Arguing in Circles
Page 57
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LTHOUGH it is inevitable that in years to come k any increase in the number of road accidents will 'be blamed upon denationalization, it is surprising Mr. Aneurin Bevan should recently have anticipated .
:ellaw-Socialists by applying this moral to the presituation, when so far not a single vehicle has . handed back to private enterprise. Not that the :hronism is likely to provide much political capital Mr. Bevan's opponents. The reply on his behalf Id condemn any rebuke as a damaging admission the process of disposal had already taken place in a hole-and-corner fashion.
tere is a certain charm in these ingenious skirmishes . party doctrine, in which neither side ever suffers • ss in its own estimation. Last week, I noted the and by certain unions for a is. 9d. cut in the fuel and linked this with the complaint, also from the ns, that wage increases were hard to get, or even tpect, from an industry such as mining or transport
-e profits were not being made. There seemed a I deal of commonsense in what the unions were but one is bound to admit that not all of them_ with their, problems in this prosaic manner.
ir obvious reasons, the representatives of railway zers might approve of a fuel tax that keeps up the of road transport. I cannot remember one of them saying as much, but they have frequently criticized fransport Act, 1953, on the grounds that it will lead fall in railway trade and harder times for the staff.
H. W. Franklin, president of the National Union :ailwaymen, has deployed the argument on novel that deserve some examination.
Unscrupulous Road Hauliers
:cording to Mr. Franklin, the Labour Government's of an integrated national transport system at the pest possible cost had been reversed by the Conser e Government. The result would be that instead co-ordinated rail and road service covering the e country there would now be cut-throat competiby private road hauliers. The railways were bound ass through an extremely difficult period, because rupulous road hauliers could cut on rail rates.
iy student of politics who hopes to get beyond the entary stage would be well advised to study this rnent and note how well it stimulates the passions )tit satisfying the reason. The adjectives point the towards the conclusion; hauliers are by nature ;crupulous," and competition is "cut-throat."
e is what seems almost a deliberate avoidance of . The policy of cheap transport, Mr. Franklin ars to say, is reversed by providing transport even cheaply. He gives voice to the fear that hauliers under-cut the railways, ignoring that they have ys had the right to do so, whereas the new Act ases the power of the railways to under-cut ers. As Mr. S. B. Taylor, chief secretary of the ;h Transport Commission, has put it recently: "the ional freedoms will mean, that the competition h follows will be fairer than in the past and, theremore reliable as a method of emphasizing in which tions lie the future functions of road and rail port."
rhaps Mr. Taylor makes it look too simple. His reference to fair competition reminds us again of the handicap of taxation that the road user has to overcome before he can begin to compete. So many discussions on tran'sport at the present time have a habit of moving in circles and frequently coming back to the beginning. They are not always obviously contradictory, iike Mr. Franklin's, but many of the terms in common use have acquired more than one meaning. Mr. Franklin thinks competition wasteful; 'Mr. Taylor finds it useful as a guide. The passing' of integration and co-ordination is lamented by the Socialists, but they do not all contemplate these ideals from the same point of view.
if the railwaymen were really enamoured of integration, it was because they thought of it in terms of the subordination of road to rail. It helped to build a • plausible .facade for the purpose of persuading Transport Man that transport was one and indivisible and that the user had no need to exercize his freedom of choice. The customer would be guided by the tariff of rates that was ultimately to be 'formulated, but his guided journey, one suspects, would have been one way only, from road to rail.
Benefit to Cost of Living
All in all, one is not justified in taking too seriously Mr. Franklin's reference to cheap transport, but it is a worthwhile ideal in the sense that Transport Man would understand it. When 10 per cent. of the national income is spent each year on moving people and merchandise from place to place, no Government should ignore the possible benefit to the cost of living that would follow a substantial cut in the cost of transport.
The fuel tax is the only possible candidate for such a cut, and it is true that the reduction would benefit road
rather than rail. Nevertheless, cheap transport, in whatever direction it first took effect, might in the end be to the advantage of the whole industry. It might not be the case that the proportion of national expenditure on transport remained at 10 per cent., but the all-round economies. made possible by cheaper transport should encourage industry and the public, with the result that there would be more goods to carry and more people wishing to travel. The company who reduce their transport costs per mile can go farther afield, and manufacture more goods for more customers. The man who saves even a few pence per week on his bus fares to work may find, when he takes his holiday, that he can afford to travel a longer distance by rail than in previous years.
Mr. Taylor's restrained evaluation of the future, following a brief survey he made of the whole pattern of transport, may be a hint to operators under free enterprise that they would gain as well as the Commission from a mutual discussion of problems and difficulties, possibly through the machinery' for liaison, if the word has not become discredited. It is a little surprising that this subject is not dealt with in any of the resolutions prepared for the Road Haulage Association conference next week. One can appreciate that hauliers have talked' the Transport Act to a standstill, and have no wish to indulge in a guessing game about disposal; but their future relationship with nationalized transport, and particularly the railways, is something on which it would be interesting to have their views.