The Appointed Day of Wrath
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By JAN US ROAD haulage liaison may be said to become a reality with the divisional committee meetings beginning this month. The national conference and committee may do excellent work in framing terms of reference and formulating principles, but only experience—and generally speaking that means local experience—will show whether the terms of reference cover what each side wishes to discuss, and whether the principles can really be put into practice or are merely " full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
The formula likely to be used in attempting to solve all the varied problems of liaison is that hauliers and the Road Haulage Executive each acknowledge the possession by the other of territory where each is predominant. The free . hauliers agree that the longdistance field belongs to the R.H.E.; the R.H.E. recognizes the claim of the free hauliers to the short-distance field. Neither has a monopoly even within its own sphere of interest, but where one feels that the other is encroaching unfairly, it has the right to bring the matter up for discussion through the joint machinery.
After the Axe Falls One cloud—as yet only one on the horizon—threatens the perfect weather of the liaison scheme. The "appointed day" will tip the scales heavily in favour of the R.H.E., which will then have the right, within its own field, of obtaining whatever degree of monopoly it thinks necessary. This may not wreck the scheme, but it will reveal structural weaknesses. After the appointed day, road haulage liaison must depend largely upon the goodwill of the R.H.E.
If the maintenance of a more equitable balance of power be considered desirable, there is one possible solution to the problem of the appointed day. Unofficial forecasts have continually put the day farther and farther off, and, as time goes on, the prophets become less confident. When it comes to the point, even the R.H.E. and the Ministry of Transport seem to be hesitating to take the step that will mean protracted wrangling over permits and operating centres, claims for compensation and prosecutions, in which public sympathy will be on the side of the offender and in the end probably no advantage will be gained.
Need Never Name the Day
It may be that the R.H.E. would be better off if it never named the appointed day. The Act fixes no timelimit, and even if it did, that would be no insuperable obstacle. The two years envisaged for the preparation of a charges scheme have just been extended by the Minister to four, and nobody seems to mind. There can, therefore, be no legal compulsion upon the R.H.E. to hasten the appointed day, and a good deal may be said in favour of a policy of masterly inactivity.
The fixing and enforcement of the appointed day will make the British Transport Commission unpopular at a time when it is anxiously striving to establish and increase its goodwill. There is a parallel in the policy of dismantling in Germany. This policy was approved by the Allies in the first flush of victory, but for various reasons it has not been put into effect in the British Zone until fairly recently, with the result that the Germans tend to lay the whole blame for dismantling not upon the Allies but upon the British. A similarly unfair transfer of criticism is likely to happen over the appointed day. The restrictions following the day were devised by Parliament, but that was in 1947. If the day comes, one can be certain that hauliers and traders will raise their voices against the Commission and not against Parliament. Possibly the B.T.C. will bear the complaints of hauliers with equanimity, but the of the trading community is another matter. The present increase in the number of C-licensed vehicles is likely to seem a trickle compared with the flood of licence applications bound to follow the arbitrary refusal to allow trade and industry to use the hauliers who have served them in the past.
25-mile Radius Superfluous As usually happens, there was more than one reason for the inclusion of the clauses concerning the 25-mile radial limit on hauliers in the Transport Act, but in general terms the purpose was to make sure that hauliers left under free enterprise did notbegin long-distance services in competition with the R.H.E. The licensing system could have been used almost equally well to achieve this result, as a short-distance operator who _ switches over to long-distance work will find himself in trouble when his licences come up for renewal.
Admittedly, the occasional long trip, often made to oblige a .customer, is more difficult to stop except by a mileage restriction. It is interference in this sort of activity, however, that is likely to cause irritation. When "a long-distance haulier is taken over, his customers generally go with him. When a haulier remains in business, but has to refuse certain traffic, the customer is more likely than not to become exasperated into a resolve to get rid of the red tape by carrying the goods himself.
Each to His Own
The purpose of the 25-mile restriction can be served much better by road haulage liaison, working to the rule that long-distance traffic is the main province of the R.H.E. and short-distance traffic of the haulier under free enterprise. It is not in the interests of the R.H.E. to deprive a haulier of work its order to put another C-licensed vehicle on the road. Both sides would be better occupied in improving the services within, their own spheres.
Once the appointed day has been fixed, the decision cannot be revoked. The procedure suggested here can be abandoned at any time if it does not work. The threat of restrictions will provide an inducement to hauliers to see that it does work. They will feel bound to discourage a fellow-haulier from doing work for which it could not reasonably be supposed that a permit would be granted. They may even join with the R.H.E. in bringing him to book in the traffic courts.
The R.H.E. for its part will have to take a fairly liberal point of view. There are bound to be differences of opinion about whether a permit would or would not have been made available in individual cases. But what the R.H.E. may lose through not being able to impose its opinion by farce, will be more than made up by the avoidance of the complications following the appointed day, which may well be a dies free, or day of wrath, for the R.H.E. rather than the haulier.