LOAD SHEDDING
WE described the interim report of the committee of inquiry into the railways as 'shock treatment.' Its final report can only be called load shedding. The committee confesses that it was not competent to make a con- sidered verdict. For-that, further investigation will be required. In other words, the interim verdict was not based on a com- prehensive study of the needs of the railways, let alone of the community, but on naked administrative expediency.
There is little point in making a scapegoat of the committee —unless, like Cleopatra. we find it relieves our feelings to whip the bearer of bad news. The committee did what it was asked. It found a formula to avert the threatened strike, by pronoun- cing that the railways need no longer pretend to be a normal budget-balancing concern. Dangerous though this revelation may be, disastrous even, the members of the committee cannot be accused of inventing it. They were merely the loudspeaker through which it was first broadcast.
In their final report they are rather more cautious. They treat the old-fashioned notion that railways ought to pay their way with less derision. The caution has come too late; in the meantime, the British Transport Commission has been,quick to take the hint. It has produced a plan for the railways that leaves no room for doubt that they will not, and cannot, pay their wa), unless they are modernised and re-equipped, at a cost of well over £1,000 million; and that the reconstruction process will take from ten to fifteen years to cOmplete.
'This really is rather a revolutionary plan.' Sir Brian Robertson told a Press conference : then, correcting -himself he asserted 'this is a revolutionary plan.' Evidently the BT: is anxious to show that it has not been asleep all this time. after all. But why 'revolutio6ary'? It may be startling, and earen saddening, to many of us that the familiar puff of the steam engine (to be replaced by electric and diesel traction) and the cacophonous clank of the shunting goods train (to be provided with continuous brakes) may soon be heard no more. Others will be surprised (to put it mildly) that the BTC is capable of shaking off its torpor for long enough to produce a reasoned policy of any kind. But revolutionary ts a misnomer. By comparison with what has been done in other countries, the plan is the essence of cautious oonservatism- and none the worse for that.
If—to argue by analogy—some European country published a report advocating a gradual switch-over from piston to jet engines on airliners in the course of the next fiften years, we in Britain would regard the report as distinctly dowdy. No doubt that is precisely what foreign railway experts are now saying about us. The BTC's plan simply reveals how far behind we have fallen in the transport race. The trouble with the plan, as with all such plans, is that it looks altogether too alluring on paper. The picture it conjnres up is of swift, sleek trains bearing contented, well-fed passen- gers (or well-wrapped, unbroken freight) swiftly and silently into clean, comfortable stations. Wonderful! And paying its way, too! Entranced by the prospect, we may forget that it must be related to certain chilly economic and social facts of life.
In the first place, the plan cannot be considered without reference to the future of the roads. It so happens that this week the Highways Committee of the County Councils has put out a road plan at a projected cost of some £350 million. Not only does this revive the controversy on road and rail priorities : it also suggests that where such huge sums are involved the re- spective plans will have to be carefully interlaced to avoid waste.
Secondly, the BTC plan makes barely a mention of labour • relations. No doubt this was deliberate; it may have been afgued that, given the promise of a brave new world, the railwaymen's frustrations and resentments will 'vanish. But it can also be argued that the men who have so strenuously and successfully resisted the BTC's earlier fumbling efforts to pro- mote efficiency are unlikely to favour a plan which will more drastically diseupt their traditional habits.
Finally, there is the problem of the BTC itself. Nothing in its past record suggests it can create the atmosphere of enthusi- astic co-operation without which the plan cannot hope \ to get into its stride. It is not easy to decide how far the BTC's past ineffectiveness has been due to the remoteness of the executives, encased in their paper cocoon, from the realities of labour relations; how far to faults in the structure of BR. such as excessive centralisation, which make such remoteness inevit- able. But the fact remains that the BTC has lost the respect both of the railwaymen and of the public. Any reorganisation of the railway system must be preceded by a reconstruction of its executive on business—not on civil service or military— lines.
Reorganisation must also be preceded by a firm guarantee from the railwaymen (not an NUR guarantee—that has now been proved worthless) that if the plan is to be adopted, they must accept its consequences, however uncomfortable. For without the co-operation of the railwaymen such, plans are useless; it would be better, and cheaper, to let the railways gradually slide into oblivion. 'Strategic reasons' have in the past provided the railwaymen with some security of tenure.
But are those reasons still applicable? It is possible that if the railways cannot be made efficient without vat expenditure, they should be allowed to disappear.
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