NO MORE FARES
Page 50
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
LET me not get tangled up in the controversy about who should rule the wavelengths, but it is perhaps just as well that the Pilkington Committee were not let loose on the transport industry. As with television, there is a state-owned and an independent service, and there is a seemingly endless argument about whether one form of ownership is preferable to the other, and for what reasons. To• complete the parallel, the subject has in it the seeds of a further argument about whether the public should be given the transport they want or the transport that is thought good for them.
This was perhaps the unacknowledged theme of last week's debate in the House of Commons. The Minister of Transport led off with a resolution to take note of the reports and accountsof the British Transport Commission for 1960 and 1961. The clear lesson from these documents was that many of the services given by the railways were no longer wanted by the public sufficiently to justify their continuation. "We in this country have to be ruthlessly efficient to survive," said Mr. Marples, and in general he approved of the policy of streamlining to which the Commission now seem committed.
HE amendment moved by Mr. George Strauss criticized Government action on the grounds that it had "adversely affected the service that public transport is able to render to the nation." The exact meaning of the words was still not clear at the end of the discussion. Most of the M.P.s who spoke in support of the amendment managed to avoid saying categorically that the railways ought to be kept in being irrespective of public demand. This may not even be their opinion, but it is one they must find hard to resist when they are pursuing their favourite vision of rigid integration triumphant over untidy competition.
An unsatisfactory debate, disappointing all -the way through, produced too many statements such as the following from Mr. Bob Mellish at the end of his speech winding up for the Opposition: "We do not believe that the vast majority of our people must suffer merely because some individual manufacturers and employers say that it is cheaper for them to send their goods by other means.
Transport seems to attract comments that in any other field would be ridiculed as incomprehensible or bizarre. Knowing his background and his political views, one can understand in a general sense what Mr. Mellish means. But of what other industry would it be possible to suggest, in however roundabout a fashion, that the provision or use of a cheap product or service is somehow going to be bad for the public? It seems another example of what Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies called the "economics of Bedfam," in an intervention during the speech by Mr. Strauss.
Once again the so-called interests of the public were in question. Mr. Strauss was opposing the contention that existing rail services could be replaced by buses. This solution would not be satisfactory, he said, without a full fIequency of service and reasonable charges. People living in the country and working in towns must not be expected to pay more than anybody else because there is no longer a rail service.
Another Socialist M.P., Mr. Ron Ledger, has carried the argument completely beyond this stage., In a B.B.C. Home Service programme a week ago. he was given half
B16 an hour in which to develop his idea that passenger tran5 port on the railways should be free. 'Questions and objec tions were raised by Mr. Graham Hutton and Mr. Edwar Martell, but Mr. Ledger remained unshaken. Indeed, bein a Socialist, he seemed more than ready to accept that h. plan, if it were put into operation, would have to appl to all forms of public transport—at any rate of passengei —and that this would entail the integration equally dea to his heart. He managed to leave the impression tha but for the obstinate preference of the present Governmer for free enterprise, everybody would by now be travellin for nothing.
A.S might be expected, the broadcast discussion range over a number of points without bringing any of them t a conclusion. The starting point for Mr. Ledger's propose was the unhappy financial plight of the railways. So fa as could be made out, he had in mind a formula incor porating, among other things, the railway deficit and th cost to the nation of road congestion and accidents. Hi opponents seemed to find his statistics as confusing as th listeners must have done, but seemed to find few seriou objections to his general thesis. Their matter-of-fact cot tendon that millions more people would use the railway much more frequently and for much longer journeys i there was nothing to pay were gleefully accepted by MI Ledger as the confirmation he needed.
To me, the most dispiriting feature of the exercise we the apparent absence of any conception of the proper func tion of transport in the community. The development c road transport in this century, in the same way as th growth of the railways in the last, has brought about revolution in the life of the community on a scale the can scarcely be rivalled by any other invention or di! covery. The price that people have to pay for frequer and easily available transport at speeds that their ancestoi would have thought fantastic is generally accepted a reasonable in spite of occasional grumbles. That it ca also be envisaged as properly forming part of the welfar state provides a good example of the way in which to-day. wonders are accepted tomorrow as a matter of course.
WHEN transport is available in so many forms peopl tend to forget that it is not a necessity, as are, for exarnpli food, clothing, shelter and warmth. Deprivation of thes things has meant misery and death since the dawn c history, but at no time have people died simply becaus they could not get from one place to another. Many c them even today-may live their whole lives within walkin distance of the home in whkh.they were born, but font nately this is probably no longer true of many people her A gradually rising standard of living means more and mot opportunity to enjoy the benefit of the country's increasing] efficient transport system. Is it so much taken for grante that anybody can seriously argue that it ought to be free Even Such necessary items as water, heat and light sti have to be paid for. And the Pilkington Committee, col troversial as some of their proposals have proved to b did not suggest free television. In -fact, they want the pub] to pay more.