A front-page article in the October 23rd issue of Railway Review, entitled "Labour and Transport" draws attention to Wilson's statements on transport in the pasts “Harold Wilson has taken a keen interest in transport for a number of years. As far back as March, 1945, he compiled a report for the Railway Clerks! Association - that was even before the Labour victory = on the subject of the financing of railway nationalisation. ‘Some years later he did another report on the railway financial problem, initially for the TSSA (as the RCA had become), but subsequently for the NUR and ASLEF, The report was addressed to the executives of the three unions, snd dated December, 1951.
"Mr. Wilson described the take-over of railway assets and the terms of compensation. He concluded that 'any inquiry into the financial structe ure of the Transport Commission would be deficient if it failed to draw attention to this strange anomaly which has saddled the Commission with an interest burden some £54 million higher than equity and sound theory would justify. The surprising thing, looking back on it all, is that no one commented on it at the time.' And later in his report, Mr. Wilson says . firmly that compensation terms were excessive. In light of the worsening railway financial position, allied to other difficulties, ‘the compensation settled is certainly too high, and involves a heavy and unfair burden on the Transport Commission, on railway users and railway workerSe'ceces
"At the Scarborough annual general meeting of the NUR, Mr, Wilson told delegates that 'the future of transport policy in this country is, and must be, a political issue to be settled first in the House of Commons and then to be settled by the verdict of the people in a General Election.! He described the Beeching report as a perfectly competent and honest job but that the terms of reference were wrong. .Dr. Beeching should not have been set to inquire into what services must be closed down ‘but what should be the shape of transport as a whole.'...eLabour's policy was to consider transport policy against the wider problem of economic planning and expansion. And 'that is why we claim that the Beeching surgery as a whole must be halted until we have made a full survey of the transport needs of the country.!"
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