Political Commentary By JANUS
Page 43
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Jabberwocky
WHAT a pity, said a Member of Parliament, the other day, that the Government invited the Road Haulage Association to make nominations to the Road Haulage Disposals Board, but would not let the trade unions have a representative. The Minister of Transport, not the man to muff an opportunity of this sort, mildly regretted that the absence of the M.P. concerned from the debates on the Transport Bill had caused him to overlook the fact that the trade unions had declined an invitation.
The exchange of pleasantries throws an interesting light on the psychology of the Opposition. To their way of thinking, a Conservative overture to the unions is not in the natural order of things. They would as soon imagine Nero asking the Christians to appoint somebody to sit on his games committee. When the incredible happens, there can be no question of the invitation being accepted. Representation from the Left would throw a mantle of undeserved respectability over the Conservative plan, which is by definition sordid.
One can sympathize with the policy of detachment. There is little evidence that the Conservatives themselves took any active steps to help make the first Transport Act work. In fact, they were not asked. Where the Socialists badly needed the services or the assets of a haulier at an early stage, they generally had little difficulty in settling the matter by offering special terms for voluntary acquisition.
Perhaps they did not realize how lucky they were in being able to deal with political problems on a commercial basis. Had their task been like that of the present Government, to put free enterprise into an industry instead of taking it out, they might have come up against More difficulties. I can, in a kind of lookingglass dream, imagine the Socialists returned to power on a Conservative platform, charged with the job of denationalizing road haulage.
Fair, but Spartan They would no doubt advocate fair shares for all, and the welfare of the workers would be supreme. These principles were supposed to animate theofirst Transport Act, but they seemed to be largely missing in the execution. Fair, if rather spartan, shares were promised by the terms of compensation. In practice, payments received by the former owners have been very unequal, and the concerns which went over voluntarily gained for the most part a considerable advantage, apart from the fact that they have escaped the payment of balancing charges.
What a fuss the Socialists would have made about this had they been in opposition at the time! Mr. Callaghan would certainly have enjoyed himself. He would have pointed out that public money was being spent to enable dispossessed hauliers to start even bigger businesses somewhere else, and to live in luxury until the opportunity came to buy back their old undertakings.
Whether the workers gained or not from nationalization is a matter for argument. Many of them lost a boss and found a manager, but the conditions and the wages did not change a great deal. Representation on the Road Haulage Executive may have made some difference to the workers, but, if so, it was too subtle for most of them to detect.
Fair shares under denationalization would mean presumably dividing the R.H.E. into a number of exactly equal units and selling them at a uniform price. The Socialists themselves have shown the absurdity of such a procedure by their support in principle of the proposal to set up a certain number of fairly large companies instead of transport units.
The question of a fair price raises other difficulties. In our looking-glass world everything is reversed, so that the new Act must cater for a market where there are one seller and many buyers, and the aim is to get the highest price. The Socialists, if they had the framing of the Act, would soon come round to a system providing for sealed tenders which might vary considerably, not only as between buyer and buyer, but from unit to unit.
Next would come the problem of finding the able and willing buyers. They must be made to feel they have some temporary advantage over other hauliers, so that the 25-mile limit must be retained for a while. The Socialists should find no difficulty on this point at least. The buyers would demand some security of tenure, and the granting of an A licence, pure and unalloyed, for a period of five years might be thought a satisfactory answer.
Help for Buyers
On the whole, the Socialists would prefer buyers who knew something about transport, and who would wish to operate independently and not as part of some great financial trust. The prospective buyers with practical experience would also be likely to have only limited resources. They would want to borrow a good part of the purchase price, and would be in difficulties if repayments were demanded too quickly. The looking-glass Socialists would therefore find it advisable to relax the hire-purchase restrictions and to advise the banks that advances might be made to suitable persons wishing to take over transport units.
The Socialists might go further and approve the formation of a company which, with the resources of a financial corporation behind it, would help hauliers, ex-hauliers and others to secure loans at a lower rate of interest than usual and extending over a reasonably long period. The name of such a company might even be Transport Unit Finance. How the Socialists would keep Mr. Callaghan quiet about this matter is their own affair.
With some reservations about the transport levy, cannot see the Socialists making any great changes in the procedure laid down in the new Act. The desire to safeguard the welfare of the worker is reasonable, except that it is difficult to know against what he has to be protected. The wages machinery outside the R.H.E. has the force of the law behind it, backed by a strong trade union.
There may be some disturbance in the status and prospects of individual workers, but probably nothing like as much as followed the passing of the 1947 Act. The most notable difference that the Socialists might make to the later Act would be the addition of a tradeunion representative to the Disposal Board, and on that point I can only refer again to the recent Parliamentary answer by the Minister of Transport.