‘.• . the point might have been made that integration inevitably means a monopoly '
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IN opening the recent conference of transport organized by the Export Council for Europe, Sir William McFadzean, the chairman of that body, is reported to have described Dr. Beeching's, report on the re-shaping of the railways as the first major essay in the planning of transport in Britain, and to have repeated the criticism which has sometimes been made that the context of the report could have been sufficiently wide to permit consideration of the role of rail as well as road transport Apart from the questionable assumption that wider terms of reference would have produced a better report, Sir William's tribute seems to be carrying the Beeching cult a little too far.
Credit where credit is dile. At least one major attempt at planning preceded the Beeching report by many years, and more nearly approached Sir William's ideal in that it set out to cover the whole field. The Transport Act of 1947 set up a monopoly which was ordered to acquire several thousands of undertakings and use their resources in order to provide an efficient, adequate, economic and "properly integrated" service. The first instruction was more easily carried out than the second. Trade and industry did not find the result to their liking, and it is difficult to imagine that they would be much better pleased with whatever other variety of integration Sir William has in mind.
At least the conference performed the useful service of drawing attention to the importance of transport in the export trade. The attendance included many captains of industry who seemed to think that the occasion provided a good opportunity to berate road transport operators and to some extent the railways. Dr. Beeching was excluded from the strictures, but then he is a considerable industrial figure in his own right. He was evidently regarded as a giant among pygmies. Sir Norman Kipping, directorgeneral of the Federation of British Industries, declared enigmatically that other providers of transport, including dock authorities and shipping companies as well as hauliers, were hoping to cash in on the results of Dr. 13eeching's studies, but not to initiate their own.
TOP-CLASS-PEOPLE NEEDED Particularly'Slighting was Mr. N. J. Freeman, Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. The transport organizations, he said, could not match industry with a high enough grade of opposite numbers. What was needed was top-class people who could take imaginative action. The same theme was taken up the following day in a leading article in The Times. "The transport department," it complained, "compared for example with the production and sales departments, has all too often been treated as a poor relation, in regard both to the calibre and seniority of those who staff it and to the expertise it brings to bear." These criticisms are perhaps part of the price the transport industry is having to pay for the widely reported demand for a battery of first-class brains made by Mr. Keith Granville in his presidential address to the Institute of Transport.
Mr. Freeman was one of a panel of transport users who a28
exchanged opinions and criticisms with a panel of operators led by Dr. Beeching. The suggestion from Mr. E. G. Whitaker, transport adviser of Unilever Ltd., that demurrage charges might help to cut down terminal delays was met with a warning from Mr. Freeman that industry would be paying increasing attention to the make-up of costs. The transport operator might be tempted to ask what else industry has ever done. Hauliers and the railways find themselves under continual pressure from their customers to reduce their rates, and any attempt at an increase meets strong and often successful opposition. The comparatively low margin of profit would help to excuse any shortcomings in large-scale and expensive planning, and would account for the absence or rarity of great industrial figures. After all, without Government support would the railways have been able to afford Dr. Beeching?
THE COST OF TRANSPORT Naturally, the cost of transport is an important consideration. In his address at the conference dinner, the Minister of Transport estimated that transport accounted for 10 per cent of total production costs, so that if, as was hoped, Britain exported £1 700 m. worth of goods to Europe in 1963, inland transport costs would be £170 m. Modernization of the transport system would reduce this amount, said Mr. Marples, and would thus make a contribution to exports. No doubt he was thinking of the Beeching plan, of an improved road system, of better facilities at ports, and so on. He did not continue by saying that the work could be done satisfactorily only by integrating the whole transport industry and appointing one or more supermen to run it.
This was the language, on the other hand, which many of the industrialists were using at the conference. Sir Norman Kipping, in summing up the proceedings, said that users would like to do business with some entity which Linked all the elements of the transport producers. There was not enough evidence, he continued, of the transport producers seeing their combined functions as a part of an integrated whole. There would seem to be a fundamental disagreement between this Point of view and that of the " producers " themselves, who speak in terms of co-operation among independent road and rail operators rather than integration.
Possibly the divergence of view is largely verbal and both sides are expressing the same thing in different terms. This is not how it appears to the outside observer. There might have been an advantage in a more prolonged discussion of specific export problems, in the course of which the representatives of road and rail could have explained their aims more precisely. Among other things, they might have asked their critics for exarhples of the uneconomic provision of transport and for an explanation of the way in which integration would have reduced the cost to the customer in each of the examples given. Above all, the point might have been made that integration inevitably means a monopoly, and in the case of transport a nationalized monopoly. Like Frankenstein, the assembled industrialists might well have recoiled from the monster of their own devising.