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Tall Stories
Page 91
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WORKERS in the road transport industry may have noted, and should take warning from, the tendency to present them in a bad light by means of anecdote and myth. They arc more in the public eye than most other workers, and must be correspondingly more careful to see that people have a favourable impression. A different kind of impression is often conveyed by what appears in the Press and in other forms of public communication.
Among the residue of ill-feeling left over from the bus strike is the story of the two people, sometimes two men, sometimes a man and a woman, who thumbed a lift in the back seat of a car, slashed the cushions with a knife or razor, and left a message to the effect that they were bus workers, whose efforts to improve their lot the car-owner was doing his best to sabotage by his untimely philanthropy. Whether the incident happened even once is doubtful. Most of the reports, from several different places, arc almost certainly false. What is most revealing was the willingness of the public to believe the story, and to pass it on. Road passenger workers as a whole might wonder whether this credulity is much of a compliment to them.
The suggestion has been made that the strikers invented the story themselves, as a way of discouraging motorists from giving free lifts. This seems difficult to credit. Even strikers desperately anxious for the withdrawal of their labour to have the maximum effect upon the public would not deliberately advertise themselves as no better than juvenile delinquents. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the dispute with the London Transport Executive, the workers ought to have done everything possible to show, by their behaviour at least, that they were responsible citizens. Whether they wished it or not, they were in the limelight. Upon them largely depended the reputation of road transport workers as a whole.
Wholesale Breaches
It needs a boost. Goods-vehicle drivers have had to endure even worse criticism for a much longer time. They have been accused of wholesale breaches of the law, which go far beyond the mere failure to observe the 20-m.p.h. speed limit when it was legally-4n force for heavy goods vehicles. For some reason, violation of that limit seemed almost universally regarded as a venial offence. This may account for the fact that the uplift of the speed limit seems almost to have escaped notice, so much so that in one section of the industry the Government have found it advisable to set up an inquiry, perhaps in order to find out what has happened.
Stories about goods-vehicle drivers usually begin in a transport café. Their tongues loosened by strong tea, the drivers pour out to sympathetic listeners who seem to be remarkably thick on the ground, instance after instance where they have carried on working far beyond the permitted number of hours, falsified records, and in other ways laid themselves open to substantial penalties.
The occasional sincere driver is even more garrulous. He strengthens in the horrified listener the impression that the main roads of Britain at night are more dangerous than a front-line trench during an enemy advance. The accounts that record the impression often include a description of part of a journey, interspersed with maledictions against the drivers of approaching lorries, whose reckless behaviour is invariably attributed to lack of sleep. On the analogy of the situation in the bus industry, it might be suggested that goods-vehicle drivers also have created their own unfavourable myth. The motive here would presumably be to discredit the owners, rather than the drivers, of the vehicles, and to argue that nationalization of long-distance road haulage, whatever it may or may not achieve in other directions, at least makes the roads safer. Here again, it seems difficult to suppose that drivers would blacken their own characters to achieve a political end.
That the politicians have the point in mind is apparent almost whenever the subject of transport comes up for discussion in the House of Commons. In a debate not long ago two M.P.s each described a visit to a transport café. One spoke as though he were Orpheus returning from the company of the damned; the other as though he had come from the Fortunate Isles.
It might seem curious that the first speaker should be from the Labour Party, and the second a Conservative. The subsequent discussion showed that the real target for criticism and defence was the employer of the drivers, the independent road haulier. The Socialists alleged that he compelled his men to work, interminably, and to break the law in order to swell his profits.
• More Foolish
By degrading the master, the Socialists must also degrade the man. If the driver allows himself to be browbeaten or cajoled into ignoring the regulations that should govern his working life, he is just as guilty as his employer, and much more foolish. He stands to gain comparatively little, but must take nearly all the risk, including the possible loss of his driving licence, and with it his livelihood. The restrictions on his hours of work are devised for his own protection. By refusing to be bound by them, he knowingly increases the chance of being involved in an accident.
• He might think it more to his advantage to lodge a. complaint against his supposed supporters. Propaganda about alleged conditions in the road haulage industry may • have the object of making people think that hauliers arc disreputable. Because the propaganda keeps the hauliers in the background, and concentrates more on the driver, public criticism falls mostly upon him.
About a year ago, two films were produced with a road haulage background. One of them showed a group of drivers on a building site. Without exception, they had no scruples about breaking the law. They behaved badly in public, and made a point of interfering with the harmless pursuit S of the local inhabitants. Their leader was a bully, before whom they cringed like jackals, and they allowed him to share with the site manager most of the extra money they earned by driving their tippers at racing speed.
The other film, it is true, introduced an unscrupulous boss, but it was again mostly concerned with drivers, this time on long-distance work. The hero, an American, was almost alone in .concerning himself with the security of his loads. Most of his fellow workers were hand in glove with crooks, and how any consignment ever reached its destination was as much a mystery at the end of the film as at the beginning.
If these films correctly convey the impression that at least a section of the public have of lorry drivers, the fault may lie with the drivers themselves for allowing so many extravagant tales to be spread, often by people who claim to be their supporters.