Barbara in Brum
Page 30
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by Paul Moody • Mrs. Barbara Castle, Minister of Transport. had a busy day on Friday, when she visited the West Midlands.
Her first engagement was at the BRS depot at Oldbury, where she toured offices and took special interest in the ,new maintenance buildings. It was there she took the opportunity of carrying out the penny-in-the-tread test on a rather large and--much to the relief of attending BRS officials—sufficiently "new" tyre.
• Next on Mrs. Castle's agenda was a Press conference in Birmingham. The Minister spoke out against indiscriminate criticism of the Transport Bill, which she described as "a charter for the lorry driver, the public and the [road haulage] industry": she said: -The industry must either attack the Bill because of the effect that the switch of traffic from road to rail will have or because that switch is so small that the Bill is not worth the candle."
Mrs. Castle did not think that vehicles of over 16 tons gross weight would be forced off the road. The economic advantages of using larger vehicles were so considerable, she said, that firms would not use small vehicles simply to avoid being involved in a lenient system of licensing.
In the afternoon, the Minister inspected work in progress on the Midland Link Motorways. which will extend M6 southwards to join Ml at Catthorpe, north-east of Rugby, and M5 northwards to connect with the M6 extension at Ray Hall.
The visits to the Gravelly Hill and Ray Hall interchanges went off as expected, but when the Minister arrived at the Bescot interchange, she was greeted by a lorry-load of men from Coopers Road Services' Wednesbury depot carrying placards bearing anti-Bill slogans.
After inspecting the site, Mrs. Castle was again confronted with the wrath of the persistent protesters. Although she was working to a tight schedule, she took the leader of the group, Mr. I. R. Cooper, and some of the men that were with him into one of the site buildings and spent considerable time answering their questions about the consequences that the Transport Bill would have for the road haulage industry if it were passed in its present form. All emerged smiling.