WHITE PAPER CHAINS
Page 38
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She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving tarnishes the craving. Gives too late
TROY might still be standing if the inhabitants had observed I the maxim that the Greeks are dangerous when they come with gifts. The shadow of antiquity may have fallen for a moment across the audience at Honiton when they heard the Minister of Transport, Mrs. Barbara Castle, read out her shopping list the other day at the opening of the bypass. The welcome which might have been given to her plans for new roads was less cordial when it was realized how long it would take to put those plans into execution. Other items of policy might be even better appreciated if they were not put into effect at all.
Mrs. Castle agreed at Honiton that it was not possible to be satisfied with just the one stretch of road that she was opening. There should be a link with the M5 in Somerset running into the south-west as far as Plymouth. The road was clearly a vital one and would be built, said the Minister. "That is a firm undertaking."
39 steps
When would it be carried out? On this point the going was much less firm. There would be an aerial survey during the first three months of next year, said the Minister. Then a decision would have to be reached on the kind of road needed. Long before this stage visibility had dwindled away almost to nil.
Although the Minister did not mention them there will undoubtedly be the notorious 39 road-building steps to be climbed before the dream becomes reality; and, as Mrs. Castle did mention, the road-building programme is now full up to 1970. Bypasses of Cullompton, Bridgwater, Taunton and Exeter would begin a sequence of construction starting "about 1973 or 1974" and then pressing steadily ahead.
Some other areas of the country will have no better luck, said the Minister, and she had other things in her Christmas shopping basket by way of consolation. She is not going to allow the south-west to be denuded of railways in the absence of the roads the region needs. Uneconomic rail and rural bus services which have a social need will receive Government or local subsidies. "We are not going to turn these counties into a trainless, busless wilderness."
This way of presenting a somewhat negative policy as though Mrs. Castle were carrying a cornucopia to the southwest may seem not altogether inappropriate in the pantomime season. A .superfluity of presents with a sting in the tail has brought bad luck on one or two celebrated occasions. The princess in the fairy story received a different gift from each of a dozen Godmothers but the last to arrive cancelled all the rest.
The traditional version of the tale of the Sleeping Beauty provides a happy ending which would be changed these days when the pantomime has moved over into the theatre of cruelty and it is the fashion for Alice in Wonderland to die of fright and for Prince Charming to strangle his Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. Like road users lulled to slumber by Mrs. Castle's tale of things to come, the princess in the modern fairy story, having slept on promises for a hundred years, would wake up to find that not so much as a mile of motorway had been built in all that time.
Ungrateful?
It would be difficult to find more promises to the square inch than those contained in the White Paper on transport policy. The road operator may seem ungrateful, but instead of the glittering prospect spread before him he might prefer merely a firm undertaking that he will continue to enjoy the reasonable measure of freedom he now possesses.
No record is extant of the thank-you letter from the person at the receiving end of the Christmas nursery rhyme. The chances are that he (or she) may well have been completely satisfied with the original partridge in a pear tree. He may subsequently have suspected that he was the victim of a hoax when more and more presents began to arrive, in parcels at first but towards the end in vans and even charabancs.
In the same way the road operator may begin to think he has had too much of a good thing by the time the Minister has unloaded on him: 80 heavy vehicle testing stations 40 liner trains 20 university projects 10 subjects for research 8 regional economic planning boards 6 road construction units 4 conurbation transport authorities 2 Prices and Incomes Board reports with a national freight organization and a new system of licensing still to come.
On the day following Mrs. Castle's statement at Honiton there came a warning from Mr. John Davies, director-general, Confederation of British Industry, that perhaps these fairy gifts are no more acceptable than fairy gold. Mr. Davies, who was giving the inaugural Sir George Earle memorial lecture, described the present relationship between Government and industry as consultation by condescension.
Government policy
Previously the Government had been content to provide the framework within which trade and industry could thrive. More recently the policy has been to play a leading part in the creation of national resources. A maze of consultative groupings is being built up, said Mr. Davies, with the dual object of genuinely acquiring knowledge of the workings of industry and of quietening the fears that the Government would act in an arbitrary or impulsive manner.
What industrialists are experiencing is not a joint effort to improve the framework but "Government getting in on the act". The initial concept of the national plan and the incomes policy was one of voluntary and collaborative action. The development has been in favour of autonomous Government action "with industry at best a dubious onlooker", said Mr. Davies. Partnership should be the aim rather than consultation —"which has become practically and rightly a dirty word."
Clearly Mr. Davies' comments have an application in the field of transport. The White Paper promises consultation on almost every proposal put forward and consultation is a constant theme in ministerial statements. When it comes to the point of action, however, the danger is that operators will either be bullied—as they were when they dared to take a line ol action which did not have the full approval of the Prices and Incomes Board—or ignored, as it seems may happen ultimately in the dispute over the availability of liner trains.