DOCTRINE OF INFALLIBILIT
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FOR journalists specializing in industrial affairs and labour relations the last few months have been a golden age. Never has there been a more responsive public for stories of restrictive practices, demarcation disputes, price cartels and hidden monopolies. To this extent at least the prices and incomes policy has been successful. The public has become more conscious of rising costs or wages and less disposed to accept them as an inevitable part of the economic landscape.
Trade unions and trade associations, or in some cases groups of manufacturers, come in for the main criticism. The Prices and Incomes Board may be said to be leading the attack. The Board has published 18 reports, two of them dealing with road haulage rates, and has another five references under consideration. In the meantime the press are making their own inquiries, perhaps shepherding new victims towards the Board and the Monopolies Commission.
FORMIDABLE OPPONENT As road operators have found, the Board is a formidable opponent to combat with the weapons of publicity. It has the advantage of the initiative. As an official body its pronouncements are treated with respect and usually reported at length. To the industry or union concerned neither of the obvious alternative responses is attractive. Acceptance of the Board's findings without comment is regarded as tantamount to a confession of guilt. A refusal to comply is construed as an obstinate attempt to extort from the public prices higher than are justified.
Few effective protests have been made against recommendations by the Board. As a result Mr. Aubrey Jones and his team are beginning to acquire an aura of infallibility. In the press as well as among the general public whatever the Board says is accepted. Its condemnation of an industry is a stigma which cannot be removed.
The Board itself would not claim that it can never make a mistake. But the tone adopted in its reports does give the impression that once it has issued a verdict the last word has been said on the subject. Although Mr. _Jones does not preach the doctrine of infallibility he equally does nothing to discourage it.
This state of affairs is hardly satisfactory when at any time the Government's prices. and incomes policy is to be armed with the full force of the law. The organizations concerned must find some way to ensure that their side of the case is not overlooked.
Isolated objections have been made often a considerable time after the event. It was in April, for example, that the Board recommended a standstill in the price of beers which for any reason except the imposition of duty had risen in cost since January 1 1964. Last month in his statement at the annual general meeting of Whitbread and Co. Ltd., the chairman, Colonel W. H. Whitbread, attacked the report containing this finding. It seemed to bear little relation, he said, to the very frank discussions which took place between members of the industry and the Board. In his opinion the members of the Board were not equipped to spend two months part-time in looking into a complicated industry and then give judgment on its structure and the ability of its management.
Hauliers may feel that this objection applies even more strongly in their case. They have not made a great deal of use of what opportunities there have been to protest. There has been more than enough provocation. The double-barrelled attack by the Board gave hauliers the worst of both worlds. In the interim report the Road Haulage Association was reproached for making specific recommendations to cover a heterogeneous industry; in the final report the industry itself was reproached for being so heterogeneous that it could not supply the Board with information in a standard form.
UNMITIGATED CONDEMNATION
The memorandum which the Board subsequently sent to the Minister of Transport was an unmitigated condemnation of the advice from the RHA that members should open negotiations with their customers. Mrs. Barbara Castle then criticized the RHA on her own account. More recently still a general report from the Board makes one reference after another to the road haulage industry, most of them unfavourable.
In spite of provocation there is some reluctance by hauliers to reply. The reason for hesitation is clear. For several months operators were not allowed to forget that the Government was preparing a policy statement on transport which could well include a number of unpleasant proposals affecting road transport operators. The anxiety has not been greatly relieved by ultimate publication of the White Pa which contains no unequivocal tin but hints at several unpleasant possibili When the other side appears to most of the cards operators may feel their only course is to keep silent. In the year or so they have been conditioned thinking that they have few genuine frie The results of the roadside checks, at glance so appalling, were used to ju strong attacks on a complacent indu which could allow its vehicles to deteric to the extent which the checks apparc revealed. The reports of the Prices anc comes Board, coming not so long a wards, filled in more details of the pic of an irresponsible industry.
nPROPER INVESTIGATION
Hauliers might be tempted to think a Government which wished to attack t would have the support of public opin This is probably not true. If a proper vestigation could be made it might be fo that people think much the same of the r transport industry as they did nearly years ago when their sympathy gave a rni ing to the struggle against nationalizat Naturally circumstances change. In tt days many people envisaged the cant as one between the rough, homely efficient haulier and the quasi civil seri who it was popularly supposed would I his place. Comparatively few people I would make such a sharp distinction tween state-owned and independent r transport. The impression still persists the operator, regardless of where loyalties lie, is best left to make his way.
Hauliers can hardly hope to es( public attention. They need not hes also to express their opinions. They have a fund of public goodwill upon w they can draw. This will be useful to t if the Government introduces legisla against their interests. It would be Iv in every way if the Government refra from doing this. For road operators the prophylactic must be a continuous si ment and restatement of their case. If make clear their intention to resist at they may find that the attack never col The present Government has` shown a siderable regard for public opinion whi is behind a bold front.