The N.U.R. has chosen an odd point on which to haggle'
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ALMOST before the ink was dry on the Beeching plan for re-shaping the railways there were strong rumours of protests by the trade unions. They were promised .7onsu1tation and it was accepted that their co-operation was essential for the success of the plan. They showed iigns of raising difficulties on many matters, including the :ordinal point of the finer train proposal.
Before long their opposition came into the open. As was xpected, the union chiefly concerned was the National Union of Railwaymen. The remaining unions have kept an Irnbiguous silence but the N.U.R. has made it clear that t will not agree to the inauguration of liner trains unless nutside vehicles coming into the depots are confined to hose operated under C licence and possibly also those of British Road Services. This attitude has recently been :onfirmed at a meeting of the N.U.R. executive.
Dr. Beeching has consistently had the simple answer of he businessman. The purpose of his plan is to improve .he commercial prospects of the railways. The more traffic le can get for the liner trains, the better will he be pleased old the source of the traffic does not worry him. A large 3roportion of it may come from independent hauliers who would find it to their advantage to send vehicles to railway lepots with suitable containers and leave the long haul to he railways. If their vehicles are not acceptable they will -e-route them by road for the whole journey.
Without the co-operation of hauliers, in the opinion of Dr. Beeching, the liner trains would have so little chance 3f success that he would hesitate to launch them. He has lo intention of changing his view or changing his plans kn earnest of his resolution may be seen in remarks made ay Mr. S. E. Raymond, the member of the British Railways Board responsible for commercial affairs, in a speech to :he National Federation of Scrap Iron, Steel and Metal Merchants. His audience might well be thought to have no burning interest in the controversy and this strengthens he impression that Mr. Raymond was choosing the time rather than the occasion to make a definite statement of policy. .
It was expected, said Mr. Raymond, that public road nauliers would wish to use liner train services. In addition the railways would continue to provide their own road ransport "to carry traffic door-to-door for those customers who prefer the railways to handle the throughout movevent ". The railways' road fleet would be adapted as necessary to the changing pattern. "By these means," Mr. Raymond continued, "the board hopes to quicken the move towards a rational transport policy based on commercial :oncepts,which recognize the economic merits of both rail Ind road transport."
Fear of Redundancy
This brushes aside the N.U.R. complaints, which are based not so much on a rational transport policy as on fear A redundancy. Mr. Sidney Greene, the N.U.R. general iecretary, has spoken recently of the unwillingness of his union to allow private road hauliers to have the facility A "free terminals ". It is not clear what he means by this and still less clear why it should be appropriate to refuse the facility to hauliers and allow it to traders with their own vehicles and to an indeterminate extent to B.R.S. So far as the railways are concerned every user of a liner train is a customer irrespective of the type of licence he holds or of whether or not he has a licence at all. It would be just as sensible or meaningless to determine right of access to railway depots on the basis of religion or politics.
Whatever other reasons the N.U.R. puts forward, they can hardly affect the general opinion that the real and in fact the sole objection to the use of railway depots by hauliers is that some road traffic which might otherwise be carried by drivers who are N.U.R. members would be carried by other drivers instead. They might well be the same men if hauliers need more men to provide shunt services to the finer trains, but the net result to the N.U.R. would still be a loss of members.
If hauliers decide to co-operate in carrying out the Beeching plan, any redundancy one would have supposed would have been amonglong-distance drivers. It would be the unions looking after their interests who might have had cause to protest at the danger of redundancy. The N.U.R. has chosen an odd point on which to haggle. The great majority of its members are railway workers rather than road transport drivers. The main method of improving their prospects of employment is to get more traffic on to rail. It is cutting off one's nose to spite one's face to turn the greater part of this traffic away.
It may be significant that the road transport unions have seen no reason to object to the possible effect of the Beeching plan on their members. The hauliers also have stood courteously on the side lines. They could have adopted no other policy, although the dispute concerns them colsely. Nevertheless, there must be some temptation to draw a political moral. The N.U.R., like most other unions, has pressed consistently and fiercely for the integration of transport In this context integration means the same as co-operation. As soon as the opportunity arises for road and rail to work together the N.U.R. attempts to exercise a veto.
A simple inference to draw is that the N.U.R. wants integration only on its own terms. It wishes to dictate how the country's transport should be run and the interests of the user would be subordinate to its requirements, Most members of the public are only too ready to suspect that this is true. They would find no difficulty in accepting the suggestion that a government in the hands of the party supported by the N.U.R. would not easily be able to escape from the N.U.R. concept of transport.
Presumably the NAIR. will not follow to the bitter end its policy concerning hauliers and liner trains. It is not unusual for a trade union to make a stand on one point in order to win concessions somewhere else. It is still regrettable that the chosen issue will arouse some feeling between railway road drivers and drivers employed by • hauliers. The views of these fellow-workers might well have been canvassed before the N.U.R. decided to make its own case public.