Phoney War
Page 69
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Political Commentary JANUS IN their original campaign against the Transport Act. 1947, hauliers worked to death the metaphor of the crossroad, where the driver of a lorry—an appropriate enough symbol—was looking at a signpost, pointing towards nationalization in one direction and private enter{arise in the other. He was represented as in the same predicament as Bunyan's hero making up his mind between the City of Destruction and Mount Zion. The text usually left no doubt as to which he ought to choose.
Had they wished to do so, the Socialists could have made use of the same device simply by turning the signpost round. ' The lesson of the metaphor was that the public had a clear choice, and that, once they made it, they were committed for good or ill. Renationalization does not prevent anything like such a clear-cut opposition. The public have had 10 years' experience of British Road Services, and realize that although they may be different from independent hauliers in some respects the similarities are more important.
There is reasonable satisfaction with both sides of the industry, and the public are puzzled to know what it is.the Socialists hope to achieve. They have announced their intention of taking back long-distance road haulage (and iron and steel), and have given no more satisfactory reason than that this has always been their policy. The public in general, who do not 'care for principles that are stretched to their illogical conclusion, consider that the Socialists are making a lot of fuss about nothing..
If the hauliers require popular support, as they do, they might well forget about the crossroad and the signpost. They must continue to develop new practices and new techniques, but their advice to the politicians should be to leave well alone. This is what many of the hauliers are saying. It may not seem a very inspiring slogan: It is purely defensive. It gives the opponents the advantage that they can make all the running. But as they are constantly changing their tactics, and putting up new arguments as soon as the old ones are knocked down, there is much to be said for the hauliers standing by their record, which happens to be good, and forcing the Socialists to make wilder and wilder statements in an effort to justify themselves.
Crossroad Metaphor
There are a few right-wing politicians, but probably very few hauliers, who still visualize the situation with the help of the crossroad metaphor. Like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Their aim is the total extinction of B.R.S., or at least a reduction to a fleet of no more than 3,000 to 4.000 vehicles. Five years ago. this was the official policy of the Road Haulage Association, although many members privately, and in a few cases publicly, dissented from it. The Association have never officially retracted their opinion, but if called upon would almost certainly not reaffirm it. Their leaders have more than once said that the road haulage industry wishes merely to be left alone. .
This is no more than a realistic attitude. B.R.S. have done enough to prove their right to exist, in preference to another upheaval with the object of selling back more of their assets to free enterprise. For both sides of the industry, the signpost now points in the same direction. When Maj.-Gen. G. N. Russell, chairman of B.R.S.. told the Mansion House Association on Transport, at their annual luncheon last month, that he was certain a suitable pattern would emerge if the present balance between public and private transport were maintained, he was putting into Ivory Tower English what has already been said by the chairman of the R.H.A.
The Socialists could not have found a better method than the threat of renationalization to make an industry content with its lot. The Transport Act, 1953, contained a number of things with which hauliers disagreed, in addition to the continuation of B.R.S. The notorious Section 9 (4), under which a licence holder may be called to account if his guess about the future proves wrong, may yet become the subject of furious controversy. In the meantime, hauliers look upon the Act as their sheet anchor. It is a compromise, they say, and if they accept it they think the Socialists ought to do so as well.
The iron and steel industry have reacted to the Socialist threat in much the same way. They also have their 1953 Act, which puts the industry under the supervision of an independent Iron and Steel Board, appointed by the Government and including representatives of the consumers. The Board have a duty to. Promote the efficient,economic and adequate supply, under competitive conditions, of iron and steel products, and their field of activity includes development and prices.
Public Supervision
The iron and steel industry successfully conceal any adverse opinion they may have of this set-up. They are content to stress that it gives the Government ample powers to see that the industry fulfil their national responsibilities. At the annual general meeting of the British Iron and Steel Federation on March 18, the president, Sir Andrew McCance, said that the present system "successfully blends private enterprise with public supervision, individual initiative with central planning."
Not for the first time, Sir Andrew drew a dividing line between the steel industry and the other industries already nationalized. "They are services," he said, "steel is a manufacturing and trading industry." .Unless Sir Andrew means his words to have a very restricted sense, he appears to be throwing road haulage to the wolves. It is desirable for the threatened industries to stand together, rather than to separate themselves into sheep and goats.
The distinction that Sir Andrew makes is by no means clear. "Nationalization frustrates," he says. The bad effects could not be confined to the steel industry—" the whole economy of the country would suffer." These objections apply just as much in the case of road haulage as of iron and steel. Sir Andrew says that the threat is adding greatly to his industry's problems. This difficulty is probably even more acute among hauliers. Mostly small men with limited resOurces, they must find that the purchase of new vehicles calls each time for a comprehensive reappraisal of the situation. Some of them have found. recently that their customers are tending to keep at least some of their business with B.R.S., as a kind of insurance against the time when they will possibly have no option but to give B.R.S. the lot.
Familiarity with the threat of enationalization has not made the predestined victims any more reconciled to their fate. They can see better where their best defence lies. They should aim at a united front. They should show the advantages of leaving well alone, making the most of the fact that the policy of the Socialists on nationalization arouses no enthusiasm even among themselves, so that they have to fight a phoney war to keep up appearances.