Left wing support
Page 27
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Iget the impression that your reporters leant over backwards to try to be objective in their story on opposition to the building of the Newbury by-pass (CM 21-27 March). Apart from being a woman international freight driver, I am a committed Marxist and feminist who has been involved with Labour most of my adult life. So it might be assumed that I am going to complain that you favoured the road-building programme.
This particular socialist is firmly on the side of the
bulldozers. Whenever environmental arguments are put, as in the opposition to a by-pass, it is always working people such as truck drivers who are called on to make sacrifices. When we are held up in a traffic jam, and in spite of your reporting you can get held up for an hour going through Newbury, it is always the drivers who suffer.
We might have phones in our cabs or satellite links so we can warn of delays, but our employers or those we contract to always expect us to make time up when we are help up. We end up pushed to cut break times or try to cut minutes off our journey
Most Cil// readers who are working drivers will remember driving conditions before the Twyford Down upgrading—driving a 16 or 18.5-metre truck along those narmwish roads was quite simply dangerous while the new motorway is purpose
built for the vehicles we drive.
On behalf of left wing political activists like myself who recognise a need for a certain amount of road building! would like to apologise to workers engaged on building the bypass for the insults and attacks they may have suffered. The protesters involved would be much better employed fighting for decent pay and conditions in industry, rather than running away from life to a tree house.
Rachael Webb, R W Transport, Peterborough,
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