We can bring Coalition down, says fuel activist
UK gridlock threatened as tanker drivers’ support grows
BRITAIN is threatened with gridlock after the prospect of thousands of lorry drivers blocking roads and refineries in support of striking tanker drivers was raised.
Today, union chiefs are preparing for talks at Acas, the conciliation service, to try to solve the tanker drivers’ dispute.
But leaders of the Fuel Lobby, concerned at rocketing petrol and diesel prices, made clear yesterday they were prepared to go head-to-head with the Armed Forces, whose members are being trained to drive tankers should the unions take industrial action over health and safety concerns.
Andrew Spence, leader of the Fuel Lobby, even threatened to bring the Coalition Government down. The farmer and haulier, instrumental in the blockades of 2000 that led to 3000 petrol stations running out of fuel, warned he would “bring Britain to a halt” unless his organisation’s concerns were addressed.
He said: “We have been in negotiations with the tanker drivers since 2000 and have been aware of their grievances. We have said we may have to stand beside them in any protest. We are better organised than we were in 2000. This time we will bring the Government down.”
The father-of-three from County Durham said the threatened action was a “last resort” because hauliers and farmers were going bust.
“People are going to the wall,” he said. “The price of fuel is rising by the day and 63% of the price is tax. It is costing me £200 a day just to run an average-sized tractor. There is no way you can make a living. We are supposed to be coming out of a recession but it feels like we are getting deeper into it.”
Yesterday, UK Government Ministers, faced with opinion polls that made clear the public blamed the Coalition for creating a sense of panic over fuel, dismissed the criticism as “chatter”.
William Hague denied it had been the Government’s strategy to cause a “bit of panic” to defeat the tanker drivers’ unions, noting that the real test for the Coalition would come at the 2015 General Election. The Foreign Secretary argued his colleagues had “done absolutely the right thing” by warning motorists of the threat to fuel supplies.
He said: “Had they not set out the precautions people should take and alerted people to the situation, then, if the strike took place in the coming weeks, it would be said they were complacent and hadn’t prepared the country.
“The country is in a better state of preparedness now than it was a week ago for the eventuality of a tanker strike, so they have handled that correctly.”
Mr Hague downplayed the controversial call by Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, for people to fill up jerry cans with petrol, saying it had been a “technical error”.
He added: “Of course, the solution is for the union in question to call off the strike, which is not in the interests of their industry. It is obviously not in the interests of the country as a whole.”
Yet senior Tory backbencher David Davis, who challenged David Cameron for the Conservative leadership, said the Government only had itself to blame for some of its difficulties. “Some of it has been carelessness, the issues over the fuel strike, they haven’t thought things through properly,” he said.
His Tory colleague Bernard Jenkin was more direct, criticising the way the ministers had provoked panic-buying after a week of difficult headlines for the Government. “This was to try to take people’s minds off donors, the Budget and pasties and the Government added to the heat on this,” he claimed.
As a poll showed four out of five people blamed the Government for the panic-buying of last week, Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, accused ministers of deliberately provoking a confrontation with the unions because they wanted to recreate Margaret Thatcher’s clash with the miners in the 1980s.
“They created this petrol crisis,” she said. “What they did was they caused a run on the pumps for political reasons because they wanted a ‘Thatcher moment’.”