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not be forgotten that for over a century the vast bulk of the trade of the Clyde has in fact been catered for by a single authority, the Clyde Navigation Trustees, and therefore that there is on the Clyde no such compelling case for unification of authorities as forced the creation of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board or the Port of London Authority. In all human probability, it is argued, the port of Glasgow must continue for an indefinite period to predominate enormously in importance over all the other ports on the Clyde in combination, and therefore the creation of a single large port authority can only mean the diversion of the attention of the Glasgow representatives from their proper task, and their subjection to pressure from tyrannous minorities to saddle the trade of Glasgow with capital charges on uneconomical local projects elsewhere.
This point of view deserves serious consideration. Several Clyde port undertakings have, as we have shown, had bitter experience of the disastrous results of past uneconomic developments, and that experience has bred a fixed determination that there must be no more bankruptcies and no more judicial factors. Moreover the memory is still fresh of the ruinous depression which overtook Clydeside after the last post-war boom, and the lament- able results to the heavy industries and to the population of the depressed areas of Western Scotland. We were impressed, but not surprised, by the emphasis laid by nearly all affected interests upon the principle that the volume of trade at a port tends to vary inversely with the level of dues and charges, and that capital expenditure or added facilities can be justified only if it brings required improvements in service at economic cost.
It is perhaps significant that of the six main Clyde ports the only one enthu- siastic for large-scale unification and large-scale new capital works is Greenock, and that the others are either non-committal or only prepared to support, subject to careful qualifications, limited measures of reform.
(119) In order to narrow the ground, we may at this point anticipate our concrete recommendations by stating at once that we could not advise the full acceptance at this stage of the most ambitious version of the unification project, involving the creation of a super-authority for the entire estuary, lower as well as upper. The water area would be upwards of 2,000 square miles. The coastline embracing this area extends to over 400 miles in length, and includes many scores of town and villages subject to five County Councils and a large number of separate Town Councils. The infinitely varied local problems of these widely separated localities, between most of which there is no community of interest or outlook, must be left to local initiative and local administration, with such assistance and co-ordination as the central authorities may afford, and could not properly be undertaken by any port authority centred in Glasgow, nor made a burden upon the shipping using the Clyde ports or the goods passing through them. The attempt to construct an authority sufficiently representative and omni-competent to dischrge such a diversity of function would be fore-doomed to failure. there are authorities and individuals on the Coast who are saddled with We recognise that unremunerative or derelict piers or ferries and other local they would gladly transfer to the broad shoulders of a large authority, leaving facilities which that authority to bear the odium of future criticism or the financial burden of providing better services. But the same coastal authorities and individuals would on any suitable opportunity be the first to protest against the invasion of their independence by a bureaucratic organisation operating from a distance. This does not mean that there is not much to be done in improving the transport facilities for passengers and goods on the Clyde estuary, or in
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improving the fishing harbours, or in developing the tourist traffic to the coast resorts. But it does mean that these are not primarily functions for a Clyde port authority, and that they should not be carried out at the expense, and therefore to the detriment, of the ocean and coastwise shipping and goods traffic of the Clyde ports,
We have therefore discarded all idea of creating a super-authority to com- bine the provision and maintenance of ports and harbours with the functions of a transport undertaker, a tourist agency, and a local authority for an entire region, and have confined ourselves to the problem of an authority which will be a Clyde port authority in the accepted sense of the term. We are satisfied that to press the wider proposals in face of general scepticism and open opposition would antagonise the principal trading interests and create friction and dispeace which would imperil the entire project. It would also place an unfair and unjustifiable burden on shipping and overseas trade, and would thus be contrary to the national interest.
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(120) Even for the purposes of the problem so limited, the area of unifica- tion has proved controversial. The main difficulty arises in connexion with the Ayrshire ports, and particularly those engaged in specialist traffic. It is claimed that the railway ports are, commercially speaking, integral parts of the railway undertaking, and both railway company and coal interests are strongly opposed to any alteration in the status quo. Both Ayr and Troon apparently belong to the type of port of which the Royal Commission on Transport reported that it was not at all certain that it would be to the advantage of the public that they should be transferred from their present ownership." Having regard to the type of trade at present carried on and to other factors, we do not see any practical advantage at present in bringing Ayr and Troon within the scope of a new authority, but there would be no difficulty in separating the dock undertakings from the railway if this proved desirable in the future.
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(121) But if the administrative status quo on the Clyde is left unchanged, we venture to forecast that one or other of two things will happen. On the one hand the several sectional interests will continue to produce unrelated paper schemes, and nothing constructive will be done. Or, on the other hand, one or more of the competitive projects will be embodied in Parliamentary promotions, in the course of which much expense and delay will be incurred and much bitter feeling engendered, until the history of the Mersey and the Thames repeats itself in an insistent public demand for a forced amalgama- tion of the warring interests, and the presentation of a single agreed plan as a condition precedent to authority and financial facilities for its execution.
We feel strongly that the Clyde cannot afford the luxury of leisurely, costly and largely abortive methods of this kind, for other industrial and commercial centres, both at home and abroad, will not be content to stand still while the West of Scotland settles its differences. The plainest considerations of self-interest and regard for the wider community, on which the Clyde depends and which depends on the Clyde, requires that no time should be lost in settling down to the study of what is a single problem, with a view to pro- ducing by concerted action and friendly collaboration a single tong-term policy for the entire estuary, and energetically carrying that policy into effect.
Upon this ground alone we regard a measure of administrative unification as not only desirable but urgent. It is now the duty of no authority to think of the river and estuary and their potentialities as a whole, or to devise and