Calls grow for intervention in French lorry row

PRESSURE mounted on the Government last night to intervene in the French lorry drivers' dispute, as a motor manufacturer laid off 2,000 workers until deliveries could be resumed.

The Peugeot Talbot motor company said yesterday it would lay off 2,000 workers until Monday because supplies could not get through. The spokeswoman said the lay-offs would cost the company pounds 4m and result in the loss of 500 cars. Deliveries to the Ryton and Stoke assembly plants had been seriously disrupted. Workers were asked to report back on Monday, when the situation will be assessed.

The factories, where the 405 model is made, get body panels, engines and transmission systems from Poissy in France.

At Sochaux, in eastern France, Peugeot temporarily laid off 12,000 of its 22,000 workforce. It said that only half of the 700 lorries that deliver parts daily were getting through. Similar lay-offs were planned at Citroen and Renault plants elsewhere.

The UK Road Haulage Assocation demanded more government action to force the French government to break the blockade. It warned that British businesses faced costly delays because lorries could not get through with vital supplies.

One company director warned that businesses faced losses running to millions of pounds the longer the blockade continued. A London fruit importer, William O'Neill, director of Paladin Gem Sales, said he had two lorries of peaches and nectarines stranded near Lyons.

He warned that prices could collapse. 'The situation is atrocious. When the produce does get here the quality will have deteriorated. It could cause the whole market to collapse,' he said.

Two of his drivers telephoned him with the news that they were blocked. 'They have taken turns at trying to find a way out of this mess by asking for alternative routes but it led to them being threatened by striking French drivers.' Each lorry carried 20 tonnes of fruit worth pounds 10,000, he said.

A French-born fresh fruit importer, Salvador Valiente, said he planned to write to the French ambassador. 'This situation is totally unacceptable. My phone should normally be ringing all through the day with calls telling me that new loads are under way. Instead it's been dead for hours.'

British lorry drivers stranded in France supported calls for more action. Richard Ellins, a driver from Ossett, West Yorkshire, who was part of a three-truck convoy carrying a 58-ton printing press stranded on its way to Bordeaux, said the plight of lorry drivers was worse than that of tourists. 'The news is all about tourists being stranded, but the real scandal is the problem we are facing,' he said.

'Thousands upon thousands of British lorries are scattered across France, missing deliveries, losing return loads and wasting thousands of pounds a day. But there is nothing we can do.' He feared going out of business if the strike continued.

Another driver, Neil Makinson, said there was little sympathy for the French drivers. 'We have had a points system for traffic offences in Britain for years.'

Some drivers claimed they were threatened with physical violence if they tried to break out.

The Foreign Office yesterday warned drivers that all French autoroutes and major motorways were affected, with the Lyons, Toulouse and Bordeaux areas particularly bad.

The AA and RAC said problems were unlikely to ease before the weekend as the lorry drivers wanted to disrupt the start of the French holidays on Saturday.

The Government ordered a ban on the export of live animals yesterday to ensure livestock was not trapped on motorways.