Pantomimes, fairy tales, carols, Christmas cards and cracker mottoes . .
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NO doubt one of the functions of the Christmas holiday is that it helps one to forget about everyday affairs. This is not always possible for everybody, and especially for people engaged in road transport. Christmas may even be their busy season, with an unusual number of travellers at unusual times of the day, and a substantial increase in the movement of consumer goods—in every sense of that term. In addition', because transport touches our lives at every point, the traditional objects, ceremonies and other activities may persistently remind the unfortunate transport man of things which. at such a time he would
rather forget. .
He may not be alone in this. Some Christmas reflections have a universal appeal. To most men, I think, there comes that moment, somewhere in the middle of December, when he wonders whether the giving of presents, and particularly the elaborate shuttling back and forth of Christmas cards and calendars, are not customs which serve very little economic or social purpose, and could very well be abandoned.
OTHER RITUALS
Almost inevitably, the mind passes on to other rituals, not connected with the season of Christmas, of which the same might be said, perhaps even more forcibly. Transport operators will think in particular of the annual and invariably barren pilgrimages to the Treasury to seek tax concessions from a Chancellor who has no intention of giving them; or of the quantity of dummy ammunition expended by the Wages Council after they have agreed on a proposal which no subsequent discussions will alter.
Although politics may seem to have little to do with Christmas, hauliers certainly may not succeed in forgetting them entirely. They will be inclined to assume that they are excepted from any affirmation by the Labour Party of goodwill towards all men. Indeed, to many transport people as well as hauliers the Labour Party seems ideally cast for the role of the wicked fairy in pantomime, furious that her plans have been frustrated in the past, and threatening destruction or metamorphosis in the near future. If such an image is less than fair to the Socialists, they cannot claim that they have tried very hard to improve it.
THE GOOD FAIRY
To seek the equivalent of the good fairy in real life, transport operators would be bound to turn their eyes from left to right and choose Mr. Ernest Marples, even if his detractors might say that he does not so much as look the part. True to pantomime tradition, as well as to the policy of the Conservative Party, he would no doubt declare that, while unable to give a complete guarantee against the spell of his opponent. he could at least contrive that its effect would not be permanent.
He would undertake to break the spell in due course with the help of the magic---and indeed newly coined— word " redenationalization .-. To show his own goodwill, he might very well display the gifts presented at the birth of a new transport era by his attendant sprites, Rochdale, Beeching, Hall, Buchanan and Geddes; names to conjure with at any time, he would declare, and not merely at Christmas.
No doubt, if only to balance the account, the comedian would then appear on the stage with the slogan "Marples Must Go" fixed to the anatomical equivalent of the rear bumper. Not every Christmas reverie, even by road transport operators, will show, the Minister in a congenial light. The strains of Good King Wenceslas " outside the door might well call up a picture of Mr. Marples, accompanied by his page and smoke-meter, taking a personal interest in the fuel problems of the peasants—and in their names and addresses. Who is he? Where and what his dwelling? —and the details are entered on yet another prohibition notice.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
However, the sleeping beauty, at whose birth the fairies quarrelled, might turn the thoughts of some road operators in another direction. The licensing system has slumbered almost undisturbed for a good many years, if not for a whole century, and in the meantime a dense tangle of case law has buried it from sight. Few men have been bold enough to hack their way through the jungle. But there is a rumour that the hour for the ending of the spell has almost come, and the sleeping beauty awaits the kiss of Geddes—or perhaps more appropriately the Geddes axe. Only in the fairy tale itself is there a certainty that the beautiful princess will live happily ever after.
Fairy tales often have less agreeable characters, and the operator will reserve judgment on the Geddes report until it is published. In many of the other reports which the Minister of Transport has already received there is more than a distant reminder of the Arabian Nights Entertainment. According to the Hall report, the motor-car population is expanding as rapidly as the size of a djinn released from a bottle, and there is a touch of Eastern magic too in the panache of a Buchanan planning the transformation of great cities.
In other respects fact may seem to have outstripped fiction. The international haulier may have adventures which to him are stranger than those of Sinbad the Sailor; and the "Open Sesame which revealed the interior of the cave has less power to stir the imagination in a modern world when the single word "strike " can bring a whole transport system to a standstill. On the other hand, the use of an automatic password may be a novel security device to those operators who are interested in such things; and the comparison is all the more appropriate when it concerns the 40 Thieves who robbed the caravans, probably the first of all the hi-jackers. and Ali Baba, the first and the most opulent of all the receivers.
Pantomimes, fairy tales, carols, Christmas cards and cracker mottoes. . . . The list is endless, as the Traders Road Transport Association might say. In spite of the associations of ideas, readers will undoubtedly be enjoying themselves as much as usual.