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Page 45
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By JAN US CHARLES DARWIN, I suspect, must occupy a hallowed niche within the Ivory Tower. Whenever the leaders of the new order need to assure hemselves of their superiority to the ape-like hauliers .nd passenger-vehicle operators—and no doubt the teed arises fairly frequently—they rediscover the theory A evolution and triumphantly proclaim how the proiders of nationalized transport are rising on the stepping tones of their dead selves to higher things.
Mr. John Benstead, deputy chairman of the British Crampon Commission, is the latest exponent of the heory. "The advent of the B.T.C.," he said recently, ' is only another step along the road of evolution which tarted with the amalgamation of the railways into four Toup companies in 1922." This statement is evidence A a charming, if somewhat naive, nostalgia for the ;ood old Victorian days when progress was thought to le continuous and inevitably for the better; but the pellet having taken some pretty hard knocks during he 20th century, is now held by few people apart from .4r. Benstead and his colleagues.
Frequent complaints of the Commission's high prices nd poor service provide an ironical commentary to the laim, and make the somewhat haughty assumption of uperiority all the harder for the lesser breeds to endure. )espite evidence to the contrary, however, the concepion of the Transport Act as the pattern for the transport uperman is deep-rooted. It colours the frequent tatements on policy made by both the Commission nd the Minister of Transport.
Not Good Enough The recent unofficial but widespread strike by British toad Services drivers who disapproved of the placing Pf additional inspectors on the road reminded me how, rom the beginning, the Commission stood rather stiffly n its dignity in deciding that the well-tried system of pegotiation with the workers was no longer good enough. he Commission's first report, for the year 1948, gives le explanation that "the machinery for statutory nforcement of wages laid down by the Road Haulage Vages Act was felt to be inappropriate for a public body uch as the Road Haulage Executive."
Propriety, it may be argued, is of secondary nportance to utility. The elaborate negotiating lachirtery now running parallel with that of the freenterprise hauliers seems in no way to have helped to nprove relations between the Executive and its stall. : is surprising, however, to find that even the experts re willing to accept the B.T.C. at its own high moral aluation.
An article in "The Economist" some time ago ttempted to justify the high rates under nationalization y saying, among other things, that British Road ervices, "whatever some of its competitors might do," annot disregard regulations controlling drivers' hours nd speed. This comparison is certainly odious. It annot be denied that some drivers—and some mployers—are at times guilty of breaches of the law.
yen if one takes into account the probability that the eccadillos of a nationalized organization attract more ublic attention than those of concerns under free aterprise, the fact remains that some of the offences re committed by employees of the R.H.E.
The Transport Act does its best to give the B.T.C. the status of the herrenvolk, but even in these circumstances there is evidence of human frailty. Only the other day the Transport Arbitration Tribunal found it necessary to protect the former owners of acquired undertakings against entering into agreements with the R.H.E., which ignored the Tribunal's decision in the Maggs case. The Executive had adopted "a most improper attitude," said the Tribunal. "It is not for the parties to decide that our decisions are wrong, or to arrogate to themselves the right to postpone giving effect to them."
Original Sin
Integration is no cure for original sin and nationalization does not make the provider of transport any less fallible. He merely has more power, and the greater the power, the more likely it will be misused On this point Mr. Benstead was silent Without going so far as to complain, he wistfully indicates ways in which the power of the Commission could be augmented.
The "greatest disadvantage in relation to private industry" is the inability to put rates up at will. "Before we can increase our charges on railways, London Transport and docks, we have to secure authority from an independent tribunal, and this can only be obtained after we have suffered the impact of increased prices from our suppliers. Whilst this inquiry procedure is taking place we continue to suffer the increases mentioned, thus inevitably worsening our financial position, as we cannot adjust our charges retrospectively," he said.
Lord Hurconnb has also at times embroidered this theme. It is a strange point to emphasize at a time when the Commission is step by step enlarging its monopoly over a wide field. Although no suggestion is made that the Transport Tribunal is superfluous, one may perhaps catch an echo from the statement on the propriety of statutory wages for nationalized bodies. Is there just a hint that a public body should really be trusted to fix its own charges?
An Ugly Guise Such a hint would not be welcomed by trade and industry, to which the R.H.E., at present in the happy position of not being responsible to the Transport Tribunal, appears more and naore in the ugly guise of a monopoly with scant regard for any interests but its own. The furniture manufacturers are, perhaps, the first complete industry to come up against the consequences. They are aghast at the terms of the Pickfords's proposed new furniture-carriage service, timed to come into force on July 1. Rates are to be increased to between 20 per cent. and 80 per cent. above the present charges, and more onerous conditions are to be imposed, including carriage at owner's risk, demurrage charges and a percentage charge for furniture damaged in transit.
• If the evolutionary process be really at work on the Commission at the present time, it seems to meet with strangely little approval from the general public. So far from wishing to go back to Methuselah, or even back to Darwin, many people believe that the step taken in 1947 was profoundly wrong from the beginning. The Conservatives, deplorably atavistic, would prefer to go back to that date and start again.