Foreign News: Revolt of the Motorists

Spunky British motorists last week struck back at spectacular young Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha, sponsor of the hated “Belisha Beacon.”

The beacons are pale orange globes fixed atop seven-foot poles at intersections too minor to rate a stop-&-go light. They glow continuously, drive motorists wild by giving pedestrians continuous right of way. To get past a Belisha Beacon one must drive at a crawl permitting instant stops should a pedestrian wish to cross. No other subject in years has so roused Punch, which now prints an average of two Hore-Belishing cartoons a week. Asks an irate female motorist in a recent cartoon across which smug pedestrians stroll (see cut): “Don’t you loathe these beastly Belisha faces?”

Suddenly in the dead of night last week motorists in open sport cars began dashing about London on a Belisha Beacon hunt. Passengers with air guns pinged at the big orange globes which burst in showers of tinkling glass. When Scotland Yard counted up next morning 26 Belisha Beacons were out and no motorist had been caught.

Some 20 years ago socialites of the Royal Automobile Club fought a successful nation-wide battle to eliminate speed traps as “unfair and un-British.” Discreetly from sources close to R.A.C. last week came threats: “It may become necessary to organize trigger squads of from 30 to 40 cars of air gunners and shoot up all the beacons in London.” From his Ministry of Transport publicity-courting Major Hore-Belisha retorted, “We are rushing the construction of new beacons and will have installed 20,000 by Christmas.”

Three years ago the National Government contained two white-haired boys in important Under-Secretaryships. One was Captain Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office. The other was Major Hore-Belisha in the Board of Trade. Both are very dapper, very efficient young men, with imposing records at Oxford and in the Army. When Major Hore-Belisha was promoted to Minister of Transport most of his friends were afraid that he was being laid upon a very stuffy shelf. They need not have worried. Leslie Hore-Belisha, freed of the self-abasement expected of an Under-Secretary, has proved to be the sort of politician who could make screaming daily headlines running a wet wash laundry.

The average run of British motor accidents—about 150 per week—provided Major Hore-Belisha with a terrific TRAFFIC CRISIS. Dashing about to inspect the terrain on which no citizen’s life could be considered safe, the major was photographed on his motorcycle as a sort of Mussolini of Motoring. He decreed barber-striped safety islands and chevron-striped crossing lanes. In order to restore to London what he called “the priceless boon of sleep” he issued a dread ukase that no horn may be sounded between 1.1:30 p. m. and 7 a. m., another compelling horns to be sounded in certain specified emergencies. Jail sentences caused Punch to cartoon a motorists’ prison for hornblowers and non-horn-blowers (see cut). Other Punch cartoons depicted the predicament of a motorist with a cold whose nose-blowing sounded illegal to a London Bobby (see cut, p. 19); and the instruction given by two parents to their infant son as to his rights under a Belisha Beacon (see cut, p. 19). Last week’s air gunning of the beacons was the first revolt against Hore-Belishment by the highly organized forces of British motordom. In no other country are motorists so admirably self-disciplined. Over 5,000 neatly uniformed service men of the Automobile Association and Royal Automobile Club ceaselessly patrol the Kingdom’s roads. They informally direct traffic when necessary, supply information, carry first aid kits and minor spare parts, change tires and make small repairs for members of the A.A. or R.A.C. and salute smartly whenever a member’s car flashes by.

Nowhere else does a motorist, on finding or losing, say, a glove or a side curtain, expect that it will return to its owner through the smooth clearing channels of organized motoring. Before buying a used car the British motorist has it “expertized” by his club, knows what he is buying. Last week nobody knew better than Major Hore-Belisha that his antics as Minister of Transport are merely a smart flash in the political pan. They may help to blow him far, even perhaps—eventually—to the Prime Ministry.