Happy Faces in Westminster
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BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
it /PST of the occupants of the Pa Strangers' Gallery in the House of Commons last Friday were no strangers to each other. The parties of hauliers who had come from all parts of the country, including a strong contingent from Leicester, must have thought their journey well worthwhile.
They probably expected to hear a straightforward discussion of their grievances andof the harm caused to the publicby the 25-mile limit and the revocation of permits. Parliamentary debates are rarely as simple as that. Some speakers, it is true, kept closely to the terms of the Transport (Amendment) Bill.
Particularly commendable was the restrained and well-knitintroductory speech by Mr. Bevins. He covered a good deal of ground, and the Opposition speakers who followed were able to develop in their own way points he had already made
Some of the other M.P.s who took part, notably Mr. Barnes, Minister of Transport, chose to widen the discussion considerably. The plight of the railways was put forward as a sufficient reason in itself for rejecting the Bill. Mr. Barnes angrily thumped the
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despatch box as he sought to justify the ways of the British Transport Commission. Look how many C-licence vehicles there are! he cried.
At this stage the listening and anxious hauliers were a little bewildered. They had not thought that a few extra miles on their permitted radius would have such far-reaching results. They had been more at home earlier in the debate, when they watched the Socialists sitting rather glumly on their benches and listening to Mr. Dye (Labour), who had taken the trouble to find out what the Transport Act really meant to hauliers in an agricultural constituency.
Apart from Mr. Dye's contribution. the debate sagged a little in the middle. It tightened up again as the time for the vote drew near. M.P.s crowded into the Chamber. The vote was taken, and even before the result was announced it was plain from the jubilation on me Opposition benches that the Bill had passed its second reading.
A round of applause from the gallery greeted the official announcement of the Government's defeat. For a short time afterwards there could be seen in and around Westminster a number of hauliers with very happy faces.