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| Communication breakdown: Why
are we kept in the dark? |
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A crowded tube trian
Bob Crow
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SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
HOW would you feel if you were sitting in a darkened tube train
– passengers panicking all around you because of rumours of
a fire or a bomb – and you knew that the driver couldn’t
contact anyone because his radio wasn’t working?
You’d feel trapped and terrified, I bet.
Do I hear you say, “This couldn’t possibly happen, surely!”
But you’d be wrong, according to the Railway, Martime and Transport
union, (RMT) whose members staff the tubes.
Reports from RMT members increasingly point to the network’s
creaking radio system which regularly fails leaving the driver completely
cut off from the control room.
If this happened during a terrorist attack, underground rescue missions
would be severely hindered.
Although the whole network is prone to this problem, according to
RMT representatives, the Northern Line is regarded as one of the
service’s worst hit lines – second only to the District
Line.
A driver at RMT HQ in Chalton Street, Somers Town, told me: “I
don’t think passengers realise that very often the driver of
a train carrying up to 1,000 people is totally out of contact with
the control room.
“Over the years, I’ve lost count of the times the radio
has been out of action. The unions are arguing for a policy of no
radio, no train.”
Officially, Transport for London (TfL) deny any real radio problems
exist. A TfL press officer admitted the radio system wasn’t
“robust” but that’s as far as he would go.
But who would know better? Drivers and other tube staff who spend
most of their working hours underground – or TfL officials
many of whom probably only use the service to commute into the office?
And then, if the radio system was up to scratch, why has TfL embarked
on a private project called Connect to improve it? But even this
revamped system won’t be ready until 2007.
The RMT is also campaigning for every train to have two crew members
at all times.
At present, most trains start the day with only one qualified driver
and my inquiries have found that when two members of staff are on
board, it’s not always the right staff.
A driver is often backed up by somebody who is not qualified to
manage the train should the driver lose consciousness in an emergency.
Alarming stories of IT staff and pregnant women being drafted in
to the back-up position have been relayed to me.
Despite cosy sounds made by TfL about dangers on the underground,
the fact remains that there was only one crew member on the tube
struck by a bomb near Russell Square station on July 7.
There was no guard at the back, so panicking passengers tried to
smash their way out of the carriage without any guidance at all.
They could so easily have stepped onto live tracks. Luckily, they
didn’t.
RMT official Unjum Mirza told me: “Having an extra operational
member of staff at the back of the train may not stop a suicide
bomber, but it would help passengers if an incident occurred.”
Mr Mirza told me he has written to London Mayor Ken Livingstone
as the unions press harder for improved safety to be introduced
as soon as possible.
“We cannot accept budget contraints as an answer when billions
of pounds have been spent on wars we didn’t want and then to
be told that we cannot more staff on the underground.”
In the RMT’s publication Across the Tracks, the union’s
leader Bob Crow writes: “Why is that political leaders sometimes
fail to see blindingly obvious facts that everybody else already
knows?” A pretty good point, I believe.
Hey Jude, why so rude?
A LITTLE over a year-and-a-half ago I was invited to a Bafta
screening of Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain at the Everyman
Cinema in Hampstead.
In the audience was one of the stars, a certain Jude Law, (pictured)
who was at the time suffering the final strains of his divorce from
Sadie Frost in the media spotlight.
He spent most of the evening sulking in a corner, cursing the press
and hiding from my photographer and I, which was odd, because neither
of us local newspapermen had the slightest interest in his marriage.
Now, a reader complains, he appears to have turned his ire on the
public.
Anthony Crawford writes to tell me that he and his friend took a
stroll down the Regent’s Canal recently to take some photos
when they came across Law and a crew filming Breaking and Entering.
Mr Law gave the pair what Crawford calls a “menacing look”
and told them to “shut up” before other members of the
crew attempted to remove them from what, after all, is a public
place.
Crawford may speak for others when he concludes: “It seems,
where a film crew lands, no-one is allowed to breathe the air around
them.”
Law is probably right to be wary of certain elements of the press,
but anyone who has been near a big-budget movie set knows that many
film-makers have an attitude problem of their own.
It’s clear film will make a splash
BRAVING the icy waters of the Heath ponds just isn’t enough
for some swimmers, it seems.
And film-maker Gaby Dellal seems to have scored a hit with her debut
feature, On A Clear Day, about a sacked Glasweigan who decides to
swim the channel.
But the actress-turned-director’s heart-warming tale starring
oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn and Peter Mullan is already winning
rave reviews.
The follow up to Football, her short film starring Hampstead actress
Helena Bonham Carter, gets its general release next Friday.
But fans can catch up with Brenda, Peter and the rest of the cast
at a reception and screening at the Screen On the Hill cinema in
Belsize Park on Wednesday, in aid of the NSPCC.
For £20 tickets to the 6.45pm screening call 0207 825 2505.
Pictured: Gaby Dellal and Brenda Blethyn.
New Way for the Free may not be welcome
NURSES in one or two wards at the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead
were given an ultimatum this week as the new chief executive Andrew
Way struggled to turn the ship around.
I heard that a nurse who had worked in a specialist ward for more
than 10 years was told that it was being closed down and that she
could move to another ward.
But she only had 24 hours in which to make up her mind. If she didn’t
want to move, she would have to leave the hospital. I gather the
take-it-or-leave option didn’t go down too well.
There are no signs the management tier is being pruned in this way.
In a letter to this newspaper last week, Mr Way said this column
had been ‘populist’ in its criticism that the Free was
top heavy with too many managers. But this sort of criticism is
being constantly made in the medical press by doctors – not
journalists.
And who should know the NHS better than doctors?
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