Free Speech
Page 54
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BEHIND the Iron Curtain, or so we are told, writers are regarded as servants of the state first and foremost, like everyone else. Their work must follow the party line. It must have social value. In conforming with the dictate from above, they lose their own individuality. They may sincerely believe in the views they express, or the way of life they advocate. But the reader will find in . their work nothing about the .personality of the writers, except where it reflects the published opinions of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and their successors.
The Ivory Tower has had the same sort of effect, although not to the same degree, as the doctrine of communism. Leaders and officials of British Road Services have, in the past 10 years, written a good many articles, and read a good many addresses and papers. Much of what they have said has been worth saying. They have had original ideas, and given a new expression to old ones. They have between them built up a satisfactory picture of what B.R.S. are doing and of the plans for the future.
But their opinions, when they care to express them, are invariably orthodox. They are the collective opinion of B.R.S., or at times of the British Transport Commission. It may change from time to time, but it does so for political reasons, and not as a result of inner convictions. Before disposal began, representatives of --B.R.S. argued in favour of integration, and preached monopoly while denying that they had it. The same speakers now see and proclaim the advantages of competition, and the impression is that they were all converted to this view at about the same time.
Brazen Lungs Written records give the impression that the voices in the Ivory Tower come from brazen lungs, and that the leaders of B.R.S. are ruthless, without sentiment, and dedicated to the pursuit of amechanized and automated paradise upon earth. Such an impression does not last after one has met the individuals socially. They are as tolerant and unprogressive as the next man. More often than not, they look at television only in the local pub. Their hearts leap up when they behold a carthorse in the Strand, and they are quite capable, not merely of living in a house lit only by candles, but of boasting of the fact.
There is no need to ask why representatives of B.R.S. should conform to the B.R.S. line. In exactly the same way, officials of the industry's trade associations express their own association's policy, although it is sometimes difficult to know what that policy is. Members of the associations are not similarly tied, unless they hold high office. They may say what they please, and it even pleases some of them a good deal to attack the association to which' they belong.
Some ex-members, who have been rebelliously vocal in their time, are now employed by B.R.S. It would be interesting to know whether they like conformity, or whether, when they have occasion to speak in public, they ever feel the temptation to diverge, to cry out against socialism and nationalization, and to express their nostalgia for the primeval mud from which the Ivory Tower was fashioned.
Hauliers who escaped nationalization, or escaped from et 6
nationalization, have the chance to speak freely. It is disappointing that so few of them have made very much of the, chance. For many years,. hardly anybody on the free-enterprise side of the industry has been worth the listening. Either the speaker is inarticulate, or he has nothing to say. One might almost suppose that all the orators whose speech is geared to their intelligence went over with the acquired undertakings.
There have, of course, been one or two notable exceptions. Two recent speeches at least, of a widely different kind, have inspired hope that the period is coming to an end when the listener expects that a haulier will be either dull or vapid. Early this month, the exposition of the fuel situation by Mr. R. N. Ingram, a vice-chairman of the Road Haulage Association, was both forceful and lucid. A little later came the survey of the parcelscarrying side of the industry by Mr. R. H. Farmer, himself at one time a vice-chairman of the R.H.A., but better known more recently as a member of the Road Haulage Disposal Board.
Noticeable Contrast What is particularly significant about Mr. Farmer's performance is that he was entering a field where, or so it seems, B.R.S. have for many years had almost a monopoly. He was reading a paper to the Institute of Transport in London. It would be invidious and wrong to suggest that the rivalry between state ownership and private enterprise has at any time found a place in the Institute, or to argue whether one paper is better or worse than another, but there is certainly a noticeable contrast between Mr. Farmer's style and that of speake,:s from B.R.S.
Perhaps the difference is that they strive to be impersonal, whereas he makes no attempt to hide a distinctive personality. It is not necessarily his own. It may be the personal, or mask, with which he chooses to meet the academic world. Whether real or assumed, it has characteristics that help one to see the speaker as an individual rather than as a representative.
Mr. Farmer does not hesitate to admit to a strong personal feeling, and even at one stage to a' prejudice. He is the kind of person to back the individual against the machine. Mechanization, automation and electronic brains may take over much of the work at parcels depots, he agrees, but they will receive no warm welcome from him. He sees the saving in drudgery before the saving in money. Where a package may have to travel more than 100 yards from one vehicle to another in a depot, he realizes that a device is needed "kinder to the poor feet, and the wages bill, than a hand-truck." Many people would have put the wages first.
The qualities that Mr. Farmer values in a manager are not necessarily those that secure promotion to high office. He realizes and accepts this. The manager who has worked his way up from the bottom is often conservative about change, and possibly limited in vision. He is also likely to be sympathetic, and even sentimental, in recognizing the difficulties of the people who work for him. "These qualities may not produce the last word in efficiency," says Mr. Farmer, "but they certainly help to create a good relationship in a depot." Mr. Farmer leaves no doubt as to where his first preference lies.