Time for a big stick?
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Teddy Roosevelt was right when he said: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." The trick is to keep the big stick tucked behind your back and threaten.. ,ever so gently, without ever having to use it. Force in the pursuit of a goal has a nasty habit of backfiring.
By the time you read this the RHA and FTA (and hopefully Trans-Action too) will have met with Transport Minister John Reid in the first ever road transport industry forum. By then we'll also know if road hauliers' complaints over crippling fuel duty and high artic VED rates have been resolved, or ignored. And if ignored, then what? Is it time for the big stick?
The next protest organised by Trans-Action is scheduled for 12 April. If the forum delivers nothing then the two major trade associations will have to make up their minds as to whether they finally join the throng—or be sidelined forever. Unlike Tony Blair, we doubt if there's a "third way". The fence never was a comfortable place to sit.
However, public opinion is a notoriously fickle thing. One day the Great British Public can love you; the next thy (with a little help from the tabloids) it can be at your throat. And any operator looking to protest on the 12th would do well to remember that before doing anything rash. Whatever form the next fuel protest takes, it must keep the public on-side and the Government on the hop.
And that means keeping that big stick firmly under control.