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148 
HERE COMES THE BOGYMAN
Page 73
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RECRUITMENT from outside under the present Government has helped to build up—or so one has been given to understand—a formidable corps of economists and statisticians ready for whatever task Mrs. Barbara Castle might set them, from the preparation of a national plan for integration to a detailed analysis of the comparative costs of even the smallest hauliers. It is odd, therefore, that when the Road Haulage Association issues a simple statement on costs and rates the Minister finds it necessary to refer the matter to the Prices and Incomes Board rather than to her
own staff.
Drafting the White Paper on the national freight authority cannot be occupying the time of all the experts in St. Christopher House. A few people could have been spared from the comprehensive road transport costs inquiry so that they could confirm that these same costs may have risen in the course of a year by as much as 9 per cent in a few cases and that hauliers who cannot offset the increases ought to talk with their customers about rates. Which is more or less what the R.H.A. is suggesting, or at least so one may suppose.
Mrs. Castle may be recalling what happened a year ago when a few words from the Board extracted a promise that there would be no more blanket recommendations. If Mr. Aubrey Jones was successful as a bogyman on that occasion there is no reason why he should not have the same effect now. Reference to the Prices and Incomes Board becomes the equivalent of an arrest by the Inquisition. It is in itself a condemnation, an indication of heresy.
Exactly what effect the Board has already had can be seen from the wording of the latest announcement by the R.H.A. In the past a definite stand was taken. Members were recommended to increase their rates by a specified amount. A few words of explanation were added and at least there was no doubt about what was meant.
What happened in fact varied from one operator to another and from one customer to another. The popular supposition that all rates had automatically gone up by the amount stated was not borne out by events. The trumpets sounded and the walls of Jericho remained largely intact. The most that hauliers achieved was that the normal downward slide of rates was momentarily arrested and even to some extent reversed. There was satisfaction that once a year or so the trumpets were blown unequivocally. Perhaps operators in general fell sharply away from this brave beginning. Small hauliers approaching large customers were likely to be far more obsequious. The latest statement from the R.H.A. is near to taking the same line. Members are merely advised to "open negotiations" with their customers. A long list is set out of costs which have increased.
It might have been thought not so long ago that this was no way for a trade association to behave. Having no customers with whom to negotiate, the R.H.A. could easily take a firm line even if in practice the members found they had to compromise. Provided the recommendations were reasonable they could only be helpful. Firms within an industry would expect their association to encourage them in a positive manner.
As it is there seems little that the Government can do to the R.H.A. as such. One cannot yet envisage the leading officials being committed to the Tower for contempt of Mr. Jones. Moreover, there are not many sanctions which can be taken against individual hauliers. Each operator's costs are different and he would have to be dealt with separately. The Prices and Incomes Board might advise traders against paying higher rates; but the advice is unnecessary as far as most traders are concerned, and the Board itself would agree that unavoidable increases in costs have to be met.
Another peculiar feature in the situation is the way in which the Board is set its tasks. It was asked by the First Secretary of State to investigate three rates recommendations which happen to have come fairly close together. It has now been asked by the Minister of Transport to investigate a further statement from the R.H.A. Neither Mr. George Brown nor Mrs. Castle, one supposes, are extensive users of road haulage. At no time has the request for an investigation come from the actual cus
tomers. If they have expressed no dissatisfaction it may seem preposterous that the Government should be crying before somebody else is hit.
For those people who equate state control with tyranny there is material here to make the flesh creep. Already, it may be said, the road haulage industry is becoming afraid to say what it means. When its members ask for bread the R.H.A. can only give them a stone. Before long we shall have to keep a tight rein on our tongues if we wish to sleep sound at night.
The defenders of liberty might find plenty of evidence that the tendency to disguise one's true meaning is on the increase. It could be argued that a dictatorship is being established under which it is becoming dangerous to speak too plainly. General statements and allegory take the place of ordinary straightforward comment.
Within the Transport Holding Company the situation must be one of particular delicacy at the present time. More than one reader of The Times may have puzzled over a recently published article by Sir Reginald Wilson, the T.H.C. deputy chairman and managing director. He had been asked to explain why public money had to be put at risk, in other words why publiclyowned bodies should undertake activities which might involve the taxpayer in a loss. At the very end of a wide-ranging historical and economic disquisition, entertaining but expressed almost entirely in generalities, the following observation springs from the page:
If a Government's decision to undertake a particular activity were motivated mainly by a desire to restrict private property or personal enterprise, or to do damage by unfair means, or unnecessarily, to existing private enterprise, the decision would be suspect, however safe (or successful) the activity might prove.
What was that again? Sir Reginald may still be thinking in the widest possible terms with no thought of a specific application. The ordinary reader, however, could easily find in the words a reference to the transport industry—or even if it comes to that to the Prices and Incomes Board. It may no longer be safe to speak one's mind even in this impersonal way. Sir Reginald should perhaps be careful if he wishes to avoid the dreaded midnight summons.