ROAD TAX IN FRANCE
Traffic Held Up In Protest (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. June 29. Transport firms in France protested immediately they heard the news from the French National Assembly that the Government had passed a law increasing the tax on road transport in the centre of Paris.
Road hauliers slewed their lorries across main roads and formed road blocks which took the police two hours to sort out.
On the outskirts of France’s biggest port. Marseilles, motorists were held up for four hours and the city was isolated until the police attacked the stoppages with breakdown trucks. Cranes were used to lift some lorries out of the way when the drivers refused to move them.
The new law aims to bring in an extra £20.000,000 in revenue and to discourage heavy goods going by road, thus helping the nationalised railways. The new law puts an annual £2 a ton tax on lorries of between five and eight tons on short hauls and £24 a ton on long hauls of more than 90 miles.
The Paris correspondent of the “News Chronicle” says that a road hauliers’ protest by barricades is an old French custom.
Winegrowers and farmers halt traffic when they want to impress their grievances on the National Assembly.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 28008, 30 June 1956, Page 13
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210ROAD TAX IN FRANCE Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 28008, 30 June 1956, Page 13
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