Prepare for more disruption, oil companies warn

By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent

1 November 2000

A renewed fuel protest would lead to shortages and disruption because contingency plans can not guarantee petrol deliveries, oil company bosses warned yesterday.

They warned the public to expect "some disruption to national life" as Tony Blair insisted he would not be held to ransom by fuel protesters and dismissed the comparison of their action to the 1936 Jarrow march.

Malcolm Brinded, the chairman of Shell UK, told MPs that contingency plans drawn up with the Government, which included police escorts for drivers, would "significantly increase" the chances of maintaining supplies. But he told the Trade and Industry Select Committee that it would be "foolish" to be over-confident.

"If the blockades were in place again it would take us eight to 12 hours to be at the situation it took us six days to reach last time," he said. "We will, naturally, not have business as usual. There will be a restriction on supplies we are able to deliver and it will have an impact on national life."

The oil companies do not plan to force drivers to leave the refinery gates if they think the situation is unsafe, an industry spokesman said. Army drivers, who have received emergency training, would be called on if supplies to hospitals and the police and other vital services were not getting through but only as "a last resort".

Oil executives denied colluding with protesters during the last wave of blockades in September, insisting that everything possible was done to get fuel to the pumps. Their drivers had faced genuine intimidation, they said, pointing to 180 incidents, including three smashed windows, threats to firebomb homes and suggestions on the internet that drivers were paedophiles.

In preparation for a further wave of blockades, Shell has put up barriers at its Stanlow refinery behind which protesters must stand.

Protest leaders have warned that they plan to mount a four-day slow moving convoy of lorries in a modern day "Jarrow crusade" from Tyneside to London if Chancellor Gordon Brown did not meet their demands in next week's mini budget. The protest would culminate in a mass rally in London on 14 November, the day after the expiry of their 60-day deadline for action from the Government.

Mr Blair dismissed the comparison to the 1936 march, which he said was staged to protest at massive unemployment and poverty B conditions very different from today.

In an interview with today's Mirror newspaper, Mr Blair said: "No government can act on the basis of people threatening to bring the country to a halt, or even blocking food supplies for the country as some of them are saying, or threatening Armageddon or all the rest of it."

Con Whalen, the oldest survivor of the Jarrow march, who celebrated his 91st birthday yesterday, said the protesters should not be using its name. "It is a tradition which is to do with something else. These people are farmers and lorry drivers and they are ruining the name," he said.

Mr Blair was last night reported to have cancelled a visit to Russia to be present at next week's mini budget, but Downing Street said its date had never been finalised.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Transport/2000-11/oil011100.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 31, 2000