Misguided
Page 80
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INSPIRED by Lord HaiIsham's forceful remarks at the Road Haulage Association's dinner, hauliers will no doubt be more than willing to continue the good work by telling their troubled story to anybody who is prepared to listen. They will be completely confident that in doing so they are reinforcing what the dedicated Conservatives are saying about road transport. All the same, the hauliers may get a surprise if they stop talking for a while and join the audience of a speaker from the Conservative Party.
He will be getting his information on transport, and on a hundred other subjects, from the remarkable " Campaign Guide, 1959" just produced for the party by their central office. Hauliers who come across a copy at least cannot complain that their particular problem has been neglected. There is a chapter 54 pages long on nationalization, as Well as several other references to the subject, notably in the masterly introduction, which makes a great deal of play with "further experiments in nationalization" as one Of the more unpalatable of the alternatives offered by the Socialists in exchange for the record of the present Government.
If the campaign guide had been published even a year ago, it might have had a different emphasis. The Conservatives have now thoroughly assimilated the lesson that people in general dislike State ownership of industry. From now until the general election there will be a continuous barrage from the Right against the theory and practice of nationalization. On the defensive, however they try to manceuvre, the Labour party will on the one hand have to keep telling the public that the threats to take this and that industry should not be regarded seriously, and on the other hand reassure their more extreme supporters that the threats are genuine.
Major Issue The haulier who wants nationalization to be a major iss6e at the election looks like being satisfied. He may still be surprised at the Conservative interpretation of recent transport history as it is set out in the campaign guide: The reader who browses in its pages, and who has no special knowledge of transport, is evidently expected to regurgitate the impression that the Conservatives, by their judicious legislation, have brought the road. transport industry to a state of perfection, and that in particular the Transport Act, 1953, and the Transport (Disposal of Road Haulage Property) Act, 1956, closed ,a chapter to which nothing need be added.
Such an impression is bound to be fostered by the statement that the 1953 Act "enabled Aand B-licence holders to compete with _C-licence holders. on equal terms," and further that "to-permit easier entry into the industry,' and therefore greater competition, certain terms of granting A and 11 licences to carry for hire or reward Were relaxed." If this were really the intention of the Act, many hauliers believe it has not been carried out. They are acutely aware that the menace of normal user, which had slumbered peacefully enough for a quarter of a century since its inclusion in the Road and Rail Traffic Act, 1933, has recently leapt into life in the congenial soil provided by the section in the 1953 Act penalizing false statements of fact or of inten
tion made for the purpose of obtaining a licence. • Hauliers may feel pleased, therefore, that in introducing Lord Hailsham at their dinner, the chairman of the R.H.A., Mr. R. N. Ingram, spoke of the "growing trend, which the c38 railways have not been slow in aiding and abetting, to tie the haulier much too rigidly to carrying the same traffic year after year." He was bound to find that some of his traffic diminished in importance and that some of his customers went out of business, said Mr. Ingram.
What the campaign guide has to say on licensing may be the last faint echo in Conservative publications of the White Paper of May, 1952, which promised among other things that, "in order to allow road haulage to play its appropriate and expanding part in the transport system, provision will be made for greater latitude in the granting of new licences, where need for a fuller or more convenient service is shown," The Conservative party evidently still feel that this particular promise has been implemented. .
Understandably, the guide makes no direct. reference to the White Paper for one of the main proposals in that document was that the whole of British Road Services should revert to private enterprise. The reason was also stated quite clearly. With their elaborate system of depots, said the White Paper, B.R.S. could not give trade and industry the speedy, individual and specialized services afforded by free hauliers before nationalization, "and could not stand up to competition from them."
Present Opinion Unfortunately for the clarity of the campaign guide, the compiler cannot altogether have banished the White Paper from his mind when giving his account of the subsequent legislation. In consequence, it.is not easy to follow what happened to B R S nor to appreciate the present opinion that the Conservatives hold of that Organization. Early in the chapter on nationalization, it is stated incorrectly that the 1953 Act provided for the denationalization of B.R.S., and that the 1956 Act allowed B.R.S. to retain their long-distance fleet.
A little later, one of the reasons for the failure of the Transport Act, 1947, is said to be that B.R.S. did not emerge as a long-distance undertaking so much as a
cross-section of the road haulage industry, running any and every type of traffic, over any distance, in competition with the rest." The network of trunk freight services built up by B.R.S. is criticized because it was built "on the railway model, thus losing that flexibility which is the particular asset of a road haulage service." The point is emphasized a few pages further on. B.R.S., it is said,•
did not live up to expectations." Efficiency and goodwill of concerns taken over were lost. "Although B.R.S. had been able to underbid private hauliers for some bulk traffics, in many cases their charges were higher."
The guide does not explain why it was necessary for B.R.S. to underbid hauliers who were not in a position to compete and had probably been nationalized in any case. It is at least clear that B.R.S. are regarded as far from satisfactory. The guide then has to say why denationalization was not completed. The reason apparently was lack of demand. The decision to call a halt was "justified in view of the undesirability of splitting up B.R.S.'s longdistance lorry fleet into penny packets, and was consistent with the Conservative party's pragmatic, not doctrinaire, approach to transport problems."
The haulier will be bound to agree that he prefers the present system to anything the Socialists are likely to put into effect. He may not be prepared to go so far as the campaign guide, with its apparent insistence that at present everything is for the best.