'Tub-thumping'
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• Government claims that the travelling public of London would determine—by their votes—whether they accepted the transport system being offered to them were dismissed as "good old tub-thumping Keir Hardie-ism" by Tory spokesman Mr Michael Heseltine last week.
Mr. Richard Marsh, the Minister of Transport, had said during committee discussion of the Transport (London) Bill that the travelling public in the capital were, for the first time, ultimately in control of the position. They could appoint county councillors who would have power over the appointments and over the control of the London Transport Executive.
But Mr. Heseltine retorted that the idea that the travelling public, the taxpayer or the ratepayer had any control over public organizations in the commercial sector in this country was as naive an interpretation of our present industrial set-up as one could imagine.
The vast majority of the 10m people who lived in London were taxpayers, observed Mr. Heseltine. According to the Minister these people had at this moment control over London Transport because they were dishing out £1 Gm a year. At this moment Londoners were helping to subsidize London Transport, and, in the Minister's interpretation of events, they were in control of it. It would be perfectly possible for them to raise all sorts of arguments with their Parliamentary representatives at election time, and to change their representatives if they wanted something done about London Transport.
The fact of the matter was that they did not, and would not. Exactly the same situation would come about when London Transport was put into the hands of the ratepayers. They would not, in effect, have any control over London Transport, if only for the reason that the totality of the revenue of the GLC was such as to dwarf any possible subsidies which might have to be made by the ratepayers to the organization of their transport services.
The idea that there was going to be a great marching up and down outside County Hall by the irritated travelling public was just "not on".