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MRS. CASTLE'S STRATEGY
Page 112
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0(APPOSITION to Mrs. Barbara Castle's new deal for goods Ni-lvehicle operators is likely to concentrate on the proposals designed to protect the railways against competition. It is with these proposals that she diverges to any material extent from the recommendations in the Geddes report.
The Committee which produced that document was convinced that, for the last decade at any rate, licensing had had no significant effect in securing for the railways any traffic whose consignor wished it to go by road. If the policy was to divert goods traffic from road to rail, said the report, taxation of lorries and preferably the increasing of the attractions of rail service were likely to be more efficient instruments than any attempt to use licensing.
Mrs. Castle has every justification for believing that the efficiency of the railways has increased, thus meeting one of the two requirements specified by the Committee. She has evidently rejected the suggestion of a higher tax on certain types of road transport operation. Her own method certainly appears to be more selective. The railways would have the right to object to any application by a road operator to carry traffic which it wanted and the onus of proving that he could do the work better would rest upon him.
Common sense
The Minister has shown common sense in taking from the Geddes report no more than what she needed for her own purpose. The Committee was obsessed with the purity of its own doctrine. It would allow the intrusion of no point which would interfere with its dramatic conclusion that the licensing system should be scrapped completely. It failed to see the absurdity of suggesting that the Government, in deference to the Committee's theories, should be in any way limited in choosing the means to carry out its policy.
Discriminatory taxation may have tempted Mrs. Castle. It is applied in some of the Continental countries which she has taken as a model for some of her other proposals. Its effect would have been inflationary to the extent that it would have put up the cost of long-distance transport. On the other hand it might have helped to reduce railway losses; there would have been scope for confusing arguments about track costs; and the public is becoming conditioned to tax increases which fall upon other people. In other words Mrs. Castle might have avoided some of the attacks which will be made on her proposals by her political opponents, by trade and industry, by hauliers and even by some of her own supporters. The campaign is already building up. She must have been well aware that this would happen and it will be interesting to watch her own strategy develop.
The broad principles she will follow are clear. If the proposed arbitrary advantages for the railways are a bitter pill to swallow she will sweeten it with ingredients more acceptable to the public. The two "valid objectives" of licensing, she says, are the protection of public safety and a more rational division of traffic between road and rail. General agreement with the first point weakens resistance to the second.
Mrs. Castle's next principle follows naturally. Attack is the best form of defence. "The Government," she says, "cannot continue to tolerate a state of affairs in which anyone can buy a secondhand lorry on hire purchase for a few pounds deposit and with the prospect of a few cut-rate contracts neglect its maintenance and so become a menace on the roads." It is easy to see why this particular individual should receive special mention in the description of proposals which will affect existing operators as well as newcomers. In the public mind the emphasis in the new plan is on eliminating the so-called killer lorry and cowboy driver. The road transport industry must look to its image.
To confuse the issue more Mrs. Castle may hope to divide and conquer. The trader on own-account—we may soon have to get out of the habit of calling him the C licence holder —is mainly disturbed that for the first time some restriction is to be placed on his right to carry his own goods in his own vehicles. The haulier who will still be affected by licensing is concerned at the changes in the rules of the game played between him and the railways. All hauliers are equally anxious about the newly-won right of the trader to carry for hire or reward.
In so far as the new proposals deserve to be attacked there is an obvious need for all operators to work together. This will not be so easy to arrange now as it was in 1946. The varied elements in the road transport industry include retail delivery traders with light vehicles, short-distance and longdistance traders and hauliers and the Transport Holding Co. To these will be added in due course the National Freight Organization as the body mainly responsible for syphoning off road traffic. Even if the State-owned undertakings are left out it is hard to envisage the establishment of a stable and united front.
Inevitably, operators will look back to the campaigns of 1946 and 1947. They may provide no better guidance than did the battles of the First World War for the battles of the Second. Although hauliers lost in the sense that they could not prevent the passage of the 1947 Transport Act they could fairly claim a moral victory. The failure of the British Transport Commission helped to persuade the public that nationalization was wrong and that the hauliers were right. The acquisition of many thousands of road haulage businesses gave rise to many cases of hardship or at least distress which disturbed the conscience even of many Labour MPs.
Renationalization denied
The slogans and battle cries of 20 years ago can no longer do duty. Mrs. Castle has specifically and repeatedly denied any intention of renationalizing road haulage. The effect of her new proposals may well be the same as that of nationalization but it will not be easy for her Parliamentary opponents to demonstrate this in advance. In theory the haulier who is refused a "quantity" licence may re-apply if the railways fall down on their boasts, so that he need never lose hope. This form of licence will not be introduced until the Freightliner system has developed and proved itself and—again intheory—this may not happen for years if at all.
If the Freightliner is all that successful one might suppose that the haulier trying to compete would go out of business in any case. His future is so obscure, his doom so remote, that he will not easily be able to arouse pity. Mrs. Castle seems bent on ensuring that there will be no martyrs this time.