"Never glad confident morning again
Page 63
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FROM the grave comes the final testament of the Ivory Tower in the shape of the fifteenth and last annual
report of the British Transport Commission. Its appearance and contents are very much the same as in previous years. There are even to be found examples of the old self-congratulatory platitudes, as in the statement that British Road Services has a "long-established policy of fostering the development of vehicles and equipment through the exchange of views and information with manufacturers' technical staffs ", leaving one to suppose that this is a novel idea which no other operators share.
Closer inspection reveals one or two significant differences. Students of literary style may notice the pathetic, valedictory use of the past tense in the opening chapter. The Commission's "varied undertakings ", it says, employing nearly 688,000 people and so on, " represented " one of the largest single industrial organizations in the world. "During the fifteen years of their existence ", they were subject to great variations in the political and economic climates. They "had witnessed a dramatic decline" in the fortunes of many railways throughout the world. The impression is of a sober obituary.
ONE NOTABLE OMISSION One notable omission, in which perhaps the hand of Dr. Beeching can be seen, is of the usual discontented reference to the increased competition represented by the growth in the number of vehicles on C licence. Also missing is the tendentious diagram which invariably accompanied such a reference in the past. Responsibility for declining traffic is placed elsewhere. Low levels of production in heavy industry and in the output of minerals had a particularly serious effect on railway tonnages. The principal expansion during 1962 was in "the lighter products which do not at present move by rail in large volumes ".
Where these products move is not altogether satisfactorily explained. B.R.S. does not appear to have felt the benefit, for another part of the report states that its general haulage business "reflected the continuing falling trend in production of the more important industries" for which
it normally carries substantial tonnages. On the other hand, a larger proportion of B.R.S. traffic was carried over longer distances than in 1961, and this helped to bring the gross revenue to what is described as "a record since the companies were established ".
MORE INFORMATION-THAN USUAL
The report makes available a little more information than usual about B.R.S. It is revealed that, of the 16,300 vehicles and articulated units owned at the end of the year, 7,600 were in the general haulage fleet, 3,900 in B.R.S. (Parcels) Ltd., 2,726 on contract work, and 1,580 in Pickfords. Presumably, the remaining 500 were meatcarrying vehicles, the number of which was reduced during the year as a result of the decline in meat imports.
Here may be one clue to the future, concerning which the report is understandably reticent in view of the fact that it has been anticipated by the Beeching plan. Road transport operators, especially if their organizations are not too large, are on the whole better able than the railways to adapt themselves to altered circumstances. In spite of the decline in traffic, B.R.S. (Meat Haulage) Ltd. was able to make economies which almost exactly halved its net deficit. In 1961 it was £168,300, and in 1962 it had fallen to £84,113. Faced with a similar problem, it is unlikely that the railways could have made such a rapid adjustment.
A FURTHER EXAMPLE The results from passenger traffic provide a further example. Public transport, says the report, is being hit increasingly by the growth in private transport and such changes in social habits as the tendency to watch television rather than go to the cinema. Added disincentives to travel in 1962 were the bad weather and the rise in unemployment in some areas. As a result, the number of passengers carried fell in all sections of the Commission. Only on the railways, however, did this have an adverse effect on the final financial picture. London Transport and the provincial and Scottish buses both showed a slightly improved working result, this in spite of the fact that London Transport railways, taken by themselves, did less well.
The figures seem to provide a clear indication of the greater flexibility of road transport, its ability to cut its coat according to its cloth. The railways can only follow suit by some such drastic reorganization as is envisaged in the Beeching plan. Some hint of what can be done is given in an analysis early in the report of the results of withdrawing railway services and subsidizing bus services in replacement. Net savings on 34 services amounted to Road transport is thus already providing indispensable help in the slow and somewhat ponderous process of railway disengagement.
A FURTHER ONSLAUGHT?
Whatever other lessons are to be found in the report, one may be confident that few of them will emerge in the course of the inevitable parliamentary debate. The Opposition in particular is bound to seize the opportunity for a further onslaught on the whole transport policy of the Government. There will be laments for the failure to work towards integration, and demands for the transfer of traffic from road to rail, either by restrictions or extra burdens on the haulier and the C-licensee, or by the compulsor) acquisition of the more prosperous, efficient and wellconducted road haulage undertakings As the present report Of the Commission is the last, there will also be an attempt to recreate the mood of facile optimism in which the Commission was first set up, and of which the first few reports are redolent. Whether the Socialists will be able to sustain this mood is another matter. It may have seemed 15 years ago that the advantages of each separate form of transport would be multiplied within a single organization.. Disillusionment was rapid, and one would suppose final, except among a hard core of extremists. In words which have recently been used in another context: "Never glad confident morning again"