Coal strategy and the RHA
Page 26
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
IF Janus ever gets tired of looking in both directions at once, I reckon he could, without difficulty, find employment as a very special kind of industrialist — one who is adept at making bricks without straw. He will also need to look to his long sight since in his article Profit or greed? (CM, March 2) he has almost completely missed my point of my Roadway piece on the Central Electricity Generating Board and the circumspect stance of our coalcarrying hauliers.
Desire for esteem, although more important to lesser mortals than dual visaged Roman gods, was not the main point of my message. The gratitude, or at least the CEGB's benign acknowledgement of our members' efforts, was. For we hope to capitalise on that gratitude by persuading the CEGB to insure against strikes in the future by arranging for enhanced movement of coal by road during periods of industrial peace.
Let us suppose that road hauliers had taken advantage of the situation and held a pistol to the CEGB's head in the interests of enhanced profit, as suggested by Janus. In those circumstances, what chance would there have been of the CEGB making a strategic decision to keep some of their coal moving on rubber rather than metal wheels?
The wider issue of road haulage in the future must certainly be tackled, but it played no part on the problems of coal movement during the strike.
I wish I knew the Latin for Use your loaf, Janus'!
FREDDIE PLASKETT Director-general Road Haulage Association London SW6