Free for All
Page 59
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Political Commentary By Janus
THE anarchist that lies buried in each of us prompts me to found a society for the return of complete free enterprise to road haulage. There would be several people willing to join, although not enough for there to be any danger that the principles they support would be accepted by the authorities. The main function of the society would be to train. hecklers in demolishing the naive arguments usually advanced for keeping road haulage under a control very much the same as it is at the present day.
The ostensible purpose of the Road and Rail Traffic Act. 1933, under which the licensing system began, was to protect the railways from road competition, and one of the many contemporary articles of faith is that the abolition of the system would be the signal for hauliers to spring out of the ground mounted on vehicles of the latest type and prepared to strip the railways bare of traffic. There is no evidence that this would happen. On the other hand, the railways have never agreed that the 1933 Act put an end to their troubles.
Within five years the railways were asking for a ".square deal" that would entail further restrictions on hauliers. The demand was not renewed after the war, partly because nationalization and the provisions of the Transport Act, 1947, appeared to do what was 'required. The silent revolution ran its course in spite of legislation, and it was plain some time ago that the railways could no longer claim to be the mainstay of the country's goods transport system. Far more traffic is now carried by road, and the trend is likely to continue.
Encouragement by Restriction It can even be suggested that the restrictions on road transport stimulated ils use. Many a trader must no doubt have reasoned that, if the Government were so • keen on his traffic going by rail, there could be unsuspected advantages in sending it by road. The licensing system prevented hundreds, perhaps thousands, of enterprising men from entering the road haulage industry as operators, but it could be that the railways got very little of the business that these hauliers rnanques would have handled had an A or B licence been available over the counter like most other commodities.
The fashionable plea for restriction is that there are already far too many vehicles on the crowded roads. The Licensing Authority is told that he ought to bear this in mind when considering new applications. The point is a particular favourite with the people who dislike the Transport Act, 1953.
• In the 1933 Act the Authority was directed to have regard "primarily to the interests of the public generally, including those of persons requiring, as well as those of persons providing, facilities for transport." The 1953 Act alters this so as to read "to the interests of the public generally, including primarily those of persons requiring facilities Tor transport and secondarily those of persons providing facilities for transport." The one certain conclusion from this verbal square dance is that the customer has been put ahead of the haulier. I leave to those expert in tote and pool the exact placing of the somewhat insubstantial entity referred to as "the public generally."
.. In any case, there is no reason to suppose that the relaxation of entry into road haulage would add to congestion. It is just as easy to argue that without the licensing System there would actually be fewer commercial goods vehicles on the road. Sir Reginald Wilson, a member of the British Transport Commission, has suggested that the private user of transriort, rather than the professional carrier, presents the greatest problem, because he occupies more space in carrying less traffic. If there is any truth in this suggestion so far as goods vehicles are concerned, the licensing of more hauliers might in practice reduce the total number of vehicles.
There is no need, of course, to accept the-suggestion as true. Its strength as a suggestion may owe a good deal to the assumption (which Sir Reginald does not make) that traders rush to buy their own vehicles in response to some inner compulsion that has nothing to do with economics or commonsense. Once put the trader in the same class as the Gadarene swine, and there is soon started a quiet, humanitarian movement to save him from himself and prevent him from playing -with dangerous mechanical toys. Perhaps the growth of such a movement has not escaped your notice?
• Saved from Ham-Kini
At least the licensing system has preserved the hauliers from mass suicide. Before 1933 there were haulage companies—there is no record of the number—that went bankrupt because, it is said, the unregulated competition was too intense. It does not follow that the same thing would happen today. For the best part of a year the public have had an opportunity, which will not be repeated, of entering road haulage as holders of special A licences, with privileges that were not available to the hapless pioneers 25 years ago. Even under these remarkably favourable conditions the response from the public has been small.
Those people not in the road haulage industry have been content to stay out and use their capital elsewhere. Those people who went out of the industry with nationalization have shown no desire to come back. The principal buyers are hauliers keen to expand their existing businesses. There is nothing wrong with this. It may illustrate what would have happened had no licensing system been imposed. The early gold rush may not have proved characteristic. Once it had petered out, the industry may have settled down with the number of operators remaining constant and their fleets steadily increasing.
The society I propose to form would not attempt to prove any of the assertions I have made. Merely to state them is enough, owing to the unfortunate fact that the upholders of the opposite-point of view are just as much without solid proof. Too often they are content to refer back to the Royal Commission on Transport, which was sitting from 1928-30 and the Salter Committee, which presented its report in 1932.
Both these bodies proposed some form of licensing. Their members would be surprised, and perhaps dismayed, at the frequency with which their spirits are invoked to-day. A change of opinion expressed by the chairman of the Salter Committee merely inspires his opponent to reiterate his earlier views more loudly. But controversy cannot rage indefinitely round these ancient texts. More up-to-date reasons must be found to justify the continuance of the licensing system.