British truckers protesting in London over rising fuel prices

Lorries are seen traveling through Westminster, London, in protest of high fuel prices Wednesday. Hundreds of truckers were driving to Britain's Parliament on Wednesday to protest the rising cost of fuel. Dozens of protesters on foot awaited them outside the Houses of Parliament, holding placards that said "Fair Play on Fuel." (AP Photo/Stefan Rousseau, PA)

By EMILY RISTOW
The Associated Press

7/2/2008

LONDON — Hundreds of truckers drove to Britain’s Parliament on Wednesday to protest the rising cost of fuel.

Police closed a section of the A40 highway into the city to let the trucks gather, then escorted the 200 trucks in convoys of 20 into the center of town. Dozens of protesters on foot gathered outside the Houses of Parliament, waiting to go inside to lobby members of Parliament and holding placards that said “Fair Play on Fuel.” Trucks not in the convoy honked to show their support as they drove by.

“Business life for us at the moment is hard — very hard,” said Michael Edmunds, a trucker from Wiltshire in western England. “It’s got to the stage where I’m wondering whether it’s all worth carrying on. I’m only a small haulier. We are simply getting swallowed up.”

Drivers who work for freight companies say their jobs are in danger from gas prices that have reached 1.30 pounds a liter (almost US$10 a gallon) for diesel, an increase of more than 20 percent in the past year.

About half the price consists of tax, and the haulers are calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government to give them a fuel duty rebate so trucking companies can compete with those in other European countries, where fuel duty is lower. They also want the government to scrap a rise in fuel duty planned for October.

“This is the worst we’ve ever known it,” said Andy Lee, who has run his small truck business for 21 years in Gloucestershire in central England.

High fuel prices have sparked protests across Europe in the last few months. In May, several hundred truckers jammed a major route into London in a similar protest.

“Our industry is being driven out of business,” said Peter Carroll of Transaction, a trucking lobby group. “Continental hauliers are able to run in the U.K. using cheaper fuel from abroad. The government needs to realize that the surge in oil prices has changed the world.”

So far the British protests have not reached the level of 2000, when gas station pumps ran dry after truckers blockaded refineries in a series of major demonstrations that lasted a week.