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148 
BLACK SHEEP
Page 90
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WHAT proportion of road goods traffic is being carried illegally can hardly even be estimated. The number of successful prosecutions merely shows what a fairly small enforcement staff and the police have been able to detect and bring to book. The complaints of established operators, and the occasional comments of such people as Licensing Authorities, are evidence of a vast number of offences of which the people whose task it is to maintain the law are unaware, or upon which they have neither the time nor the manpower to check.
The legislators cannot have overlooked the fact that there would be temptations to break the law. There would be rib purpose in restricting entry into an industry unless a good many people outside were anxious to get in. Sometimes they seek or do not resist the opportunity to jump over the wall. Any one of a number of reasons may explain why a man carries goods without holding a proper licence. He may not even be aware that a licence is required, and this is sometimes accepted as a reasonable excuse. He may have bought a lorry in advance, on the mistaken assumption that this would weigh in his favour in the traffic court. When he is disillusioned, he will often test the possibilities of using the vehicle without the blessing of the Licensing Authority.
One suspects that for the most part the offender knows very well what he is doing. He believes, with a great deal of truth, that the law will have great difficulty in catching him. If after a while he is unlucky enough to be caught, he is prepared to pay a relatively small fine and to continue his unlawful activities unperturbed. He classifies unlicensed operation with certain motoring offences that the public refuse to regard as serious illegalities. In itself, in fact, it presents no threat to public safety; but it does so happen that the man who breaks the law by holding no licence is likely to offend in other ways, by ignoring speed limits, standards of vehicle maintenance and the regulations governing hours and wages.
Attitudes Differ The established operators naturally all have the same general opinion of the illegal haulier, but the opinion varies in intensity from one operator to another. Some are inveterate in their enmity and would like to see the full penalty inflicted for any infringement of the law, however slight. Others, while they are not prepared to condone, see no need to protest unless there is abstraction of traffic from an established carrier.
The difference in attitude comes out clearly in the protests about the notorious and large-scale evasion of the licensing provisions by operators, many of them owner-drivers, working on one or other of the large-scale civil-engineering . projects, and particularly a new motorway or trunk road. Local tipping-vehicle specialists argue reasonably that they should be given the job of carrying materials to and from , the site. Some of the work does come their way, but
probably the greater proportion goes to a shifting population of small men, few of them holding licences. Nobody .
can blame the lawful operators if they complain to the , authorities and to their M.P.s, and try every other available means of putting a stop to the illegalities.
Not all the operators go as far as this. It may be the case that there is far more work than they can handle. Someone else must take the surplus, and they may think it none of their business who is chosen. If they would have no right to object to an application for a proper licence to do the E32 work, they assume that they would be no more than common informers if they complained because the work was being done without a licence.
Through his ability and willingness to live cheaply, or perhaps through simple ignorance, the nomadic haulier is prepared to accept rates that 'would not keep established operators in business. For this reason, if for no other, the contractor will regard him favourably and do everything possible to keep him. When it comes to a showdown and the law intervenes, the operator is able to go to the Licensing Authority with the strong and urgent backing of his employer. In spite of previous misdemeanours, he is usually granted the short-term B licence which is all that ne requires. The local hauliers who may. have spent time and energy in bringing him to book have merely helped to provide for him a cloak of respectability.
Double-edged Sword They may well find that every attempt they make to see that the law is enforced turns out to be a double-edged weapon. On some of the rates that are alleged to be paid it is hard to see how anybody can make a living after meeting even the running costs of vehicles. The inference is that vehicle and driver are worked far beyond the limits of the law, and the obvious next step is to urge more frequent inspections. This can be done only by providing more inspectors. As a result, the disgruntled hauliers find themselves advocating the appointment of the prying civil servants and the hordes of officials that they have always deprecated. The situation becomes Gilbertian when the complainants find themselves coping with, and in some cases pleading guilty to, the extra officials they have helped to bring into being.
Only a small proportion of hauliers are interested in tipping work, and not all of them are anxious that their vehicles should deteriorate under the punishing treatment they receive on the kind of site that attracts the unlicensed operator. It might seem good policy, to allow him to ruin himself under conditions of extreme discomfort. It might seem even more self-evident that hauliers who do not run tippers should ignore the situation entirely.
Such a comfortable doctrine would be dangerous. Illegalities such as those practised by the small foot-loose operators bring into disrepute not only them but the whole industry. Public criticism cannot be avoided completely by deflecting it on to a small minority. Too often an industry
is judged by its black sheep. • .Every branch of road haulage is engaged to some degree or other in a constant battle to keep rates up to an economic level. There are many forces at work for the purpose of depressing them. If these forces succeed in one section of the industry,_ or even on the periphery in that. no-inan land where the-writ of the Licensing Authority does tiot
. run; the effect will be felt ultimately by every haulier, bow: ever secure he may think himself.
• There will also be an adverse effect on the workersin • road haulage. That nobody has the right to starve in Britain today might. well be a principle adopted by the industry., The -small .men on tipping work are able to operate at ridiculous rates partly because they seem content to 'drive their own vehicles for considerably less money than the minimum they would receive under the Road Haulage
Wages Orders. They are undercutting the established drivers and leading the customer to suppose that drivers are available elsewhere at similar rates of pay.