Nationalization Spells Ruin
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SOME 70,000 Land Girls have subscribed £1,000 as a fighting fund to defray the cost of putting their case before Parliament. On that basis, and taking a haulier's pound as the equivalent of a Land Girl's shilling, road transport contractors should be able to find £20,000 for their fund to fight nationalization. They, however, are not alone in the fight. The C-licensees also will be affected and, as they are more numerous than hauliers, should subscribe at least a like amount. Passenger-vehicle operators ride in the same boat and, amongst them, should be able to double the sum provided by A-. Band C-licensees, thus bringing the grand total to £80,000. That, however is not half enough. On the other hand, quite half the possible sources of money are not tapped in the foregoing. There are still the manufacturers, traders and merchants of this country, all of whom will be severely and adversely affected if transport be nationalized. They, between them, could easily subscribe another £80,000, bringing the total to £160,000, thus getting near to the £200,000 which may be required before the fight is over. Whether road transport wins or loses, it would be money well spent, for whatever the outcome the battle is bound to have a beneficial and, possibly, salutory effect.
Recovery Would be Delayed 10 Years For, make no mistake, the nationalization of transport in general and of road transport in particular, would be a disaster of the first magnitude for this country. It would set back its prospects of recovery of prosperity by • at least a decade, and that recovery would even then be possible only if nationalization were repealed and a return made to the status quo or at least something approaching it.
We are dependent" for our prosperity, on the volume of our exports. To ensure adequacy in that we must produce at competitive prices. A considerable factor in thecost of a product is expenditure on transport. Nationalization of transport would, undoubtedly, increase that cost tremendously. In connection with railways it is no new thing; it has been carried into effect in many countries: in all of them transport is costly. In addition, such railways are run at a loss, which has to be made good from the national revenue. Additional taxation means increased cost of production, . and so the vicious spiral proceeds. Nationalization of road transport would inevitably add to the direct cost of carriage of goods by road. It would also reduce the efficiency of the service rendered and thus, indirectly, add to the cost. These two increases are interacting and cumulative.
It is no part of our business to discuss in detail, or at length, the probable effects of nationalization in connection with the railways, nor is it necessary: there are precedents in a dozen countries which indicate the inevitable and tragic results.
Good System Painstakingly Built Up Road transport is our real concern. Its nationalization would be without any real precedent, for there is no other system of road transport anywhere which parallels that in this country, at least none which has been nationalized. It is a system which has been painstakingly built up over a quarter of a century by some 60,000 hard-working, hard-headed operators, built up practically from scratch and brought to a high state of efficiency, measuring that efficiency by the only standard, which is worth while, service to the customer, the giving of maximum convenience at minimum cost. That the incentive behind this great effort has been what is sneeringly called the profit motive is true, but the profits have been hard-earned and have accrued only because those who have earned them have given, in return, the kind of transport that the merchants and traders of this country require. At least it is true that those responsible for producing this efficient form of transport have not been a burden on this country. They have not drawn wages as civil servants.
As it happens, we have had, during the war, ample experience of the operation of road transport under Government control and can, by drawing upon that experience, indicate, with a fair measure of accuracy, how the cost compares with that of private enterprise. A simple but, nevertheless, typical example will serve. Let us first premise that the cost of transport is made up of two parts, the direct cost and the indirect. The first is the cost of operating the vehicle and the second the "overheads."
Under Government control, operators have had to stand idly by and watch their vehicles being mismanaged and the morale of their drivers sabotaged. They have, however, been able to observe the effect, and it is common knowledge throughout the industry that traffic under control takes two to three times as long to move. Our typical example is a familiar route 75 miles long. Normally? an 8-tonner would cover that route and return within a day. Under control, two and a half days is the usual period during which the driver and vehicle are absent. The direct cost in that example and under private enterprise is £7 3s. and the indirect cost 13s., total £7 16s. Under Government control the direct cost is £10 and the indirect cost, swollen by the need to pay so many civil servants, is £3 5s., making the total £13 5s., or nearly double.
Now to double the cost of transport is a serious matter for any commodity; it happens to be particularly serious in respect of those which are chiefly earmarked for export, such, for example, as textiles and machinery, because transport is called for six or more times during the manufacture of the former and, quite often, a dozen times in the manufacture of the latter. The net addition to the cost of such commodities, brought about by doubling transport costs is thus considerable.
That is why every manufacturer and merchant, every trader and small shopkeeper, should be warned of the evil that will come of the farreaching but ill-thought-out plan to nationalize road transport, and their aid recruited to fight it —£160,000 is a considerable sum of money, but it is not much if it saves our industry, saves all industries, saves the Nation.