation".
The ATA also refer to a "barrage of false information" no doubt having in mind the allegations of Representative Schwengel. The New York Times claims on the other hand that some of the legislators have acknowledged receiving payment. But the article makes plain that the story broke some time after the launching of a ampaign against the Bill and the ATA by in this curious order) a reporter for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, the 17 newspapers of the Scripps-Howard chain and the American Automobile Association with a membership of urn.
The newspapers put fOrward several arguments against the Bill. Improvements to inter-state highways to accommodate heavier vehicles would cost, it was said, £1,000m. There were numerous old bridges which could not take the additional weight. Heavy lorries made up only 1.5 per cent of all registrations, but accounted for 5.3 per cent of vehicle mileage and 11.6 per cent of fatalities on the roads where they were allowed.
Different in America Supporting the attack the American AA ran a whole-page advertisement in several newspapers showing a "three-trailer truck with a huge boar's head devouring the road as an endless line of motorists sat by helplessly". This legendary three-trailer truck played an important part in the campaign. The ATA issued its own advertisements and counter publicity describing the attacks as "scurrilous" and -misleading."
They order these things differently in America. In Britain there may well be just as many causes for dispute between motorists and commercial vehicle operators but it is hard to imagine the AA and the RHA fighting a press advertising battle or throwing unsavoury accusations at each other.
The same contrast has been seen in the past in the rivalry between road and rail. At one time in the USA the railways were running a full-scale public relations campaign designed to block legislation which would help commercial vehicle operators. Outside consultants were used and every attempt was made to represent the campaign as the spontaneous reaction of individuals and organizations having no connection with the railways. Incidentally there has so far been no suggestion that the attack on the more recent Bill has been inspired in the same way.
In Britain the railways and hauliers may have been locked in combat but few signs have appeared on the surface at any rate since the war. A somewhat pale imitation of what has happened in America was attempted by the allegedly neutral Road and Rail Association, forerunner of what is now the National Council on Inland Transport. Some years ago a press report disclosed that the firm of public relations consultants from whose address the Association was run had been receiving a substantial fee from the British Transport Commission. According to the same report the arrangement was terminated by Dr. Richard Beeching, at that time the BTC chairman.
Supporters of the Bill in the USA have not given up hope. The presidential campaign has provided an opportunity to test the opinions of the candidates. VicePresident Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, is said to have condemned the Bill and to have asked Mr. Nixon to do the same. To this request Mr. Nixon has replied that he has had no opportunity to study all the aspects of a highly technical issue. He does not intend "under the pressure of political expediency to glibly condemn legislation introduced by a bi-partisan group of 22 respected Western senators, approved by the US Senate and endorsed by the Bureau of Public Roads and the American Association of State Highway Officials-.
It is to say the least interesting to British operators to find proposals for bigger and heavier lorries approved by the last-named organisation—better known as ASSHOwhose report on road surfaces has so often been quoted in opposition to any increase in vehicle size and weights.
Balancing Mr. Humphrey's somewhat discouraging attitude to the Bill is the policy on roads laid down by his part at the Chicago convention. "Despite the tremendous progress of our inter-state highway programme," says the party's manifesto, "still more super-highways are needed for safe and rapid motor transportation. We need to establish local road networks to meet regional requirements." There are other proposals generally in favour of road transport.
The American operator who would like to cast his vote for the candidates most likely to support his own interests has a more difficult task, one suspects, than operators in Britain. Whatever may be said against the Sirens, the impression from near-contemporary accounts is that they sang in pretty close harmony and that there was no mistaking their message.