More Light on Legal Injustice
Page 29
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STRONG corroboration of our leading article, Penalties fr.& Road Offences," comes from many sources. In this issue we publish a letter on the subject from one of the oldest and most respected members of the haulage industry, Mr. C. le M. Gosselin, a past president of the Commercial Motor Users Association. This operator even suggests that, strongly as our article was worded, it could have gone farther still without deviating from the truth or constituting in any way an exaggeration of the situation.
Last week, we mentioned the fact that Mr. J. C. Francis, secretary of the United Road Transport Workers Association, had referred to the leader as being a remarkable summing up regarding questions that constitute a crying scandal. We did not solicit this opinion—he telephoned to make his comments, at the same time drawing our attention to another extremely important point which we had not mentioned.
This is the fact that, for Ministry of Labour purposes, the loss of a driving licence, as the result of an offence, constitutes "misconduct," with the consequence that the poor driver-victim is not permitted to draw unemployment benefit for six weeks.
Could anything be more ridiculous or savour more of oppression? In hundreds of cases a driver is heavily fined, automatically thrown out of work, and not only debarred from finding the wherewithal to meet the penalty, but, actually, both he and his family may be brought to the verge of starvation, with no recourse other than to obtain a loan from his firm or, worse still, from a moneylender. Possibly, in addition to this, he and his family may be thrown on to public assistance. To a well-behaved and honourable working-man such an indignity might easily induce suicidal tendencies.
We are gathering evidence of specific cases, and propose to publish details of these. At the same time we should appreciate others being brought to our notice, for something must be done to bring home to our legislators and legal authorities the facts concerning this deplorable state of affairs.
Respectable citizens should not be subjected to the risk of being dragged from their homes to prison for what, in many instances, are purely technical offences, often of a minor nature.