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Inadequate Representation of Commercial Vehicle Interests.

24th October 1907
Page 1
Page 1, 24th October 1907 — Inadequate Representation of Commercial Vehicle Interests.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, in pursuance of one section of a comprehensive programme for the protection of its members, has temporarily settled its course of action in regard to provincial shows. Signers of the Society's bond, who, until recently, were under a compact to exhibit nowhere, within a 20-mile radius of Charing Cross, except at Olympia, are now required to deny themselves the right of making a display anywhere in the United Kingdom otherwise than on three, particular occasions, at Dublin, Edinburgh, and Manchester. We believe that this tentative arrangement will prove impracticable, if not positively harmful to the Society, and we take this view for, among others, the following reasons. The decision, in the first place, shows a lack of appreciation of the views of manufacturers whose sole interests lie in commercial motors, to which class many belong. Why, in Manchester, for example, should the Society approve a building which is structurally unfitted for the staging of heavy vehicles? Again, why impose an unnecessary strain upon the loyalty of makers who have, for many years, done good business at some of the leading agricultural shows, such as the Royal of England, the Royal 'Lancashire, the Bath and West, the Highland, and others which might be named? The Society has done admirable work for the consolidation and unification of the motor industry, and it is, therefore, all the more difficult to follow the supposed causes of this apparently gratuitous and super_ fluous effort to give offence. The policy in question may suit the private-car branch of the motor trade well, but it certainly is directly counter to the judgment of many influential members of the heavy branch.

The foregoing considerations, possibly, indicate the need for still one snore change in the constitution of the Council of the Society. The representation of commercial motoring is, at the present time, wholly disproportionate. We learn that, on Saturday last, a private meeting of a few makers of business vehicles was held in London, for the purpose of inaugurating a movement in the direction of an adequate share of the seats upon the Society's next council. We should prefer to see a recommendation from the existing Commercial Vehicle Committee, to the effect that the time had arrived when a fixed ratio of places on the Council and the Committee of Management should be accorded to the heavy brigade, and we shall look for reformation from within upon those lines. In any event, we feel justified in recording our assurances, with reference to those who regard themselves as aggrieved by the effect of to-day's terms, that the Society will be most ready to review the situation in the light of any facts which can be presented. At the same tune, he gets most who helps himself. Nobody can honestly claim that the present composition of the governing committees is upon an equitable basis, and we think those who have so far been in the minority should waken up to a realisation of the fact that their interests now deserve more protninence, and should press their claims.


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