Scrambled Egg and Onion F 4 VERY now and again, somebody is
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reported as saying that the Road Haulage Executive is a per
manent feature of the Ivory Tower and can never be handed back to free enterprise. When so many things have changed or are changing, there seems little justification for thus cherishing a pathetic belief in immutability. Denationalization of road transport may be difficult; many people may consider it undesirable. There is no real ground for pronouncing it impossible.
The myth of the scrambled egg is largely to blame. As a verbal standby for politicians and other public speakers, it has become more than a little addled, and should now be consigned to the lumber room with the unexplored avenues, the shouldered wheels, the not unturned stones and the properly integrated system. The simile is father to the thought. Every housewife knows that a scrambled egg and its shell have parted company for good, and the constant comparison of the R.H.E. with an egg leads gradually to a conviction that the myth is a reality. .
If a culinary symbol be really necessary, the onion is much more suitable. It has grown like the R.H.E. by a process of accretion and can be taken to pieces by the same method in
reverse. This is presumably how the Tories would carry out their promise to denationalize road haulage.
The outer layer, the mere obstructive restrictions, would come off first; in other words, the limit to a radius of 25 miles would be raised, if not abandoned altogether. The remaining layers would then be tackled in turn, on the broad principle of " last in, first out," however unfair it may sound.
Operators whose undertakings had not long been acquired should find little difficulty in taking back their property and starting up again in business. The transition stage should be even easier to hauliers who had handed over only a proportion of their fleet. The trouble would begin when the turn came of those people who sold out an appreciable time ago. Many have already diverted their interest to other trades and industries. Some have retired, others emigrated. Not a few have invested their compensation in other haulage businesses.
Liquidating the R.H.E.
It will be no easy task to round up the eligible and settle their claims. The financial obligation that will have to be met if the R.H.E. be completeliliquidated is something like £.70m. No doubt a clearing house will have to be set up with the duty of ensuring that adequate payment is received for vehicles and other assets handed back, and ultimately of redeeming the British Transport stock paid by the Commission.
The clearing house may well have to remain in being for a long time. One major problem will be to persuade the ex-haulier to part with his money. Compensation for his business may not have been as much as he wanted, but it was often more than he had expected, and the long delay in payment made it seem all the more precious when at length it arrived. He may hesitate about giving it back, especially when he remembers that the swing of the political pendulum may in due course return to power a Socialist Government deter
mined to take his business away again, this time possibly without compensation.
The solution could be found in allowing the haulier to pay for his old business by instalments, as if he had taken out a mortgage on it. This arrangement would suit him much better and in fact may be necessary if the return of ex-operators in large numbers be thought desirable. They are unwilling (even assuming that they still haste it) to pay back the compensation that has cost them so many sleepless nights. They would welcome the chance of regaining their old undertakings and running them on a pay-as-you-earn basis.
Obstinate Layers At this stage, the onion would have shrunk to perhaps half its original size, and the most obstinate layers remain to be peeled off. Towards the centre lie the undertakings of operators who capitulated even before compulsory aequisition, thus making the Commission a present of the framework without which the building up of the R.H.E. would have been almost impossible. Many hauliers feel that their former colleagues who went over voluntarily to the other side should not be allowed to return.
Although it may be easy to sympathize with this opinion, it cannot logically be adopted as a policy. If some people thought they would drive a better bargain by volunteering, so did others think it in their own interests to hang back. The sifting of motives would lead to endless and fruitless arguments, and the industry needs the help of every able and experienced road transport operator, irrespective of his nationalization record. It is perhaps appropriate, however, that the volunteers should wait until last for their freedom.
Not all the assets of the R.H.E. would be claimed, but once the process of liquidation had started it would probably be thought desirable to make a complete job of it apart from the collection and delivery vehicles of British Railways if they had by that time been absorbed by the JULE There should be no lack of bidders for what may be left over when the returned exiles have taken their share. The main concern should be to prevent the sale of the remainder in one piece. Established operators in need of some extra tonnage might be given preference in the disposal of the surplus assets.
From first to last there will be snags. There will most certainly be many technical difficulties, financial problems and labour troubles. On the other hand, practically every trader and manufacturer in the country will welcome the attempt and co-operate fully They will do this the more readily if they cease to prate of unscrambling the egg, and instead liken the task of denationalization to the peeling of an onion. The one conspicuous flaw in the analogy is that the spectators are far less likely to shed tears.
• Copies of "The Commercial Motor" Tables of Operating Costs, 1950-51, may be obtained from Temple Press Ltd., Bowling Green Lane, London, price 2s. 8d., including postage. A second impression of the 39th edition has been made. Cost figures for the operation of all types of commercial vehicle are given, together with hiring charges.