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Malcolm V.
Robson
• When Jim Finnis retired from the chair of the RHA's International Group last week it was the roost natural thing in the world that Malcolm Robinson, who has been in Continental transport since 1956, should fill the vacancy,
Malcolm Robinson claims that his company, although not the biggest, was the first Continental operator based in Britain. As the assistant Continental manager of Continental Road Transport Services (Ackworth) Ltd, he spends a great deal of his time far from his native Yorkshire. Meetings in London. the Channel ports, European capitals and IRU centre at Geneva have become almost commuting points for this athletic 42-year-old since he joined Ackworth seven years ago.
Before that time he had 10 years' Continental work with LEP Transport, so that he well understands the problems of Continental operation and his views on European operators coming into the UK are based on long experience—"sometimes bitter experience". he comments.
The inability of enforcement officers in this country to bring the full weight of the law on Europeans who break our regulations causes him concern. He points out that circumstances are entirely different across the water. Although he realizes that there must he some good, diplomatic reasons which deter us from acting against these law-breakers, he does not accept that this should be so.
Malcolm Robinson has some reservations from a transport point of view about Britain's application to join the Common Market. "They are finding their problems", he said, and as he points out these are problems which would face the British operator if we joined the Six.
Malcolm Robinson began his career in transport in the Bradford wool trade and despite his globe-trotting is still very much a Yorkshireman. He claims that the Quaker village of Ackworth is the capital of Yorkshire but to appease his big city friends he supports Leeds United. When he can, he plays cricket.
He is a keen photographer but confesses, however, that all of his photographic time is spent snapping Continental trailers.
As a life-long transport man, it would have been natural if he had spent his military service in the Royal Army Service Corps. -But you
know the Army", he said. was pushed into the Medical Corps."
He paid his predecessor in the Group chair a fine compliment: "Jim Finnis was a good
tutor,he said. I.S.