NOT A HOPE
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Political Commentary • By JANUS
LITTLE ITTLE harm should follow the somewhat unexpected intrusion of the controversial subject of denationalization into the middle of the workaday discussions at the Road Haulage Association conference in Blackpool last week. No secret has been made of the dislike some hauliers have for the foreign body within their industry and the conference was as good a place as any to provide a Safety valve for their opinions, which some of them had obviously been saving up for a considerable time. The applause they received does not hide the fact that there are many hauliers with no wish to see any further change in ownership, and it is also just as well to make clear that there is hardly any hope of bringing these changes about.
What helps the dissentients to keep the memory of their grievance fresh is that they undoubtedly have the moral right on their side, if morals can be said to enter into politics. In retrospect it is certain that the Conservatives, when they first returned to power 10 years ago, had every intention of keeping their promise to give road haulage back completely to free enterprise. They changed their minds a few years later largely because of pressure from various quarters, including some traders and manufacturers.
Conservatives Wrong
It was highly convenient, at least, to claim that there were no buyers at the right price for the larger transport units. If this were true, it would absolve the Conservatives from any accusation of bad faith. Whether or not they were sincere in their claim they were almost certainly wrong, to judge from subsequent events. There was plenty of money waiting to be invested in road haulage. Clearly a little perseverance 'would have brought in satisfactory bids, and hauliers would almost instantly have filled the gap left by the complete dissolution of British Road Services. In a perfect society, therefore, the Conservatives would admit their fault and make the amends for which the intransigent hauliers are still clamouring.
As everybody knows, it is useless to ask politicians, or at any rate a political party, to keep a promise, especially one made several years ago. The occasional individual M.P. may feel that the affair is one of honour—especially if the facts are put to him by a haulier who happens at the same time to be one of his constituents—but he will not be able to take it very far with the leaders of his party unless he can demonstrate some present advantage. The Conservatives, who have enough transport troubles as it is, can see no point in adding .to them by introducing another measure for denationalization.
In proposing such a measure, hauliers at Blackpool were both eloquent and forceful, but many of them must have had difficulty in disguising their memory of what happened at Blackpool in 1952. This was the last occasion when the town was the scene of an R.H.A. conference, and the guest of honour was Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd, then Minister of Transport, who was piloting the 1953 Transport Act through its last stages in Parliament.
From his conversations with hauliers, Mr. Lennox-Boyd must have discovered—and possibly have been disconcerted by the discovery—that even in those days many of them were not strong supporters of denationalization. They would have been reasonably content with the abolition of the restriction to a radius of 25 miles: This was an extreme view and may not have been intended 'to be taken too seriously. It provided evidence, however, of an undercurrent of feeling among hauliers that the reign of the Ivory Tower had not been altogether bad and that there were some things about B.R.S, that they liked.
The same feeling has persisted. Hauliers have many reasons for not wishing to see the total dispersal of B.R.S. They find their fellow operators much more ruthless. While rates have been persistently falling, B.R,S, have struggled harder than most other people to keep up the standard. In their role as a•clearing house they have not tried to abuse their position by passing on unappetizing traffic at starvation rates and they have settled their accounts promptly with their sub-contractors. Although their objections to applications have been on the grand scale B.R.S. have also played their part in working the negotiating machinery, and even their objections have not always been unwelcome to other hauliers.
In the early days of nationalization, it was not' hard to produce abundant evidence that B.R.S. were inefficient and were charging too much. The situation has changed. There are still fairly frequent complaints, but they do not amount to a flood. Many traders and manufacturers would prefer to be in a position where they coUld deal only with independent operators, but few people think the improvement that would result is worth all the trouble likely to be involved in a further process of disposal.
In a few words the demand for denationalization, whatever its moral justification, does not have anything like the universal support of hauliers, is not very greatly wanted by trade and industry, and has been left behind by the politicians, who prefer to jump on a band wagon that is gathering speed. This does not mean, though, that the protest put forward at Blackpool was a useless gesture that it would perhaps have been better not to make.
Hauliers are right to look to the future of their, industry and to believe strongly in the direction they think that future should take. Had more time been allowed for discussion it might have turned on the tendency, not merely towards the building up of larger individual fleets of vehicles, but towards the-grouping of those fleets into loose confederations of various kinds. What the end product may be is far from clear, but a reasonable hope is that the comparatively small unit would continue to operate independently, while being linked with any number of other units for the occasions when co-operation would be helpful or necessary.
B.R.S. Anomaly
En an industry that had evolved to this stage, B.R.S. would seem more than ever an anomaly. Hauliers with a determined faith in free enterprise are understandably exasperated that an alien body seems to stand in the way of their conception of future development. Their indignation may be just the thing needed to persuade the Government to take the path they are already tentatively exploring. This would mean detaching B.R.S. from the present meaningless link with the B.T.C. . and encouraging whatever steps are required to make B.R.S. conform more closely to the pattern of the rest of the industry.
An extreme policy is also useful as a counter balance to the continued and insensate determination of the Labour party to destroy long-distance road haulage as completely as they did after the war. The Conservatives may feel they are holding the balance by keeping the situation more or less as it is. Hauliers are more inclined to see the present state of affairs as an uneasy boundary between the two political parties.