"Keep Transport Free "—A.B.C.C.
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THE Association of British Chambers of Commerce, at their annual conference in London last week carried unanimously a resolution affirming the belief that a freely competitive transport system best served the nation in its general economy and in its commercial efficiency.
The resolution urged that users should remain free to employ the form of transport most suitable to their, commercial needs, including their own C-licence vehicles when that method achieved the greatest overall economy.
Mr. D. H. Joyce, supplies and transportation manager of Shell-Mex and B.P., Ltd., who is chairman of the transport sub-committee, said the resolution came at a good time psychologically, because they had recently heard of the British Transport Commission's losses, and the hope that with Government assistance the Commission would eventually be self-supporting.
"The reason for this resolution is that there are people who see only one way to correct this deficiency—by cutting out competition and restricting road hauliers and traders using their own transport," said Mr. Joyce. The Government had belatedly decided to back the modernization scheme of British Railways and there was a possibility that they could balance their books without restrictions on competitors.
"The trader who retains his freedom should use it intelligently in his own commercial interest, without bias, to get the best transport system possible for himself and the nation," concluded Mr. Joyce.
The National Union of Manufacturers continued their campaign against renationalization last week, when they issued 68,000 pamphlets declaring that further State ownership would harm everybody in industry.
They said that with all transport monopolized, traffic would be forced back on to nationalized railways, or on to nationalized road services freed from the competition of private hauliers. The pamphlet stated that C licences would he cut to the bone.
"Transport is vital to every manufacturer and nationalized, transport will be dearer, less convenient and less 'reliable," declared the pamphlet, which Concluded: " Industry must fight this threat together, or be picked off one by one."