No wonder it was a struggle
Page 2
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
The other day I read some of Damian McBride's book Power Trip. For those of you not familiar with him, he was Gordon Brown's spin doctor for almost 10 years. Chapter six is worth a look because of its title alone A Trucking Mess. In it he recounts his negotiations with the Road Haulage Association and Freight Transport Association before the fuel strikes of 2000. To say that he, and by association the
Labour party, were not a fan of this industry is an understatement.
He describes the thousands of small businesses that make up our industry as inefficient, taking the view that their concerns about fuel duty and their very survival stood in the way of the kind of progress that the Blair and Brown regime wanted. McBride makes no concession for small and medium-sized businesses being the employment engine of the economy, nor for the fact that fuel duty was, and is, a punitive inflationary tax on enterprise.
These concerns stood in the way of McBride, and Labour, being in power so they needed to be stopped. It's easy to see that hauliers never really stood a chance... Christopher Walton Group news editor L._ Commercial Motor — the official UK journal of the International Truck of the Year and International Van of the Year Awards