What's Hecuba To Him?
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NEW inventions and processes do not always give rise to a controversy so violent that practically everybody seems to be taking part. For example, the makers of open razors, safety razors and electric shavers may compete strenuously with each other, but the shaving public are content to have a wide choice. Nobody dares tell me what method I ought to adopt for dealing with my own beard. So it is with most things, from chewing gum to kitchen sinks. There are even one or two advisory associations that test various products and services, and advise on their comparative cost and efficiency.
None of these bodies, it is reasonably certain, would venture on to the subject of transport. It is one on which too many people already hold strong opinions, likely to be inflamed but not altered whatever advice was given. The public tend to take sides in particular between road and rail, much in the way , that they will pick one team or another to support when they happen to come across a football match in progress on the local recreation ground. It is not necessary to know anything about either side, or even about football. The spectator can nevertheless work himself up into a state of mind which persuades him that only one team is keeping to the rules, and that any progress by their opponents must be the result of foul play.
It may have been a similar impulse that influenced Lord Fraser during the recent debate on British Railways in the House of Lords, In one breath he was urging the Government to "have the political courage to free the , railways and to let prices go up," In the next he was lamenting that the railways, because of their legal disabilities, "have had to eke out a living by undercutting other people and showing little regard for some of their obligations.
One Form Of Transport There has always been a strong railway lobby in both Houses of Parliament, and some of the speakers in the debate had evidently been well briefed. Others may have intervened without any prompting. The most notable feature was that nearly all of them very decidedly favoured
one form of transport. Like the player. in "Hamlet," they
spoke eloquently, even movingly, on one side of an issue that very possibly had no direct personal interest for them. Outstanding among some curious observations was an account by Lord Lucan of the change, for what he evidently considered the very worst, in the method of transporting china clay to the Potteries. In the old days, he said, it went by sea from Par to Manchester, where it was transhipped into narrow boats and taken along a canal to Stoke-on-Trent. Now a haulier . collects and delivers the china clay direct from the pit. •
"That is why our roads are in the state they are,', commented Lord Lucan. They are cluttered up with coal, china clay and other bulky traffics "which are essentially more suitable to be hauled on a track rather than on rubber tyres."
This example he used in order to illustrate the argument that the different forms of transport should be complementary rather than competitive. But, as so often happens when the discussion on transport turns to integration and co-operation, the impression was not exactly in line with the intention. Lord Lucan was saying in effect that traffic captured by road transport from coastal shipping and the canals should now be given to the railways.
Coastal shipping also had a champion in the debate. Lord Simon reported an arrangement between the South Western Gas Board and the British Transport Commission, whereby about 150,000 tons of coal a year, previously carried by sea to waterside gasworks at Exmouth, Torquay, Penzance and Bideford, were being diverted to the railways. He hinted that the traffic was being subsidized out of the payments that the Government were making for the relief and the rebuilding of the railways.
The same accusation has been put even more bluntly by hauliers in the Midlands, who have lost, it is said, millions of tons of coal traffic because of an agreement that the railways have reached with' the Central Electricity Generating Board. Lord Lucan would have, had an answer to this complaint if it had teen made during the debate. " Free competition is all ight so long as you win," he would have said, "But if he other fellow wins, they are ganging up against you, ad that is unfair competition:He would no doubt have ijepeated this sentiment, perhaps with all the more relish, if he had known that china clay is one of the traffics about Which hauliers are complaining of rate-cutting by the railviays.
Day-to-D Management . Hauliers may be interested in the reply given to Lord Simon on behalf of the government by Lord Chesham. _Arrangements for coal su plies to a particular gas board, he said, were a matter of day-to-day management, which were properly the respons bility of the board concerned. Technical and commercial reasons had been given for the change from sea to rail. ' It seems," Lord Chesham went on somewhat obscurely, "that the new arrangements will be very much in the intere ts of the consumers of gas and coke in the South Western region."
The Government understood and sympathized with the feelings of the coastal shipping industry, but there was no ground, Lord Chesham bet eyed, for assuming a conspiracy between the Gas Board, he Coal Board and the ILT.C. He understood that the chamber of Shipping might 'be making an' application to the Transport Tribunal under the provisions of Section 39 of the 1933 Act, which is concerned with the rates charged by the railways when in competition with coastwise shipping. .The fact that the matter was sub judice, Lord Chesham suggested, absolved him from having to express an opinion.
' The debate threw up a niurnber of supporters of different forms of transport, but it; t of road transport. Although. there was 'abundant critici m of the railways, the majority of the speakers were on therir side. This may be a manifestation of the British tendency to cheer the losers. The proposal from Lord Lucas which set off the discussion was to call attention to British Railways, their operation and their place in the country's transport system. It would be hard to imagine a noblefford presenting a similar motion on the subject of road hallage. Those people who are on the side of the railways can see little that is good in the activities of other transport operators. In any other industry -they would welcome
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diversity. They like to l ave a wide choice of building materials, of fuels, of food and drink and clothing, and of entertainment. They appear to think that transport, upon which all these manifold products ultimately depend, should become less diversified, sh tad even Offer no choice at all. Whether they think this 4ir not, many of their proposals would have this effect.