RHA fuel rally fails to shine...
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by Charles Young The Road Haulage Association is calling on members to donate £100 to fund a national newspaper campaign to explain the affects of recent fuel price increases. The call came at last weekend's third "Fair Play on Fuel" rally at Heaton Park, Manchester, which attracted very little media coverage of the problem.
About 250 trucks turned up to the rally and the association admits it has had little effect in convincing the Government of the need for an essential user rebate on diesel tax for trucks. There were no TV cameras at the event and RHA director general Steven Norris did not attend.
While the Conservative party has adopted the essential user rebate as official policy, the MP for North Shropshire, Owen Paterson, says his letters to the Treasury have so far done little.
... as Trans-Action heads to France
• Trans-Action, the group of hauliers protesting against crippling fuel duty rates, is restarting its campaign of direct action in October, after what it sees as the failure of the Road Haulage Association's "Fair Play on Fuel" campaign.
More than 30 hauliers are to travel by ferry to France on 3 October to "diesel up" in Calais before returning to drive through Dover with stickers and banners displaying the difference in diesel costs between the UK and the Continent.
"We have to do something to get public and media interest," says Frank Stears of Faversham-based Stears Haulage. "I was at the RHA rally at Brooklands on 22 August and I was astounded that in the RHA's backyard only 100 nonTrans-Action trucks turned up," he says.
Stears also laments the lack of coverage of the rally in the media after Trans-Action had cancelled an arranged protest
through London on 24 August in order to send up to 100 trucks to the Brooklands rally. He is pessimistic Trans-Action will support the RHA campaign in such numbers again. General secretary of United Road Transport Union David Higginbottom says part of the problem is many of the vehicles the industry's lack of a sinparked here will be Dutch gle voice. He used the plator French. It is vital that form to renew his call for a we keep the campaign joint union. going."
RHA deputy director A rally in Scotland is general John Chapman planned in the next couple said: "If the Governent's of months followed by a current policy is continued national rally in the over the next four years, Midlands.