Background on the British Fuel Blockade

["Martin Spellman" <mspellman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is an article from the 22 September 'Private Eye', a political
satire magazine. It is by 'Dr B. Ching' their transport correspondent
and gives some useful factual background to the petrol blockade. It is
certainly far sounder that some of the opportunist and rose-tinted
views I've read on here, like Peter Taafe's of the CWI. Dream on,
Peter. Maybe he's suffering from that "Oh dear I'm in my fifties and
it looks like there isn't going to be a revolution in my lifetime"
feeling.

Martin Spellman
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WHAT A TRUCK UP

The fuel crisis was a remarkable con trick by truckers and farmers who
protested for their vested interests but won widespread support by
exploiting the public's gullibility.
A public which couldn't give a toss when thousands of miners,
steelworkers, shipworkers, rail workers lost their jobs was apparently
suddenly full of sympathy for hauliers who whined they would have to
lay off staff if fuel prices did not fall. Public support for the
refinery blockades was so great it implied the truckers were backed by
some of the people such as ex-miners, who were stabbed in the back by
truckers when they tried to save their own jobs (Eye 974).

Somehow, few people were informed that hauliers pay less than the pump
price for diesel because they can claim back the VAT. The debate on
fuel costs was so simplistic that most members of the public were kept
ignorant of the huge hidden subsidies the haulage industry already
enjoys.

A report by Oxford Economic Research Associates last yew (Eye 973)
estimated that British hauliers would have to pay £2.5bn more in taxes
each year to cover their full costs, and that was before the
concessions to truckers in the last budget (Eye 999). The report said
hauliers' infrastructure costs would rise 30 percent - and car owners
would pay less - if all road users were made to cover the true costs
of the structural damage they cause to the roads.

The haulage industry's problems are much more complex than the cost of
diesel. Over-supply of vehicles means cutthroat competition is rife,
encouraging widespread law breaking. Margins are so narrow that
fluctuations in global prices, which many other businesses can endure,
cause big problems to hauliers. "Restructuring" in other industries
(i.e. mergers and job losses) as they move with the times is accepted
as a fact of life, but hauliers expect the structure of their industry
to remain unchanged ad infinitum. By supporting them taxpayers in
effect said: "Er, ok... take even more of our money and continue your
ruthless competition, endangering our lives through overloading, poor
maintenance and speeding."

A survey earlier this year indicated that 80 percent of the public
supported greater use of trains instead of lorries yet that same
public has now apparently backed the truckers. Any government
concessions as a result will make it even less likely that significant
volumes will switch to the largely unsubsidised rail freight system.

The oil companies must have been delighted. They sat back and watched
pressure mount on the government for a cut in fuel duty (which does
not fluctuate with the price of oil). That would give the oil
companies leeway to charge more for their product without driving
consumers away. A cut in duty, especially if it coincided with a fall
the crude oil price, could encourage motorists and hauliers to drive
even more often and further - meaning more traffic congestion, more
pollution and more lolly for the likes of BP, Shell and Texaco.

For farmers fuel duty is something of a red herring. Many farm
vehicles use red diesel, for which duty is 3.13p per litre compared
with 48.8p per litre on normal diesel; red diesel costs 20.32p a litre
(net of VAT which farmers also recover). But the farmers won little
public sympathy when they protested at being ripped off by
supermarkets and undercut by cheap imports from countries with a
cavalier attitude to animal welfare. That taught the farmers that the
public does not care as long as food is cheap. So this time they
appealed directly to the public's greed. If fuel duty is lowered the
cost of red diesel will drop by all of a fraction of 3.13p per litre.
Like the truckers the farmers have much deeper problems than the cost
of fuel.

Motorists say no to costly fuel just like turkeys would say no to
Christmas, But if fuel really has become too expensive for car owners
there would now be a significant reduction in the number of big cars
(including 4x4s) on the roads, car use would be declining as people
walked and cycled local journeys, and the speed of traffic on
motorways would fall as drivers conserved fuel. None of which has
happened.

If Gordon Brown cuts fuel duty across the board, help will not be
targeted at needy rural dwellers. They will still pay more for fuel
than most urban dwellers because the oil companies put the price up
where they have a local monopoly. Financial gains will accrue to
people who drive unnecessarily large cars and the to people use their
cars for every journey, even for local trips like the school run.
Conversely the 29 percent of households without a car will gain
nothing from the handout; impoverished pensioners, the long-term
unemployed and many disabled people will not me their train fares
reduced as a result. The net effect, then, will be to widen the gap
between the affluent and the Poor. Long live Thatcherism!

Dr B. Ching