The overall authority
Page 31
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CONFUSION there may be over licensing proposals; worries there may be about the Regulations; fury, perhaps, in certain quarters about the PTA plans. . .
But at Scarborough this week Mrs. Barbara Castle firmly and unequivocally dispelled all disbeliefs about one issue: "I", she said, "am the overall transport authority".
She made the statement in an interview (see page 30) after Monday's transport mini-debate. She was flushed with triumph. For it is an accepted fact that she broke the ice that encrusted most other members of the Cabinet and warmed the hearts of the Freezechilled Party delegates.
Oh, yes, the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association resolution calling for "an overall authority to coordinate the whole of nationalized transport" was carried. But Mrs. Castle made it quite clear later that this did not mean the re-establishment of the British Transport Commission. In the Conference hall, she gilded her PTA plans with the aura of lucrative ventures and made her NFO thoughts merely matter-of-fact. While Frank Cousins sat quietly rehearsing his anti-Common-Market-onthese-terms-now speech, Mrs. Castle stood revealed as a fellow away-from-it-traveller—one of the three or four Cabinet Ministers opposed to the present negotiations.
And meanwhile, in the Common Market, the Transport Minister of an EEC State, the Federal Republic of West Germany, was this week (page 31) happy to hear from his Chancellor that his defendthe-railways proposals would be law by the end of the year. And that from July 1, 1970, there would be a "temporary" ban on what amounts to 40 per cent of existing West German road goods traffic. . . .
In direct conflict with the overall EEC principle that transport users must have freedom of choice. We wonder how the German Minister of Transport will answer the criticism that is already mounting. Will he say, "But I am the overall. authority"?