Another Square Deal?
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"Every man and woman in British Transport can take a real personal pride in the achievements of 1956, revealed in the British Transport Commission's annual report just published. Many people regard it as the most exciting year since nationalization in 1948. For we are just beginning to see some fine solid foundations for a challenging future." • THIS announcement introduces a survey of the 1956 report of the B.T.C. in newspaper format, intended mainly for the Commission's staff. If they read on, they will find that, for the first time since nationalization, the railways did not earn enough money to cover working expenses, and were in fact L161m. short; and that British Road Services, the Tilling and Scottish bus groups, London Transport, the shipping services, the docks and Inland Waterways all did less well in 1956 than in 1955. On the other hand, for what it is worth, hotels, refreshment rooms and restaurant cars did better.
What the survey does not make clear, although it has an article on the subject, is that the railways' working deficit, plus their proportion of the central charges, adds up to a total loss of £571m. on the year. This has conveniently been tidied away into a special accOunt, which already contains £.70m., representing the accumulated deficit up to the end of 1955, and which has been underwritten for the time being by the Government.
Quite naturally, the survey is less concerned. with financial details than with the plans that have been made, and in some cases already been put into effect, with the object of improving the efficiency of operation, the service to the public, and the working conditions of the Commission's employees. From what they have read elsewhere in the Press, those employees must know that the foundations for their challenging future are not so solid as the Commission suggest. Over the next few years there will be a race between modernization and bankruptcy.
Military Bulletins
Will the Commission win? Their report for 1956 scarcely admits the possibility of failure. The Commission refuse to be dismayed by their large deficit. "The results," says the report," are generally in line with those forecast and published in the White Paper in October." This sounds too much for comfort like one of those military bulletins describing a defeat as a retreat according to plan. Perhaps, after all, the Commission will win the last battle, which is the one that really counts.
As always, the Commission, in their report, reject any idea of a subsidy. The survey for the staff stresses that the loans are repayable in full—" and the interest on them in addition" it continues, as though there were some special virtue in this. Outside the Commission, the general assumption is that, if the expected profits do not materialize, the loans (and the interest) will have to be written off, a process indistinguishable from a subsidy. On one occasion, it is true, the Minister of Transport, Mr. Harold Watkirtson, proposed as an alternative that the railways would have to go out of business. Nobody seriously believes this likely, or even desirable.
To escape the stigma of a subsidy, the Commission would be more than willing to put forward their own alternative. The report contains plenty of evidence of B28
what this would be. • Restriction of the ancillary user would have a big part. In the opinion of the Commission, far too much money is spent on building roads and developing road transport. "There is a fundamental paradox," says the report, "in having at the same time overcrowded roads and an apparatus of public transport which could, in fact, carry greater traffics." The decline in passenger traffic on all the Commission's services is blamed, collectively and separately, on to the private car. Responsibility for the fall in goods traffic is laid mainly at the door of the C-licence holder.
Two diagrams in the report are devoted to establishing that national investment in road transport is several times greater than in the railways. This is so, the report comments, whether or not expenditure on private cars and motorcycles is included. Under their modernization scheme the railways are spending only il4m. a year on track, tunnels, bridges and signalling, as distinct from rolling stock. By comparison with this amount, the small expenditure on road building is made to seem wanton extravagance.
First Priority
Somewhere in the report the Commission make their prayers to "the prime necessity of a second railway revolution." To the road user, whose apprehensions have been sharpened by experience, and particularly to the C-licence holder, it seems more likely that the object of the Commission's desires is a second square deal.
Improvement of the railway freight services is proclaimed as the first priority. It is important, say the Commission, "both to their own finances and to the
economic life of the nation." if an ungrateful nation is not prepared to make more use of the services when
they have been improved, the Commission may have to suggest that something more than exhortation is required.
A new twist to the inevitable annual attack on the C-licence holder was made possible by the check during 1956 to the steady growth of industrial production over the previous few years. The general level of production throughout 1956 was slightly below the peak of the last quarter of 1955, says the report. It comments a little disdainfully on" the absence of even the simplest annual statistics of freight traffic carried by road vehicles other than for British Road Services," but estimates that the total can hardly have been greater in 1956 than in 1955. In spite of this, it goes on, there were 70,000, or over 6 per cent., more goods vehicles, nearly all of them C-licensed, on the roads during 1956.
The conclusion is inevitable. If there are more vehicles, but no more traffic, then the vehicles on the average either carry less or run fewer miles.
More than one line of action might follow this conclusion. It could be said, for example, that, if road vehicles
are not being used to their full extent; although their
numbers are increasing, it might be sensible to abolish the railways, whose vehicles add to the surplus capacity,
but on the whole seem to be less desired. The Commission obviously have the opposite opinion. It is possible that their report for the "most exciting year since 1948 " is the first serious step in an onslaught on the trader who prefers to use his own vehicles.