'Angry Probe' into Transport likely
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
ONE result of the railway strike settlement, and the brinkmanship involved, is that the Cabinet could easily be forced out of its previous reluctance to take decisions on transport integration.
Mr. Wilson's "long, cool look" at .railway pay could turn into an angry probe into the results of Mr. Marples' 1962 Transport Act—and an attempt to re-introduce Socialist thinking of the immediate postwar days.
It is now being said, yet again, that the railways are labouring under an impossible financial and legislative burden. Implied in this is the verdict that the Beeching doctrine of profitability, backed by the 1962 Act, has proved hopelessly wrong.
There is plenty to reinforce this thesis of continued failure. It is now revealed that the rail operating deficit is currently running at the staggering sum of £130m. a year and that freight receipts have run into serious trouble.
When the cliff-hanging over the recent strike threat was at its height, Mrs. Castle is reported to have waxed eloquent to the railwaymen's executive about the fruits of co-ordination. What she told them went on behind closed doors, but it is instructive to see that a vote of 18-5 in favour of a strike was changed during that day to a narrower majority of 12-11.
The day after it was called off speculation had begun about the chances of yet another basinful of new policy for the railways, enshrined in a Socialist Act of Parliament to be enacted (presumably) after an election victory.
Mrs. Castle has decided that a White Paper on co-ordination (or integration) is her first priority. By attracting the undivided attention of Mr. Wilson and three key Ministers to the strike problem, British Railways and the railway workers have laid a forceful claim to priority in the shaping of this plan.