My transport policy must be
Page 32
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
wedded to today's facts, says Mrs C
from a SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT ARESOLUTION calling for an overall authority to co-ordinate the whole of nationalized transport was carried at the end of the &bate on transport at the Labour Party Conference at Scarborough this week. The resolution (CM, 15 September)—or that part of it referring to the "overall authority"—might as well have remained unmoved. As unmoved as was the Transport Minister herself by this attempt to raise what looked very much the British Transport
Commission from the dead.
Sounding remarkably like Mr Peter Walker in full rhetoric against her PTA proposals, Mrs Castle dealt with the overallauthority matter thus:—
"Some delegates, it appears, want an overall authority. I contend that it would be unwise to put all public transport operators under one vast, unwieldy monolithic British Transport Commission. Delegates' fears will be met by the Freight Integration Council I propose to set up.
"When it comes to transport planning, I have got to be the overall authority." (Which, in a television interview, she later amplified by saying: "I am the overall authority.") Bubbling with even more than her usual effervescence of zealous confidence, the Minister undoubtedly sparked the Conference hall to life as she wound up the debate.
Whereas the delegates had before paid scant respect to other members of the Party Executive, Mrs Castle won their ears and, indeed, their cheers.
She said little she has not already, and with due pre-Bill caution said before about her PTAs and NFO—or rather, NFC (National Freight Corporation.),, as she described it.
She did, however, state clearly that while the NFC would be answerable to her, on the passenger transport side I propose to create regional or sub-regional PTAs under local democratic control", and added:—
"Mr Peter Walker has called this 'backdoor nationalization'. I cannot help it if he is politically illiterate and does not know the difference between nationalization and rationalization."
She said of the five-part resolution itself that all delegates would agree that she would "stand condemned" as a Minister of Transport if she did not produce a policy which was wedded to the facts of today. And the • An agreement has been signed between Mercury Airfield Equipment Ltd., a subsidiary of Dennis Bros., and Cochrane Equipment Co. of America covering the manufacture and selling by Mercury of Cochrane Cargo King airfield equipment in Europe and the Commonwealth. Manufacture and selling of Mercury 'models in the US and some other areas by Cochrane is also included in the agreement. resolution's suggestion that the Government should renationalize Aand B-licence operators and leave C-licence matters as they stood amounted to a suggestion that the Government should "shadow-box".
"Because," she said, "whatever policy we must have, it must apply to all forms of road haulage transport equally."