container commentary
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OCL/ACT—the farce continues
FOR what it was worth, the refusal of Tilbury dockers to allow OCL and ACT to work their container berths for containers moving between this country and Australia was mentioned recently in the House of Commons when Mr. Ian Lloyd (Cons., Portsmouth, Langstone) suggested that the Prime Minister's approach to the subject had shown as much enthusiasm as "an amorous porcupine". Did Mr. Wilson share the view that the comparative performance of British and Continental ports was a matter of life and death to Britain. Mr. Lloyd asked, and would the PM adopt a more positive approach.
Mr. Wilson replied that the Government recognized it would be "nothing short of tragedy if because of inability to reach agreement on this we lost this vitally important trade".
After another Conservative member, Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby (Dorset W.). pointed out that Britain's competitors were able to use the container terminal at Tilbury while we were not, Mr. Wilson said: "We shall continue to press on with this question. although I do not want to raise hopes that it will be easy." Big deal!
Last month, when I mentioned that the Australian containership consortia were planning to bring back their first vessels into Southampton, I did not bargain for the Southampton dockers who would not, at the last moment, work the ships, forcing OCL to divert its ship Encounter Bay to Antwerp. The British Transport Docks Board, whose top commercial man at Southampton, Brian Bostock, had worked so hard to attract container traffic, was most disappointed. "Why," a BTDB official asked me, "do the shipping companies make all these arrangements before getting the agreement of the unions?" Why indeed.
My latest intelligence on what is happening to the OCUACT containers comes from the latest issue of Container Transport International Inc's. newsletter which states cate. gorically that the joint terminal is to be moved from Tilbury to Rotterdam, the decision having been announced by OCL's chairman, Sir Andrew Crichton. But Sir Andrew wasn't available to confirm this when I phoned OCL —he was in Japan, making arrangements, no doubt, for OCL's Far East container service which will be announced shortly. (Another one for Rotterdam?)