Road Transport's Future Policy
Page 29
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An Answer to the Criticisms by L. V. Ward of Our By Contributor's Article of July 27 on Road Transport's J. A. Dunnage, Future Policy RUA., A.M.Inst.T.
IN Mr. L. V. Ward's letter, published in your issue for August 17, he chides you for giving some support to the "disruptive policy of Mr. J. A. Dunnage." Evidently he has failed to grasp the purpose of the article. It was to show that, as apart from the defeatist policy of which you • correspondent's own letter is"a clear example, growing numbers of people now utterly reject such pessimism (with the corollaries to it which Mr. Ward himself admits lower down) and are hammering out something far more construetive. I hope that was clear to all readers other than Mr. Ward. I certainly tried to compress an involved subject into small cOrnpass.
Of course, your correspondent, is as entitled to plead for unity of policy among road hauliers as I am to observe that such unity does not exist. We both say the same thing from different standpoints. He wants to attain unity by silencing all who disagree. Your columns contain constant proof that such a wish will not be fulfilled. In view of the short-sighted policies being adumbrated, it is a good thing, nationally, that some hitherto less-known people are now coining to the front with courage to voice more enlightened, positive policies for road transport.
What your correspondent should not do, I Submit, is to IeaVe totally unanswered the major facts to which I drew attention. ,Nor should he try to discourage your readers from thinking the whole situatior. out for themselves, by obscurantist cautions or appeals to " keep it dark," such as his last sentence, i.e., "the less said about bringing into existence new organizations of road users, to quarrel with those already in existence, the better,"
That is no less than a request that "The Commercial Motor" should suppress news of the many fresh developments in the road-transport world, so that readers might go on supposing that there were no alternatives to the older bodies and earlier leaders, whose counsels and schemes in past years have been so varied, but—as many now see— based on short-sighted ideas of financial alliances or rate agreements with other transport interests.
Each week your paper shows that you 'do not adopt such biased lines. That' is why readers see with pleasure your familiar wrapper in the.post each Friday.
I will not follow Mr. Ward downwards to irrelevant personalities, which, in his letter, seem to be a substitute, for reasoning. He may be right that it does not matter tuppence what I think, but he will be deluding himself if he supposes that to sneer at what I sought to outline will dispose of it.
Article Written Before General Election
As my article appeared on July 27, most readers will have realized that it was written some time before the general-election' reguIts were known. Those results have made many besides myself revise their thoughts and forecasts forfor the next few years and brought a third major problem nearer for serious study. No sane person will dismiss that problem as immaterial, but it is not by any means so near as Mr. Ward implies, and there is a great danger in being stampeded .by fears into accepting policies which will lead the small man into situations no more pleasing than those possible under nationalization.
In fuller explanation of the sense in which I referred, on July 27, to nationalization prospects, Mr. Ward. might study the following paragraph, which was in my draft article, but from space pressure, had to be deleted:— " Merely in passing, and without belittling the whole question of road transport and its future, it did strike me as strange and rather cheap that at a general election of such vital .rnoment to the future life or death of millions of People in 'Europe and the Far. East: indeed, of crucial import to the whole filture olthe world, anysectional.pressure group should try to make people east their votes, not on these broad issues at all, but according to the short
term view of a single trade's alleged advantage. It was like asking you to loot through the rediming end of a telescope and to discern there the whole world blotted out— a grinning miniature of self."
I maintain still that the problem of ensuring that X. V, and Z got the particular conditions they preferred for carrying on their road transport • business, although important, was less so than that of seeing that millions of Europeans (including ourselves) do not die of starvation, do get food and clothes, and are saved the risk of another awful war in which new and terrible weapons blow us into eternity.
Your correspondent entirely misinterprets me (only he knows whethet by accident) by suggesting that my argument tends to prove that everybody other than myself is " dishonestly betraying the interests they are charged to protect." I said something quite different, but there ere wide varialions of opinion on how best the interests of independent road tranSport can be protected and, even more important, aligned with those of the community.
This Is a Much Brighter Picture Your correspondent sees no hope of going on living as a free man unless the principles of nationalization be solidly opposed, " even if this involves temporarily working side by side with people who in other respects . . . may have interests opposed to our own." Perhaps his vision is at fault. Others see a very cliflerent picture, and a more logical, progressive, and nationally useful policy; i.e., that of working to gain for road transport a full freedom to give its efficient service to the country at a price the community wants, and under conditions of freedom from rateinflating entanglements with othei arms of transport. Thus can the industry rescue itself from an unsatisfactory position into which it has been mistakenly led; thus, also, is it more likely to be able to show that national ownership is unnecessary. To tie up with the railways will obviously not do that, for it will be presenting the public once again with an internal-transport monopoly, which -neither this nor any future Government will leave alone.
But the chief thing to note about Mr. Ward's letter is that when you have smiled at his personal' references, noted his final pathetic appeal to "keep it dark," and his rebuke to" The Commercial Motor" for expressing interest in the viewpoint of an important section of its readers, you have reached the end—without finding any meat! Not a word of reasoned effort to prove my summary mistaken in whole or in any important particular.
My dim was to increase the general perception of the real underlying principles at work in what I termed (a) the policy of 'restriction and (la) the policy of expansion, and to do so without that unpleasing descent into personalities.. If Mr. Ward or anybody else will address himself to that summary, and amplify it, endorse it or show that it is mistaken, and that things are not like this at all, he will do readers a service. While he does not do this, but contents himself with such flimsy material in default of argtIment, readers may deem my ,stfinmary as broadly correct. They will also note the atmosphere of defeatism breathed by your correspondent, and his clear admission that. he considers road transport or its present leaders incapable of standing alone and justifying themselves to Parliament if or when necessary. If, in these stenzas of his lament, Mr. Ward speaks accurately for the leaders of the 'older associations (I do not say he does: I only ask), then it is evidently past high time for the appearance of some new leaders with a more positive policy, Readers will also note that the consuming public, from whose standpoint I wrote, whom all transport interests should exist to serve, and 'i%hose pockets, I submit, must not be needlessly rifled, gets no sympathy at all from Mr. Ward.