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Campaign Over?
Page 67
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SOMETIMES the truth really turns out to be what one would expect. The campaign that has been waged against the heavy goods vehicle over the past two years or so (with what one must admit to be some success in its effect upon public opinion) has been fed largely by a body calling themselves the Road and Rail Association. Their main argument has been that a good deal of traffic now passing by roadshould more properly be carried by the railways and that steps should be taken to transfer it, either by compulsion, by increased taxation on certain categories of road user, or by restricting the right of the trader to carry his own goods under C licence.
A moment of impartial consideration will show that the basis on which the argument rests is no more sensible than the theory that the earth is flat. Many even wilder ideas have their champions, however, and it is not difficult to understand that there are people who genuinely hold the views expressed by the Road and Rail Association. What is less easy to believe is that many people would be found prepared to spend considerable sums of money in propagating those views unless they were likely to receive some advantage from the outlay.
OBVIOUSLY, the main beneficiaries of a campaign against the heavy goods vehicle would be the railways. It was natural to suspect that they played some part behind the scenes in the running of the campaign, and perhaps supplied the main financial support. The suspicion has been confirmed in unexpected detail by a recent Press announcement of the termination by Dr. Beeching of the contract with a public relations firm, CS, Services Ltd., which is said to have run the Road and Rail Association as a pressure group on behalf of the British Transport Commission for the past three years, at a fee described as " substantial."
The arrangement was presumably made while Lord Robertson was chairman of the B.T.C., and the Press report suggests that the Commission's public relations adviser, Mr. J. H. Brebner, who has now retired, may have been responsible. The report also says that the Road and Rail Association was "widely believed to be an independent organization,"
THAT anybody could really believe this is open to question. All the same, it is disquieting that so much effort was made to cover up the real sources of a flow of propaganda that, in one way or another, has generated a good deal of ill will against the lorry driver and operator, even if it has not so far succeeded in recapturing any tonnage for the railways.
The episode is reminiscent of what has happened in the U.S. Over 12 years ago, an arrangement was made by the American railways with a public relations firm; there followed a comprehensive campaign against road transport, and in particular against operators carrying traffic that the railways coveted. Organizations that were persuaded to take part—presumably with no clear idea of the purpose for which they were being used—represented all sections of the community, from sheriffs to housewives. The climax came when a carrier who found that the campaign was making it difficult for him to expand his operations filed a iuit against the railways under the anti-trust legislation.
The law is very different in the U.S. from what it is in Britain, and it may be a good thing.that the Road and Rail Association are entitled to put forward their views in their own Way without fear of prosecution. All the same, one cannot help feeling that it would be better in such circumstances for an interest to be declared. The existence of pressure groups of all kinds is now for the most part accepted. Presumably, none of them conducts the whole of its activities in broad daylight. But for the most part, on matters that really count, they are willing (if not eager) to stand up and say who they are at the same time as they announce what they think. This is the ideal, even if it is not always followed.
ADMITTEDLY, opinions have a right to their own existence apart from the people who hold them. The objections to capital punishment are not invalidated by the strong support they receive from homicides. The contention that traffic should be transferred from road to rail has been taken over from what may be the failing grasp of the Road and Rail Association by a new body calling themselves the National Council on Inland Transport. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, active membership tends to be composed of interests representing pedestrians, noise abaters, touring cyclists and so on. It is for the public to judge the value of the opinions of such people on a subject that seems to lie well outside their main interests.
The proposals on which so much time and money have been lavished seem, not unexpectedly, to have made little impression in official and what are sometimes called wellinformed quarters. More serious from the point of view of operators are the incidental issues that have been raised. These include the extent to which goods vehicles may be said to cause delays and congestion, the obstruction presented by the abnormal indivisible load, the menace of diesel fumes and black smoke, and the accidents that are said to be caused by the very presence of lorries on the road—even if they are not directly involved.
VAGUE and undirected discontent on such points has welcomed a focus in a proposal aiming to send outsize consignments by other forms of transport, cut down the number of commercial vehicles—or at least the number to be seen on the roads—and miraculously by the same means make more money for the railways and relieve the taxpayer from a subsidy. Naturally, the tendency is to gloss over the disadvantages of a proposal that promises so fair. Equally .easy to forget is that the grievances of the motorist have nothing whatever to do with the problems of the railways.
The Road and Rail Association may not themselves have introduced all these irrelevant considerations. They have not needed to-do so. The public have been only too keen to do the job themselves. The result has been, amongst other things, a succession of artiges and letters . in the Press, attacking the lorry, the lorry driver, the operator and the Minister of Transport for various reasons. The invariable justification for the attack has been that a simple transfer of traffic would remove the cause for complaint.
Whether or not Dr. Beeching's change of policy means that the attacks will decrease, there is still a lot to be done by road transport interests in straightening out public thinking and disentangling their own problems from that of the railways.