Donnelly and Berkeley and Melchett and Marsh
Desmond Donnelly and Humphry Berkeley are both nice men I like, but they have deci- ded in their different ways to become poli- tical April Ashleys. Once I put it to Hum- phry that he should join Labour. 'Never,' he said, 'I am a Conservative.' Desmond said the opposite when he was dreaming up his hammer-and-longs right-wing Demo- cratic party, but the Conservatives, were too weak and liberal to interest him then, I think, being under the spell of Lord Butler, Sir Edward Boyle, Christopher Chataway (who has of course now turned a somersault) and the like.
While there are few people with much in- terest in taking on thankless tasks in nation- alised industries, unless paid extravagantly, like Lord Melchett and Mr Richard Marsh, It seems odd that Desmond Donnelly and Humphry Berkeley, who have nothing to do and are probably better at running business, Shouldn't be hired.
Joe Hyman, a remarkable man, was turned on by ambitious politicians and civil servants when he left Viyella, which he had built into such an important company. He hoped he might be of value somewhere in Public service, but it wasn't to be. Last week the City was rather quicker to recognise his genius when he made a personal bid for John Crowther. I doubt if the shares of .British Steel, or for that matter British Rail, if they had been public companies, Would have done much other than slowly sink when the news came through that Lord Melchett or Mr Marsh was to be at the helm,
Mr Marsh may do better at the railways than Lord Melchett at British Steel since, surely, a modernised railway system must be the transportation growth area to the end of the century. I know that Peter Walker, who chose him, was years ago keen on the pos- sibilities of railway station development, and —more important—what is now called the 'linear city' concept. If the economy is to be got moving plans must be made for a New Deal to include enormous national invest- ment in linear motored hover monorail systems. These would call on unused en- gineering capacity and the aircraft indus- try, would energise the economy, and would be more self-justifying than the madcap Channel tunnel and self-destructive con- crete and land-wasting motorways.
Mr Marsh, if only the Cabinet will back him, has the most important job in the country. His target should be no less than the sweeping away of the existing railway system and its replacement with an auto- matic monorail system during the next thirty or forty years.
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