Postscript
Page 48
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By JANUS
WHILSrmost of the Election literature is now being consigned to the bonfire, some of the comments that have been made still have a significance. This applies also to some of the comments that have remained unsaid. Each political party published a manifesto in accordance with tradition. The general public took little notice, and preferred to pick up their own idea of the parties' policies from other sources, mainly the Press and television.
As the campaign warmed up. less and less was heard about nationalization, and virtually nothing about the threat overhanging long-distance road haulage. This does not mean that the threat was abandoned. The Socialists may have seen little point in stressing a minor item in their manifesto, directly affecting only a comparatively small section of the public. They had no comfort to give the haulier, who was merely the predestined victim, and they would have thought it a waste of time to solicit his vote. The general public cared nothing about the theoretical advantages of the transport integration that was scheduled to follow renationalization.
Presumably, any political gain from the threat to the haulier would be expected from the drivers in the industry. They ought to be grateful to the Labour Party for the promise to restore public ownership. An Election provides the ideal opportunity for a statement of the benefits for which drivers might hope. What they were told in 1945 could bear repetition after all these years. They would be free from the tyranny of the boss, and become part of a great national organization. They would be serving the state instead of mammon. There would be better wages and conditions, and an end to oppression.
The Labour Party are fortunate in their relationship with a large number of road haulage drivers, as with many other workers. By no means every driver belongs to a trade union, but those who do are likely to be members of the Transport and General Workers' Union. Traditionally and financially, the Union and the Labour Party are closely linked. There were 21 union candidates in the Election,•and the Union gave every assistance in the campaign, in spite of differences of opinion on important points between union and party leaders. The T.G.W.U. therefore, were admirably suited to explain and justify to their members the Socialist plans for road haulage.
Undisguised Purpose The medium was ready to hand in the form of the Union's official journal, Record. The October issue is, in fact, almost entirely concerned with the Election. Apart from information about Union candidates and one or two smaller items, there are no fewer than four articles, each in its own way having the undisguised purpose of making its readers vote Labour.
The leading article, "The Sword of Deliverance." attempts an indictment of Conservative policy and Conservative practice. Mr. H. R. Nicholas, the assistant general secretary, writes under the heading "Why you should vote Labour." • He contrasts what he considers the deplorable Tory record with the Socialist promises on such things as houses, schools, health, agriculture and leisure. The Union leader, Mr. Frank Cousins, takes a similar line in a "message to all our members." There is also a message from Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, in the course of which he says: "Please remember how much it matters to Britain and to the world that we should drive out the Tories and put Labour back in power." Finally, the chairman of the Union's Parliamentary group, Mr. Tom Oswald, M.P., traces yet again the differences between Conservative and Labour policy.
Although the bias is obvious, the articles are not grossly offensive in tone, and in spite of some wearisome repetitions are not lacking in interest. What is startling is that, in a journal which has a readership largely among transport workers, there is no reference to the threat to renationalize long-distance road haulage. Mr. Nicholas approaches nearest to the subject. It is worth noting his exact words in their context: "It is imperative that a national fuel policy be applied, that we have an integrated transport system and that the steel industry be restored to public ownership to ensure its expansion and to give value for the tremendous sums of public money invested in it."
Airing a Word
The statement lays far more stress on steel than on transport, although this does not reflect the activities with which the members of Mr. Nicholas' Union arc chiefly concerned.. Many of his readers may easily have failed to grasp the implications of his use of the word "integration.' It may suggest renationalization to anybody who happens to remember that the Labour manifesto promised to take back commercial road haulage and build it into "an integrated transport system." Other people might imagine that the object of the reference to integration is merely to give a favourite Socialist word an airing. Mr. Nicholas deliberately restricts to the steel industry any talk of restoration of public ownership.
If the failure to mention renationalization in the election issue of Record was accidental, its significance is if anything heightened. To the Labour Party as such long
distance road haulage is an abstraction. The Union cannot find it so easy to take this Olympian view. To them the haulier is somebody they have met on any number of formal and informal occasions. The members of the Union on the whole have a friendly feeling towards their employers rather than otherwise. It must have been easy for the writers of the articles, without consciously realizing it, to have forgotten that the haulier is marked down for destruction, and to have directed their attack towards some more distant and impersonal target.
They can hardly have imagined that the driver was so convinced of the iniquity of his employer that no argument was needed. Election propaganda tends to play upon the beliefs that are held most strongly. Whatever the Party line. the Union knew they could not rouse the driver to enthusiasm by presenting a picture of the expulsion of his boss.
Whatever may have been said in the past, it appears— when it is a question of getting down to cases—that the T.G.W.U. (unlike, say, the National Union of Railwaymen) are not keen on any further political interference in transport. They called upon their members to vote Labour for reasons that may be misguided but are not contemptible. The T.G.W.U. believe that a Labour Government will lead to a better world. They do not paint for the road haulage driver a rosy picture of the wonderful future renationalization holds for him. Perhaps they refrain because they know he would not believe them.