This was the scene on the M6 in Cheshire today as around 100 lorry drivers and other motorists took part in a go-slow protest over fuel prices.
Up to 80 lorries, along with vans, cars, motorbikes and a caravan, crawled across the northbound section of the Thellwall Viaduct.
They had set off at 9am under police escort from Lymm Services at Warrington on their way to Carnforth in Lancashire in a 120-mile round trip.
Protest organiser Tony Burridge, who works for Valera, a commercial cooking and refrigeration equipment company, said: “It is not just hauliers who are facing hardship and having to make cutbacks and redundancies.
“Looking at the line-up of vehicles and people who have turned out today you can see that the high cost of fuel is hurting people in all walks of life.
“I am confident that by standing together and staging this peaceful protest we can make the Government reduce fuel duty.”
Among those who joined today’s protest was Steve Richardson, the owner of a Manchester-based chauffeur company. He said his fuel bills had risen in the last six months from £1,700 a week to £2,500.
Mr Richardson said: “I can’t pass all of the fuel cost increases on to my customers. If I did I would have no customers left. The only solution is to make cutbacks wherever I can. That means letting people go and denying others the pay rises they need and deserve. I’m angry fuel duty is putting me out of business.”
Steve O’Hare, a shift worker in the IT industry, pays £75 a week to commute from his home in Crewe to work in Manchester. He said: “I wish I could use public transport to get to work but I have to use my car because the trains don’t run at 4am.
“I work hard and I have a family to support and it is getting more and more difficult to survive.”
Police advised motorists to only travel on the M6 if necessary, and warned that the M56 and M62 may also become heavily congested.
5 Comments
Hmmm…last time they had a fuel protest we still ended up with higher fuel costs.
It is said that the definition of stupidity is doing today what you did before and expecting a different result.
Fuel prices will go up. Take some fuel duty off, put income tax up to compensate and everyone will be happy? I think not.
I live in Spain, and the Spanish truck drivers have been on strike since Monday. The shops are empty and the petrol stations are out of fuel. The government are having an emergency meeting today (Saturday). Not because there is no food in the shops, but because they are loosing revenue through taxes.
Rubbish, they are simply trying to make a point to the government that they need to do more to help us before the country grinds to halt.
Good on them!
If history has taught us anything, it’s that when a government turns to high taxation and forgets to listen to its people, well, that just means it time for something that starts with and R and sounds like evolution!
the amount of tax we pay on fuel is taking the micky, yeah ok tax people with big cars they brought them so they should be taxed ,, thats fair but for people on low incomes who have to drive cause their job is rare or its hard to find a job local now, i mean couldn’t they hold the prices at 1.00 a litre i mean that wasn’t to bad i mean yeah they lose out on a few pence but demand is going up so in turn the money will come back?????? hold it at a 1.00 a litre would help every one