Bird's eye view
Page 61
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by the Hawk *Ship-shape
The new £13,000 Bristol headquarters for the Western area of the RHA had a splendid launching on Tuesday, with prominent national and local transport figures among the 70 guests who attended to hear the Western LA, Mr. J. R. C. Samuel-Gibbon, declare the centre officially opened.
National chairman Noel Wynn, directorgeneral George Newman and the Devon and Cornwall and South Wales area chairmen were among those present to settle secretary Joe Cox into his new offices at 20 Church Road, Redfield, Bristol 5.
The crisp bright morning was ideal for the al fresco opening ceremony, but the LA must have thought he was in competition with the haulage industry as he tried to make himself heard above the traffic noise—mostly heavy trucks.
This is the first office which the Western area has owned—and Mr. Samuel-Gibbon reminded members that when they rented premises in Neptune House before the war the TGWU were the landlords—"a very suitable arrangement".
Now, he said, the facilities included Joe Cox. the RHA's insurers and their associated finance company, which he recommended as a highly successful recipe—advice, insurance and loans.
At the lunch which followed, area chairman Harold Russett presented the LA with a bulky gift, remarking: "I think it's one of those portable weighbridges, rigged in our favour."
In fact it was a brief case, which Mr. Samuel-Gibbon complained would not hold all the licences he had to issue between now and St. David's day (cheers from the Welsh contingent).
Another presentation was to Peter Webb, who on Wednesday left the Western area as assistant RHA secretary to take up his new post as South Wales area secretary. He remarked that his biggest problem was going to be distinguishing one Evans from another.
*Cork on the water
Never run out of novel ideas down in Swansea, do they? Latest passed on to me by B. M. K. Horner, traffic manager of South Wales Transport Co., is a winter weekend holiday scheme from September to May, by which SWT arranges Saturday-to-Tuesday trips to Eire. Passengers get special reduced rate fares on the B and I ferry to Cork—and SWT are shrewdly hoping for reciprocal traffic.
Says Mr. Homer: "We are trying to get Irish people to come to Swansea to do their shopping.
*Pen friends?
The chagrin that the unsuccessful RHA essay competitors may be feeling is probably as nothing compared with the emotions of some people within the Association who have read the winning essay. For instance, whoever it was who had the odd idea of printing at the end of the essay: "The RHA is pleased to publish Mr. Smith's thought-provoking essay but wishes to make it plain that his views are not necessarily those of the Association." More's the pity, say!.
The printed paper doesn't exactly leave the authorship in doubt, anyway. But the essay itself certainly has a go, in passing, at some of the Association's past failings. No doubt some will feel that sacred cows are being assailed. As Dan Pettit (I think) said at the CM conference this year, even sacred cows end up with sagging udders.
*Tolerant
Not that the writer of the winning essay, Ted Smith of Reece Brothers (Transport), Ipswich, is a firebrand, or out to knock anyone in particular. Far from it. When I met him last week I thought him a wise, tolerant, amiable and no doubt capable businessman. He certainly has a grasp of the industry's problems that is unusually broad, and some constructive ideas about how to tackle them.
I asked him who or what first gave him the idea of entering the competition, and he said: "Ken Williams". Ken Williams is Eastern area RHA secretary. He did a good piece of p.r. by tactfully suggesting to area chairman Ted Smith that perhaps he ought to set an example and keep the area's end up. Good staffwork.
*Chequered
Mr. Smith's career parallels that of the industry. Into the post-war boiling pot with a family haulage business in 1924; depot manager for another company from 1931-7 when the family business failed in the depression; two years with Kinders of Blaby, where the redoubtable Miss A. M. Walker (now Lady Hall) ran the transport and could drive, load and repair with the best of them.
Then getting his knees brown in the Western Desert with RASC trucks, wounded in 1942, back to transport as Ipswich depot manager for Giles and Bullen during that uneasy 1946-48 period; and into the BRS pot when nationalization came, being depot manager at Stowmarket until joining his present company, where he's a director. He's seen it all, but he's an astonishingly young 62 for all that.