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shipbuilding yards, or for longer transport by rail or road to more distant destinations. This scheme, which would have entailed the co-operation of many interests and very heavy capital outlay, never materialised. We venture to hazard the prediction that eventually something on these lines will be inevitable though we recognise that a factor of great importance is the transport of coal. In the meantime a modified project has been worked out by the steel trade, the railway companies and the Clyde Trust for the creation at General Terminus of new and up-to-date facilities for the rapid handling of ore cargoes, and but for the war, this project would doubtless have been * carried into execution before now. Its urgency and importance for Clydeside
require no comment.
(160) Our attention has been drawn by many interests to the demand for storage accommodation immediately accessible to ships. We have already indicated (Para. 58) the disadvantages of situation which prevent the Clyde ports from enjoying a large share of entrepot trade, and there is no case for the provision of the type or scale of facilities appropriate to extensive re-export traffic. Nevertheless it is plain from what we have heard that the question of providing additional and more convenient storage at the port of Glasgow deserves urgent consideration.
We also heard much of the neglect of inland water transport by barge. As things are, the virtual non-existence of works with convenient water frontages greatly limits the possibilities of barge transport. But the river and upper estuary offer excellent opportunities for industries requiring deep water accommodation for the cheap and rapid reception and shipment of large volumes of raw materials and finished products; and if such development takes place, there will be no difficulty in developing barging services to meet the needs of manufacturers and traders..
(161) In addition to the naval base project, which stands in a class apart, we have also had pressed upon our attention from more than one quarter schemes for the creation in the Clyde estuary of two entirely new ocean ter- minals, one at Greenock and another on the Ayrshire coast. The ambitious nature of these projects sufficiently appears from the public comparisons which have been suggested to Southampton and even to Liverpool.
We have not attempted exhaustively to examine these projects for they have not been worked out in detail; but it is plain that the bare fact that they have been advanced has occasioned apprehensions amongst those who rightly insist that the Clyde ports must be economically self-supporting and must keep dues and rates at the lowest possible level. To allay these apprehensions we venture to add certain comments.
(162) The creation of new deep-water commercial ports of national status is not only a matter of the construction of wharves, breakwaters and other works and equipment, (though these alone would entail on the scale contem- plated very heavy expenditure of money, labour and material), but also requires the provision of extensive housing and urban facilities, warehousing and commercial centres, road and rail communications, and the industrial planning of the adjoining region. From the point of view of the relative priorities of the demands likely to be made in the early post-war years upon the available capital, labour and material of the United Kingdom, it appears to us unlikely that the country could afford the facilities for the creation of new seaports in the near future unless the projects were well vouched as economically sound and nationally essential. In Paras. (65) to (71) we have already indicated our reasons for thinking that for some time to come
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the country as a whole will not need much additional port accommodation; and it is clear to us that, if all the Clyde schemes of new construction were carried into execution, the estuary would be enormously over-provided with port facilities. Their full utilisation could only be attained, if at all, by the diversion of traffic from other United Kingdom ports enforced by the Govern- ment against the desires of shipowners and merchants; and the capital and maintenance charges might be a crippling burden on the users of the Clyde.
(163) Whatever prospects the more distant future may hold, it appears to us that the new Clyde authority will find full scope for its activities for some time to come in modernising and improving existing facilities, in scrap- ping obsolescent facilities, and in undertaking such specialised new construction as may be required to meet industrial developments in the hinterland and to keep abreast and ahead of the requirements of shipowners and trading interests in every part of the area committed to their charge. It is along these lines that in the early years success will be assured, rather than by the prema- ture provision of large-scale port developments of a type appropriate only to the highly artificial conditions which prevailed on the Clyde during the last five years.
(164) It is also in our view of critical importance to bear in mind that it is in the port of Glasgow that by far the largest and most costly dock facilities already exist, and that these are situated in the focus of a great commercial and industrial area, close access to which as a market is, and is likely to remain, a powerful inducement to shipowners, traders and shippers. The facilities already available, with sundry improvements and modernisa- tion, are capable, if efficiently operated, of handling a very large volume of traffic-so large that the fear was expressed that the problem might be to keep these facilities employed. While exact standards of comparison between one port and another are not practicable, we heard no complaints from shipping interests to the effect that Glasgow was relatively either expensive or inconvenient, the impression conveyed to our minds being that, everything considered, it compared favourably enough with similar ports in other parts of the world except in one respect to which we shall revert.
Further we could find no support from maritime interests for the view, so often emphasised in other quarters, that the approach by the long narrow channel was a serious drawback. Incidentally, the maintenance and improvement of the channel are indispensable to the existence of the shipbuilding and other heavy industries which have come to be centred around the river.
In these circumstances we take the view that the advocates of large-scale new port construction on the Clyde must accept the onus of showing that the trade which they propose to accommodate will not be trade diverted from useful facilities which already exist, and that the heavy capital expenditure they propose will not at best result in the creation of prosperity at one point only at the expense of equivalent or more widespread depression at another. We do not think that they can discharge this onus.
At the present juncture in our national history we feel that the port should be regarded primarily as the creature, and not the creator, of the hinterland which it serves, and that nothing may be gained, but on balance much may be lost, by the provision of new facilities in excess of the industrial and commercial expansion reasonably to be anticipated in that hinterland. This seems to us to be specially true of the Clyde.
(165) In thus stressing the continued importance and value of the up- river facilities we are not to be understood as encouraging complacency in past achievements. The one outstanding criticism of the Clyde was directed
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