The Transport Holding Company and the Transport White Paper

AuthorJ.J. RICHARDSON
Date01 September 1967
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1967.tb02069.x
Published date01 September 1967
The Transport Holding Company and the
Transport White Paper
JJ.RICHARDSON
Mr.Richardson
is
Assisstant
Lecturer
in
Politics,
Kede
University.
Once again transport policy in Britain has been placed in the political
melting pot. The formation of transport policy
has
been and still
is
a con-
fused world of ideology, interest, economics and
ad
hoc
adjustment for
political gain. It is exceedingly difficult to separate the various ‘inputs’ into
the process by which transport policy is formed
-
let alone to arrive at some
quantitative evaluation of their relative influence. A product of this com-
plex system of interaction has been the Transport Holding Company.
In many ways the origin of
this
unusual organization can be traced back
as far
as
the early
1950’s.
-4
comprehensive nationalized transport under-
taking was formed by
the
Labour Government in
1947.
This of course in-
cluded not only the railway system, but the bulk
of
road haulage
as
well.
This policy
of
nationalization was, in part, reversed by the Conservative
Government on their return to power. The Transport Act
1953
provided
for
the denationalization
of
road
hadage.
The policy
of
breaking up
the
Road Haulage Executive was, however, not completely successful. By
I
956l
it had been decided
to
abandon the policy by which British Road Services
was to be sold back to the private haulage industry.
This
decision resulted
in the
1956
(Disposal of Road Haulage Property) Act. The Act permitted
B.R.S. to retain approximately
7,000
vehicles
so
that the, by then, highly
efficient trunk services could be retained for
the
benefit of the large users
of
transport. Nevertheless the
1953
Act
was
not
a
complete failure
as
far
as
the
Conservatives were concerned. It had re-introduced an element of com-
petition into the industry which apart from
‘C’
licence holders, full scale
nationalization had virtually stiflede8
The course
of
transport policy even after
1956
was not untroubled.
Modernization plans for British Railways during the
1950%
were not alto-
gether successful in putting the railways on a sound financial footing.
It
has been suggesteds that transport policy seemed to reach yet another
turning point in
1960.
The structure, organization and effectiveness
of
the
British Transport Commission came under fire from various quarters.
Eventually reorganization proposals were formulated in the Transport Act
1962.
The Act provided
for
the break-up
of
the
B.T.C.
into separate boards
305

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