TOO MUCH
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TOY must be a rare emotion for Ministers of Transport. In welcoming the decision of the National Union of Railwaymen to allow the vehicles of private hauliers into freightliner terminals, Mrs. Barbara Castle said that it had brought her the happiest moment since she had become Minister. If this is so she must have had a gloomy time over the last 18 months.
Her main achievement has been the avoidance of a strike. She has demonstrated her ability to deal with a trade union. The depressing fact remains that for three years or more this particular union has held up progress on a pretext so flimsy and incoherent that nobody has been able to understand it. The main obstacle to the rational use of Freightliners has now been overcome but it still has to be proved that all the trouble was worth while.
Some of the promises which have had to be made to the railwaymen are reasonable and some others are in any case in line with Government policy. In total they represent no small liability for the railways. Among other things they are to become half-owners of Tartan Arrow with the Transport Holding Company and are expanding the Freightliner system in such a way as to justify new investment of up to £2m. in railway cartage vehicles.
Hauliers will presumably have to put up with this substantial flow of new vehicles into the road haulage field. There will be applications to the appropriate Licensing Authorities and there will almost certainly be objections. The decisions will no doubt be affected by the verdict of the Transport Tribunal on the Freightliner appeals now before them.
If the verdict went against the railways an odd situation could arise. Licences might have to be refused for some of the vehicles which have now been promised to the NUR and the carefully constructed agreement between the two sides on the railways might come under review.
Not that this prospect is likely to ruffle Mrs. Castle's happiness. The Tribunal have yet to consider the case and it is not known in what terms future railway applications will be made. Equally relevant is the plan for a radically altered licensing system which will form part of the Government's major transport legislation later in the parliamentary session.
All in all the Freightliner controversy, working up to a final triumphant crescendo, has provided excellent publicity for the new project. Most people must have been left with the impression that a vast scheme for carrying the nation's goods traffic at a new level of efficiency has been slowly working itself out and can now go full speed ahead.
Whether Freightliners will be successful is by no means certain at this stage. A clearer picture might have been available had all operators been allowed to use the terminals from the outset. Nevertheless the early signs are encouraging. What tends to be overlooked in the recent hurly-burly is in the first place that the volume of traffic suitable for Freightliners is only a small proportion of the whole and in the second place that the project began some time before a Labour Government was elected.
TOP MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS
By a coincidence Lord Beeching, popularly, if not entirely accurately, regarded as the father of Freightliners, had a few words to say the other day about the problems of top management in nationalized industry. Their objectives, he said, fluctuated not merely from government to government but almost from day to day at the whim of parliamentary and public opinion. They had to pull together divergent demands pressed upon them from outside.
In nationalized industries as distinct from free enterprise, he went on, the areas of conflict between management and staff tended to be wider, partly because of a confusion of objectives but also because employees tended to feel that they were specially knowledgeable representatives of the owners. He attacked what he considered an absurd confusion between joint consultation and worker participation.
Although Lord Beeching was not necessarily referring to the railways, they are the nationalized industry of which he has direct experience and his comments are relevant. Throughout the recent controversy the railway leaders have seen clearly the policy which they would have liked to follow. Time and again they have had to give way to pressures from within and from without.
Although the Government has changed, at least its policy on Freightliners has remained the same. It is a little ironical that Mrs. Castle should have found her greatest satisfaction as Minister of Transport in bringing to a successful conclusion a project originally sanctioned by Mr. Ernest Marples. The Conservatives in justice ought to applaud her as loudly as her own supporters.
In this respect the Freightliner development is no different from many other things that are happening in transport. The two main political parties are not finding it easy to attack each other. This was shown clearly in the full-scale parliamentary debate which at last took place on the subject of Mrs. Castle's White Paper on transport policy. According to the official report a vote was taken at the end in which 320 Members expressed themselves as in favour of the White Paper and 233 Members took the contrary view. This dramatic division of opinion did not emerge at all clearly during the debate itself. The Opposition were hard put to it to keep up a head of steam.
That the flood of argument seemed continually to be petering out into a trickle was to some extent a reflection of the thin texture of the White Paper. It states the problems cautiously and the answers are for the most part tentative.
The Minister may be inclined to make the most of those proposals which are new and which may be recognized as part of a Socialist programme. The framework of the National Freight Organization is now becoming clearer. The integrated road-rail parcels service is merely a beginning. In due course the Freightliner accessories of the railways, including the road vehicles. will be taken from them and the Transport Holding Company will lose all its goods transport interests.
Little practical gain may result from these changes. It might have been better tc leave the railways and the THC to evolvc their own method of working together. Or the other hand the creation of the nem organization gives the Minister thc opportunity of proclaiming an achievemeni the credit for which belongs only to her anc to the Government. Her happiness may bi even greater than at the moment wher the Freightliner tangle was unravelled
Janus