TROUBLE SHARED
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NOT for the first time the road transport industry has suffered because it uses the same tracks and the same fuel as the private car owner. In making good his threat in the Budget to increase a wide range of Customs and Excise duties, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was aiming a blow at luxuries rather than necessities. In the process he may have resigned himself to an anomaly or two, and accepted the fact that the extra 3d. a gallon on the fuel tax was adding to the burden already imposed on the important service rendered by road operators to trade and industry.
Had he thought it worth while, he might' have made an effort to distinguish between private and industrial use. As the hauliers have pointed out, his primary purpose has been to stimulate the export trade, and he is not helping the cause by making transport to the docks more expensive. Some such device as the colouring of fuel has been used from time to time, although admittedly never for the purpose of enabling road operators to pay a lower tax.
If they are determined optimists, they might care to suppose that the reason the Chancellor has not bothered to show them any preference is that he does not intend to maintain the extra 3d. for any long period. The five months that the Suez shilling lasted at the end of 1956 and the beginning of 1957 may thus be taken as a precedent. The majority of operators will not feel so happy. They will remember that it was with some diffidence that the fuel tax was introduced in the first place, but that successive Chancellors have felt the guilt weigh less and less on their conscience.
Indeed, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd may at present have no idea of making his latest imposition permanent. When it comes to the point, however, the experts at the Treasury can be relied upon to find any number of convincing reasons for leaving the fuel tax as it is. at 2s. 9d_ a gallon. Whatever the reasons, they will seem equally cogent in respect of the commercial user and the motorist. It is just bad luck that the transport operator should have to share his fuel and his road space with so many other people
THE point is one of which his enemies take full advantage. They do their best to enlist the support of 'he motorist and the pedestrian against him. There is a deliberate campaign, organized by what one would be justified in regarding as pressure groups. The work is not done as openly as that of, for example, the British Road Federation and the Road Haulage Association (who, of course, champion the haulier),
seems to be effective.
The motoring organizations, with their experience of propaganda, are not likely to be taken in. But the individual motorist is more often than not impressed. He is highly critical of a road system that scarcely ever allows him to make a journey without several irritating delays. For the most part it may seem that other motorists are clearly responsible. There are too many of them chasing too little space. But except when they are flagrantly guilty of a piece of bad driving, he cannot very well vent his annoyance against his own kind. They have as much right to be there as he has.
The real villains are the Government and the Minister of Transport, or perhaps more aceurately the Governments and Ministers of the past. Because they are beyond the reach of the average motorist, they do not provide a satis it6 factory target for his spleen. He turns instead to the commercial vehicle, especially if it is of the heavy type anC more especially if it is outsize. Even if it is only occasionally that he is obstructed by such a vehicle, he remembers the circumstances vividly and with feeling, jusl as he would if he found a rhinoceros trampling the flower beds in his garden.
He is ripe to be influenced. He hears and reads constantly the suggestion that the heavy load which has held him up need never have been carried by road_ Without labouring the point, the inference is given that, often for quite inadequate reasons or as a consequence of megalomania, manufacturers are continually insisting that their largest products should be dragged up and down the country on road trains. It is not suggested that the practice should be stopped entirely. There are a few loads, it is pointed out reasonably, that for various reasons have to go by road, and the motorist, being a reasonable creature, would not object to their passage. The rest could just as well go by rail or by sea. As an appendix there is the reminder that the railways and many shipping companies are run at a loss, so that the diversion of heavy traffic to them would simultaneously clear the roads and lighten the load of the taxpayer's subsidies.
THE reaction of the average motorist is not long in coming. He is only too eager to provide the fuel on which the campaign feeds. An article that deliberately confines its attack to the abnormal and indivisible load, and even then makes a very moderate approach to the problem, is often followed by a series of letters in much more violent terms.
A wide range of misconceptions is given an airing on such an occasion. The heavy haulier is accused of hogging far more of the road than he pays for in taxation. He is vilified because he runs during the week when the motorist wants to make a business call, or over the week-end when the family car wants a clear road to the sea or the beauty spot, or at night when most people on the road are in a hurry to get home.
The next stage of the correspondence may concern itself with lorries in general. With every justification the drivers are praised for their skill and consideration, and in the next sentence are accused of filling the roads with dangerous and toxic fumes or bunching together so that nobody can get past. There are suggestions that lorries should be treated as second class vehicles, and that, for example, they should be forced to use the A5, leaving the MI to the more deserving motorist in a hurry. Commercial operators would do well to realize that the campaign is reaching serious proportions.
It would help if he could be made to examine the matter rationally. Not much benefit would come to him, even the campaign were successful and a fair amount of traffic was transferred to rail. A few million tons either way would make little difference to road congestion. especially as they would probably not be taken from the spots where it is most serious. The Minister's case for new roads. in which he has the entire support of every motorist, would be considerably weakened if they appeared in any wa.% to be less important than before for trade and industry. Moreover, if the roads were no longer used so much for commercial purposes, the Chancellor might well 112 encouraged to increase the fuel tax even further.