It is perhaps fitting that Transport Secretary Louise Haigh MP is due to publish an outline of her proposed Integrated Transport Strategy (ITS), exactly a week after the passing of the great John Prescott.
When Labour took power in 1997, Tony Blair appointed Prescott not only as Deputy Prime Minister but also Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. He grappled with issues that are still current, including global climate treaties, regional devolution and green belt protection. But I want to focus on his transport legacy.
The previous 5 years had seen determined peaceful protests against road schemes throughout the country, starting at
Twyford Down (1992-3), culminating with road protester Swampy’s tunnelling exploits in 1997 – it took 7 days to evict him from a tunnel at the
Fairmile protest camp in Devon.
Friends of the Earth and the Green Party had capitalised on public support for the protesters, campaigning for
laws that would require the Government to halt and reverse the growth of motor traffic.
Two months into his new role, Prescott whole-heartedly backed their aims,
declaring that “I will have failed in five years’ time if there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It’s a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it.”
– “Simply building more and more roads is not the answer to traffic growth. ‘Predict and provide’ didn’t work. Privatisation and deregulation of public transport were key features of the last decade. But they failed the passenger because they fragmented public transport networks and ignored the public interest.”
– “Increasingly, people do not have real choices. For many people using a car is now no longer a choice but a necessity. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rural communities with no daily bus service. For those who rely on public transport it is all too often inadequate, suffering from declining standards and services. And as motoring costs fell in real terms, bus and rail fares have gone up.”
– “Over the next 20 years car traffic could grow by more than a third. Van and lorry traffic is forecast to grow even faster. […] This means more traffic jams, not just in the cities but in country towns too. […] Driving will become even less of a pleasure and the costs to business will soar. There will be more damage to the environment and our health will suffer.”
Sadly, Prescott’s admirable ambitions were undermined, partly by the fuel duty protests of 2000 but also, sadly, by a lack of support from his own party leadership.
So the question is whether Louise Haigh can now accomplish what Prescott so valiantly sought to achieve.
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As a P.S. to yesterday’s post, I’d add that Thursday – when Louise Haigh MP is due to publish her Integrated Transport Strategy – also marks precisely the 30th anniversary of the start of the eviction of Claremont Road.
This was a residential street in Leytonstone, East London, which had been squatted, decorated and barricaded to resist the building of the M11 Link Road. It was the longest-lasting and most grittily ‘urban’ of the big anti-road protests of the mid-1990s, that paved the way for John Prescott’s Transport White Paper. See today’s Guardian article about it, including some quotes from yours truly.
Encouragingly, Louise Haigh is talking about adopting a ‘vision-led approach’ instead of the failed ‘predict and provide’ style of transport planning, where predictions of inevitable increases in motor traffic are used to justify road-building as the ‘solution’.
Of course, those predictions obviously then come true, with terrible consequences for our health, wealth and well-being, particularly for disadvantaged groups and communities, for our children and for anyone else wanting or needing to get around without always relying on cars.
However I noted yesterday that Prescott’s 1998 Transport White Paper also promised to end ‘predict and provide’, and instead to deliver a transport system that was better for the global and local environment, for our health, for the safety of our streets and communities, for equality of opportunity and so on.
He tried valiantly, but ultimately failed, not least because his party leadership was unwilling to back him when the going got tough.
So I really hope that, this time, Louise Haigh’s Integrated Transport Strategy will set out a clear and compelling ‘vision’ of a future with less car, van and lorry traffic, because the alternatives are simply far better. And that her cabinet colleagues will give her the backing and the long-term funding she needs to deliver it!
