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He can't help being pretty near
Page 78
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EVENTS are floating the nationalized transport organizations into a position of power. They have made no efforts to bring about this state of affairs. It may even have been against their will. In spite of this they find it impossible to escape the resentment of independent road operators and indeed of trade and industry as a whole.
Operators may be excused a sour reaction to overtures from the organizations that the Transport Bill is designed to benefit. Mr. H. C. Johnson, chairman, British Railways, has promised that if the Bill is passed the railways will interpret the provisions for quantity licensing sensibly. He has expressed concern that nothing should impair good relations with hauliers.
Mr. Johnson has gone as far as can reasonably be expected. Some operators have claimed that he could have reached the point of refusing to object to applications for special authorizations. This would be theoretically within his power but he would not have been permitted to put such a selfdenying ordinance into effect. "The law is the law", he has said.
While operators have to accept this they are justified in pointing out that with the utmost goodwill on both sides the substantial benefits which the Bill confers on the railways with no corresponding rights for road users are bound to hinder the establishment of a cordial relationship between the two forms of transport.
Same difficulty
The same difficulty will arise with the Transport Holding Company when it expands into the National Freight Corporation as a result of the Bill. Sir Reginald Wilson who is to become the NFC chairman has done his sincere best to minimize the problem. Road operators whether stateowned or independent have more in common than in conflict, he has said. The railways will more and more become the servants of the road transport industry. If hauliers work together nothing should go wrong.
Although there is much truth in this the independent operators, traders as well as hauliers, cannot help recalling that the Bill will give the NFC even more power than it will give the railways, whose objections will be anchored to the existence of a competitive rail service. It is the NFC that will have scope to argue that the alternative which can be provided need only partly be by rail.
Road operators have been haunted by the Bill. They have organized angry meetings, rallies and processions. They have argued with the Minister and with the Bill's supporters on platforms, radio and television. They have written letters to MPs and to the Press. They have stirred up their customers and the public in general.
While all this has been going on the nationalized bodies seem almost to have succeeded in putting the Bill out of their minds. Mr. Johnson's statements were in no way a comment on the proposed legislation. He spoke out mainly because the opposition to it had reached the point at which it could damage the railway's
business. What he said amounted to a plea to his customers to forget the Bill.
The THC seems even more oblivious of what is being contemplated by Parliament for its benefit. Some of the current Press announcements—if they are not diabolically intended to scare the trader into climbing on the band-wagon before it runs over him —show a political indifference that would be touching but for the sinister double meaning that operators are bound to read into the wording.
For an example of how to scare the customers without really trying it would be hard to beat the latest advertisement of BRS (Contracts) Ltd. It ends with the slogan "Come to terms with BRS": innocent enough in the ordinary way but at the present stage of the Bill sounding deceptively like an ultimatum to many a transport manager.
The message
He will already have noticed that the message is addressed to "every managing director who feels there must be a more efficient way of managing his transport"— not altogether complimentary to the man who is at present doing the job. The managing director himself, if he has read some of the literature about the Bill, may wonder uneasily why his attention is being sought at this time.
His mood is not lightened by the heading in bold type: "Four frighteningly good arguments for contract hire." Good arguments are not good enough, he is led to suppose. He has to be frightened as well. The first of the four points is not calculated to reassure him. "New Legislation", it begins. "You have been warned". He is well on the way to being ready to come out with his hands above his head.
When he reads further he finds that the new legislation to which the announcement refers is not the Transport Bill after all but is concerned with such things as braking efficiency, noise levels, tyre standards, plating and testing and "more than salutary fines for offenders"—whatever that may mean.
There is in fact an ambiguity in the wording as well as in the general effect. Th. following advice can be read in more thai one way: "If you have a fleet already an am beginning to regret it, you can recove your capital by selling outright to BRS re-hiring under contract and handing ove the problems connected with it to peoplu whose sole business they are." At one leve of meaning this is a suggestion worth con sideration; at another it arouses curiosit: about the people who it would appear clain a monopolistic right to the managin director's transport problem.
'The true costs'
Echoes continue to sound from othe contexts. A few lines further on this sentenc meets the eye: "There is a surprising ladl of understanding of the true costs of runniq transport." Was it Mrs. Barbara Castle o Mr. Stephen Swingler who said this first Certainly neither of them were thinkini about contract hire at the time.
Its advantage to the trader or mane facturer are set out very clearly in the texl It is the occasional phrase that opens up ; different perspective. When a vehicle break down, it is pointed out, a replacement cant), provided at any time after "a call to th nearest BRS branch manager'. Then follow in parentheses: "And he can't help beim pretty near." At once the undisciplinec imagination conjures up the picture of th. Big Brother who is watching.
If the NFC depot is near then the NR is likely to be interested in the traffic in am circumstances where it will require a specia authorization. Perhaps it is ignoble of thi trader to think in this way. It is hard fo him not to do so when he has the assurano of Mrs. Castle that the intention of the Bil is to direct traffic to state-owned transpor and when he realizes from the Bill itsel that he will have to support a contestec claim by revealing the details of his business
Whatever their protestations the railway: and the NFC will have to live with tfa suspicion that they are probing the activitie: of traders and of hauliers to build up du case for their own objections. The mos guileless invitation may be regarded as E trap.
The message from BRS (Contracts) Ltd concludes with an offer to send ro'und E specialist with no strings attached. "He'l be a professional adviser who'll take E professional look at your transport set-up
see for himself where the difficulties lie and suggest how you could best tackle them." That the proposal can still be made is in a sense a testimony of the goodwill that the THC has built up over the years. Nobody really supposes that the professional adviser will turn out to be a spy collecting information for future use.
Once the Bill is passed this may well be the opinion of many traders who would otherwise be pleased to take advantage of the offer. Even when the managing director wonders whether there is a more efficient way of running his transport he may feel equally strongly that representatives of the NFC are the last people from whom he ought to seek advice.