JANUS

8th November 1963, Page 108

8th November 1963

Page 108

Page 108, 8th November 1963 — JANUS

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WRITES

. . . might do well to examine more closely one or two recent statements by Dr. Beeching.'

SPEECHES by prominent railwaymen at this juncture tend to conform to a revivalist pattern. They open with a ritual beating of the breast, a confession of past errors of omission and commission. Through a brief declaration of repentance they then modulate into a firm undertaking that the past is dead and buried and that the future will be entirely different. If they are reluctant to agree that Dr. Beeching can claim all the credit for the plan which the wilful public insist on linking with his name, they cannot stop themselves from talking as if the publication of that plan marked a significant turning point in their lives and in the fortunes of the railways.

The one spokesman who does not bear the winter garment of repentance is Dr. Beeching himself. This is easy to understand. He has no responsibility for the past history of the railways. Although, as his detractors are fond of pointing out, the re-shaping plan contains no entirely original proposals and says little that is new, he was the first person in authority to bring the proposals together and push them to their proper conclusion. To most people the broad outlines of the plan seem selfevident. It still needed somebody to delineate them, just as it once needed an astronomer bold enough to say bluntly that the earth went round the sun.

The change of attitude is clearly illustrated by what Dr. Beeching in particular has to say on the subject of the C Licence. The old-fashioned ritual almost invariably included a denunciation of the growing ntimber of traders who were putting their own vehicles on the road and thus depriving the railways and road hauliers of traffic. The new and more constructive approach is to accept the existence of the C licence holder, and to use arguments rather than compulsion to persuade the trader to send more of his goods by one or other of the public carriers, preferably the railways. In this context road-rail co-operation presents an additional bait. The trader might continue using his own vehicles for collection and delivery, but containers and other equipment would enable him also to use the railways for the trunking portion of the journey.

Hauliers might suggest something a little different without disturbing the principle. Throughout the vicissitudes of the post-war period, and even at times when they must have been sorely tempted to change their tune, hauliers have continued to affirm the trader's freedom of choice and his right to carry his own traffic if he so wishes. This is still the policy of the Road Haulage Association, and it has now been adopted also by the railways. The relief that the C licence holder might feel at this might be premature. He might do well to examine more closely one or two recent statements by Dr. Beeching.

He dealt with the subject in some detail in the Dallas Lecture to the Glasgow Junior Chamber of Commerce. Rationalization of goods transport, he said, depended upon finding the proper balance between rail and road and between public and private road haulage—by which he meant what is more generally described as the haulier arid the ancillary user. On the second point of balance he quoted with approval the conclusion by the Ministry of Transport that their road goods transport survey in 1958

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provided no evidence of inefficiency in C licence operation. "It may be, therefore," said Dr. Beeching, "that only doctrinaire reasons remain for restricting" the ancillary user rather than the haulier.

The reference might well have been to rumours circulating a short while ago that the Labour Party were seriously considering extra taxation on journeys by C-licensed vehicles beyond a certain mileage. Although the proposal does not have the official seal of party approval, it has caused considerable discussion and alarm among traders and manufacturers. They might well feel relieved, therefore, that Dr. Beeching will have nothing to do with it.

However, he did not stop at this point. What he had to say, he continued, was "distinct from the question as to whether all forms of long distance road haulage should be subject to some further measure of control or to some new form of financial levy ". He was careful to indicate elsewhere in his speech that he was expressing no opinion one way or another. It was possible, "but by no means certain," he said, "that a more refined judgment will show that long-distance road haulage is not paying as much as it should ". The fact that he introduced the point, and emphasized it, is sufficient in itself to show that he saw something in it.

THE REVERSE OF REASSURING • In short. Dr. Beeching is the reverse of reassuring. His championship of 'the C-licence holder, belated as it may be in railway history, is confined to comforting him with the thought that any new restriction imposed upon him should in equity be imposed also on the haulier—including British Road Services no doubt. If he believes that this equality in adversity is likely to please, he will be disappointed. Confronted with the unpalatable choice between restrictions on his own vehicles and restrictions on all goods vehicles, the trader would surely prefer that at least the haulier would not be affected. This would go a long way towards preventing a disastrous increase in longdistance transport costs, an issue which is bound to be the trader's main concern.

In 1946 the trader was threatened with restrictions on his right to operate beyond a distance of 40 miles. His concern was augmented rather than appeased by the realization that the fate of the haulier was to be considerably worse. At any rate, there were bodies of traders sufficiently worried, and sufficiently influential in Socialist circles, to compel the Minister of Transport, Mr. Alfred Barnes, to withdraw the offending clause in the course of the committee stage of his Transport Bill and in the teeth of protests from his back-benchers. Mr. Barnes may have been surprised at the strength of the opposition to the clause. He may have thought the trader should have considered himself generously treated with untrammelled permission to carry goads up to 40 miles, whereas the haulier would be compelled to stop short at 25 miles. He must soon have come to appreciate that the restriction on the haulier was one of the important reasons for the trader's apprehension about the restriction on himself.