Tories will fight 'monstrous' Freight Authority plan
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Peter Walker sees Barbara Castle as 'Madame Guillotine' threatening the transport system
MRS. Barbara Castle's plan for a National Freight Authority was "a monstrous one", Mr. Peter Walker, the Shadow Minister of Transport, said at the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool on Wednesday.
The Government first undermined the free enterprise road haulier, put up his fuel tax, increased his motor vehicle licences, took away his investment allowances, made him give the Government an interest-free loan in the form of selective employment tax, he said.
"The Government publicly denounced him when he put up his charges to meet the additional costs the Government imposed. Then, when the private haulier is impoverished by the higher costs and unfair competition, they will incite the National Freight Authority to gobble him up at knock-out prices.
"It is a project of nationalization without proper compensation. We will fight it both in Parliament and throughout the country".
Mr. Walker, who was summing up the debate on transport, said he recently attended a dinner of the Road Haulage Association also attended by Mrs. Castle. "I watched her gazing at these free-enterprise hauliers with that fixed, frigid, if photogenic, smile and I thought to myself 'all that is missing is the knitting and the guillotine', for this Madame Guillotine is a danger to our entire transport system. "It is this Madame Guillotine who has already chopped £14 m. off our roadbuilding programme. It is this Madame Guillotine who has chopped £10 m, from the programme to improve the docks and the ports. It is this same Madame Guillotine who has murdered the project to build a new port at Portbury in the Bristol Channel."
Mr. Walker complained that there was one place where the blade had failed to fall. There had been no attempt by Mrs. Castle to cut away the restrictive practices that slowed down lorries, sabotaged liner trains and crippled ports.
Mr. Walker went on: "A nation that spends more than £2,000,000,000 of its national income on transporting goods and people must each year increase substantially its expenditure on new motorways and new roads. 1965 was the first year since 1951 when no such increase took place.
"I see no reason why bridge and other projects for which the toll principle could be properly and efficiently applied should not be allowed to proceed as additions to an increased road building programme".
A Conservative Government today would be concentrating on planning the second thousand miles of motorway while the Labour Government was lingering on the first. The Conservatives would tackle con
gestion by seeing that every major town had a highly qualified traffic commissioner skilled in the techniques of traffic engineering and with powers to act to speed the flow of urban traffic. The only contribution of the Labour Government to solving the congestion problem was to stop the motorcar industry from producing cars, he remarked.
Mr. Walker spoke of the creation of 2 Parliamentary task force on transport; it work would range from road constructior to ports and docks from inland waterway: to the future of railways.
"The creation of this task force will mear that every Government decision and non decision—and the latter are likely to out number the former—will be examined am when necessary criticized. But more irri portant than this, we will complete at analysis of all the transport problems it need of solution, we will meet the leaders o academic thought on transport, the indus trialists, the operators and the users c transport.
"It is our intention to scan the world fo ideas and innovations which could be applie to Britain. Our aim is to create a blueprir for a new era in transport", he added.
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