Co m plica t ions O N the result of the coming General Election the
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oracles are ambiguous, but there is no doubt about public opinion on the single issue of nationalization. The opinion polls show a three or four to one majority against any further extension of state ownership. Nationalization is unloved and undesired. It is at the top of nearly everybody's list of items in the Labour Party programme they could well do without.
Encouraged by this, and by the apparent determination. of the Labour Party to stick by their full programme, win or lose, the Conservatives and the threatened industries are concentrating on an obviously vulnerable point in their adversary's armour. The steel companies are no longer content merely to tell the public how good they are. They have set to their suffrage a limit just short of the political— not noticeably short, some people might think—by asking for the voice of their supporters, and not specifically the vote. The Institute of Directors, in what they themselves describe as a free-enterprise campaign publication, have followed out one or two hints by Labour Party spokesmen by giving a list of about 600 industrial companies with a capital of more than £24m., which are at least in danger of being expropriated under a Socialist administration.
Reaction from the Labour Party is a mixture of nervousness and bravado. There are inspired denials of any threat to the 600 concerns. The only industries that need worry, it is suggested, are steel and long-distance road haulage; their fate has been sealed and proclaimed. Simultaneously, Mr. W. J. Carron, president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, cautiously put forward the machine-tool industry as "well on the way to be on the list" for public ownership, with the aircraft industry "running second." He hastened to add that acceptance or rejection of nationalization by the public could affect the result of the election, and that this was one of •the factors with which the Labour Party must reckon. More and more people, he admitted, were participating in private enterprise, by the creation of unit trusts and the issue of shares to workers, and were therefore interested in the maintenance of the present system.
Shopping List
Hesitancy among even the leaders shows how divided the Socialists are on the subject of nationalization. The hackneyed pledge on steel and road haulage makes no sense at all if there is no intention of going farther, and the larger the shopping list the less likely is the success of the Labour party at the election. No wonder, therefore, that the champions of free enterprise have taken heart. The impression is that more sustained and more effective protests are being made this time than 10 or a dozen years ago, even during the agonizing period when the Socialists were actually in power and were making good their threats.
By this reckoning, the clamour on behalf of hauliers should be very loud indeed. Their opposition and the supporting noises were by far the most vociferous in 1946 and 1947, and the echoes are still reverberating. There are now many voices more strident than that of the haulier. The steel companies notably have almost edged him out of the picture. The reason appears to be not so much that the haulier is doing less shouting than before, although to some extent this may be the case, but that other people are shouting harder, and are beginning to find a more receptive audience.
One contributory factor is that the iron and steel indusa24 try have a relatively simple case to explain to a public unwilling to listen patiently to long explanations. It is not difficult to learn that the industry was nationalized by the Socialists, denationalized by the Conservatives, and is now threatened with renationalization. It is true that one large steel company remains under public ownership but this exception does not greatly affect the general picture and can be ignored, just as, when the case was stated for road haulage in 1947, there was no need to explain pedantically that some hauliers would escape.
The issue for the road haulage industry has now become complicated. Only a small part of the industry was nationalized, just over half of that small part was denationalized, and it is not quite certain what will be taken over again. It is possible to grasp what is proposed for iron and steel without knowing anything about the industry; some small knowledge of road transport is needed to understand the meaning of the threat to hauliers.
All the Same
The public are confused. Some think all road haulage was nationalized and has remained so; others think it has all been denationalized. Those people who seldom make use of public goods transport know only the names of British Road Services, Pickforcls and Carter Patersons, and seldom realize that they are all in fact the same undertaking.
Unkind remarks are sometimes made about Conservative M.P.s for their ignorance on road transport matters. They cannot be experts on every subject, and one may sympathize a little with them if they shirk the task of mastering a confusing issue on which there is not complete agreement even among the people who ought to know. At least two Conservative M.P.s have recently canvassed one proposal for the completion of the process of denationalization of road haulage, and another proposal that C-licence holders should in certain circumstances be allowed to carry return loads. Presumably there has been some support from within the industry fOr both proposals, even though there has been much greater opposition.
The Conservative party, as distinct from their representatives in Parliament, have made some attempt to put the case for hauliers. At once a difficulty arises in addition to the problem of obscurity. Whoever praises free enterprise in road transport by implication criticizes B.R.S. and condemns the railways. The Conservative Government, like any other Government, are responsible for these two organizations, and must wish to see them prosper, politics or no politics.
Not for the first time do the hauliers find the railways a stumbling-block in their political path. Just after the war, when the threat from the Socialists was against the whole of the transport industry, road and rail combined in a unified campaign. This was not entirely satisfactory from the hauliers' point of view, in that the public opinion that supported them was much less decided about the railways. Road and rail were roped together, much to the disadvantage of the former. Now that the railways are on the other side of the fence, they can still exercise a harmful influence by compelling the Conservatives to pull their punches. If the Labour party do return to power, and introduce the legislation that is now merely a threat,-hauliers may expect to have the slight satisfaction of receiving much more full-blooded support from a Conservative party freed from the cares Tags