SOCIALIST FREE-FOR-ALL
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BAFFLED to make any sense out of the Minister of Transport's White Paper, but with the uneasy feeling that they cannot attack it unless they pretend to understand it, the hostile critics may have conceded more than was necessary. They have seen shapes where' there is no more than a smokescreen. They seem to have accepted rather too readily that a statement of Government policy does not have to spell out exactly how the policy is to be put into effect.
Admittedly a White Paper is not a piece of legislation where every phrase has been drafted to have a precise meaning. Nevertheless, it is at least expected to set down the broad lines of the Government's plans. This is all the more so with a subject which has already been covered more than once. The first attempt might be excused if it is tentative.
FIELD OF
4. ROYAL COMMISSION
With transport the process seems to work in the opposite direction. Mrs. Barbara Castle has covered as wide a field as the Royal Commission on Transport did nearly 40 years ago. Whereas the Commission's report was brimming over with clear proposals, some of them amplified in considerable detail, her own document is full of hesitations and peradventures. It is lavish only in promises of reviews, appraisals, investigations and further research. One suspects there will in due course be an even less palatable Part H.
Until Mrs. Castle chooses to be more precise it might be a mistake for the opposition to set up its own targets merely for the pleasure of knocking them down. Opposition to the White Paper should rather be directed towards the fact that the only worthwhile reading matter is between the lines. The assumption that it contains anything solid enough to be worth attacking is too great a compliment. It appears to say a great deal on first reading but the substance evaporates as soon as one attempts to pin it down.
One emphasis which can be detected is on the virtues of subsidies for publicly owned transport, particularly the railways. The form in which the theme is developed almost invites the comment that the taxpayer could find a better use for his own money. However, there is nothing revolutionary about the principle. The railways have been heavily subsidized for many years. The attempt to make them selfsupporting has long been abandoned in practice if not in theory.
A political party which advocated the alternative of abolishing the railways would do so at its peril. If they cannot be made to pay, then they must be given a subsidy. When the Government promises to assume responsibility for the losses on services retained for social reasons it is merely following the example set by such projects as the new Victoria underground line in London.
An argument about the proposed national freight organization may seem more promising. It cannot be taken very far because there is no more information than before about the structure of the organization or of the way in which it will work. Few of the interests engaged in transport, or at any rate in road transport, can feel that the White Paper registers much progress towards the fulfilment of their hopes or the confirmation of their trepidations. They can hardly have made the mistake of believing that the White Paper tells them anything definite.
Unfortunately it cannot be ignored. The more nebulous its contents the more closely they have to be examined. There is time for this to be done. Parliament will not be able to debate the White Paper until the next session and legislation is not likely to be introduced until late in 1967 or even in 1968. Road operators must not lose the opportunity thus provided of examining the document point by point and putting forward their own opinions.
MAINLY TO DO WITH RAILWAYS What gradually emerges from closer study is that what purports to be a statement on transport policy as a whole is in fact mainly concerned with the railways. The introduction might almost have been written by somebody who had not read the rest of the White Paper. It deals for the most part with the private car. The implications of the motor age have not been appreciated, it says. "Each of us still believes he can find his own individual means of escape from the accompanying unpleasantness; for example, by finding a house further afield and buying a car—or cars—to enable him and his family to get to it."
One may question in passing whether this is not merely the civil servant's dream and not that of the public as a whole. The next point would be more generally acceptable. The expansion of motor traffic on the present scale, says the White Paper, "calls either for a completely new kind of physical environment or for a willingness to adapt its use to the sort of conditions in which we want to live". The first alternative is beyond our means. Some adaptation, inevitably slow, must clearly be made.
SOCIAUST FREE-FOR-ALL Here is a bold enough beginning. If ii means anything at all, it is that the use of tilt private car must be restricted. Apparently this is not the intention. There is no furthei hint of such a proposal. After devoting mosi of the introduction to the motorist the authori of the White Paper seem to lose interest it him. They can hardly suppose that their plans however successful, would make it possibli for the number of cars to increase at tin present rate or at the rate forecast in the Hal report. They can hardly suppose in particula that the transfer of a comparatively smal volume of goods and passenger traffic fron road to rail, even if this happened, is realll relevant to the problem of urban congestion
One odd feature of the document, how ever, is that it proposes virtually no restriction for anybody. It is the Socialist version of ; free-for-all. Railway closures will be con siderably fewer than had previously beei proposed. They will have money provide( for all necessary investment and to meet th; cost of unremunerative but socially necessar. services. There will be increased expenditur on the roads and an expanded programme o capital development for the ports. LocE authorities will have power to give financiE assistance for providing or improving roa passenger transport.
Only the unfortunate Transport Holdin Company seems destined to lose its identit in the new freight organization. There will b a new road haulage licensing system, bt there is no indication that this will cut dow the number of hauliers. The C-licence hold( is not even mentioned and this my be take perhaps optimistically to mean that there wi be no interference with his freedom of open tion. There are promises, sometimes vagu in the White Paper, but no threats. Perhaf they are being reserved for Part II.