For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Turf wars (20.04.12)

Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends, were the lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II for the musical Oklahoma! And one would think by the rhetoric surrounding the pedicab/licensed taxi debate that a turf war was being engaged by the two proponents along the lines of the ranch disputes in America’s mid-west.

Nothing could be further from the truth, the dent in a London cabbie’s income caused as a consequence of business lost to ‘rickshaws’ is minuscule.

Anyone with a desire to climb aboard a pedicab wants to do just that, they don’t want to undertake a journey in the luxury of a London taxi.

No, the grievance we, the London cab trade, have with pedicabs is that ‘Plying for Hire’ is not practised on a level playing field. We have to undergo up to five years of arduous study while on The Knowledge; have a Criminal Records Bureau check and take an enhanced driving test before we can ply for hire.

Private hire now has vigorous checks upon cab offices and their drivers and they are not allowed to prowl London’s streets picking up passengers.

But pedicab riders can pitch up, undergo the minimum of training, have no formal checks upon their suitability and then pick up tourists including children from the Capital’s streets.

We have to take any assurances from pedicab operators at face value when they tell us of their vehicle’s roadworthiness.

There is also a question of whether just about anyone can buy one of these carriages and go out on London’s roads without even the cursory checks that a pedicab company would undertake.

Public transport in London has been regulated for centuries, in fact, it was Oliver Cromwell who first brought some order to cabbies’ behaviour. But now we have a group whose only regulation is self-regulation – it’s just not enough.

But cabbies’ biggest gripe is the sheer numbers clogging up the streets of the West End, and instances of them riding in contravention of the road traffic regulations with seeming impunity from prosecution.

And this last point might be just a personal observation, but how is it that large numbers are allowed to congregate around West End theatres at the end of a performance? Not only do they impede pedestrians, including the disabled, but if an evacuation of the theatre should be necessary theatregoers would be confronted by a wall of steel preventing safe egress with possible tragic circumstances.

No, if we are to continue promoting pedicabs as yet another London ‘icon’ they need to be regulated. Turf wars it is not, but we do need a level playing field. If not they should be restricted to London’s parks where curiously they are never to be found. Now, why should that be?

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Rage against the machine (13.04.12)

This year’s mayoral race is following the predictable campaign that you would expect from the front runners, all the time honoured issues are being aired and as per usual it looks like a two-horse race. Fortunately for Londoners, some with more eccentric views have made their voices heard over the years on the Capital’s streets which have both amused, entertained and informed us in equal measure.

STANLEY GREEN An entrepreneurial spirit has at times been commendable with some individuals, for example, Stanley Green who upon retirement from the civil service decided against taking up golf, but chose to spend the next 30 years warning us of the dangers of protein. “Protein makes passion” his printed leaflets exclaimed, so reduce your consumption of fish, bird, meat, cheese, egg, peas, beans, nuts and well err . . . sitting, and the world will be a happier place. From 1968 until his death in 1993 Stanley sold his own pamphlet called “Eight Passion Proteins with Care”, which sold over 87,000 copies. With an eccentric approach to punctuation, the document was 14 pages long and rendered in a smorgasbord of font faces and weights, it also existed in a 392-page book form, which the Oxford University Press rejected in 1971.

WILLIAM BOAKES Riding a bicycle festooned with slogans and driven by a solidly-built, elderly gent Bill Boakes fought his first Parliamentary contest in 1951 when he stood for election at Walthamstow East polling 174 out of 40,041 votes cast; in 1956 he tried his luck again but this time in Walthamstow West, where he had an even worst result at 89. After a 30-year career in the Navy (he was a gunnery officer at the sinking of the Bismark) he stood under the banner: ‘Public Safety Democratic Monarchist White Resident.’ Road safety was central to his manifesto, that and a little racism thrown in for good measure. He would push a pram loaded down with bricks onto pedestrian crossings to make the point that motorists should slow down. He is pictured here in his ‘campaign bus’. It was actually a 140lb armoured bicycle hung with road safety and other posters that cleverly concealed an iron bedstead. Sadly for one who dedicated his life to road safety, he was injured whilst stepping off a bus and died from complications to a head injury.

GEORGE CECIL IVES Was a poet, writer, penal reformer and early gay rights campaigner. Born in Germany the illegitimate son of an English army officer and a Spanish baroness, he was educated at Magdalene College where he started to amass 45 volumes of scrapbooks of press clippings of murders, punishments, freaks, theories of crime and punishment, transvestism, psychology of gender, homosexuality, cricket scores, and letters he wrote to newspapers. In 1897 Ives created and founded the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society for homosexuals which was named after the location of the battle where the Sacred Band of Thebes was finally annihilated in 338 BC. Working to end the oppression of homosexuals, what he called the ‘Cause’ he hoped that Oscar Wilde would join the ‘Cause’, but was disappointed. He met Wilde at the Authors’ Club in 1892, Wilde was taken by his boyish looks and persuaded him to shave off his moustache, whereupon he kissed him passionately the next time they met in the Travellers’ Club. In later life he developed a passion for melons, filling this house with them. When the Second World War ended he refused to believe it and carried a gas mask with him everywhere in a case until his death.

DAVID SUTCH Screaming Lord Sutch founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983 and fought the Bermondsey by-election. In his career he contested over 40 elections, rarely threatening the major candidates, but often getting a respectable number of votes and was easily recognisable at election counts by his flamboyant clothes. It was after he polled several hundred votes in Margaret Thatcher’s Finchley constituency in 1983 that the deposit paid by candidates was raised from £150 to £500. His most significant contribution to politics came at the Bootle by-election in 1990 securing more votes than the candidate of the Continuing Social Democratic Party (SDP), led by former Foreign Secretary David Owen, within days the SDP dissolved itself. In 1993, when the British National Party gained its first local councillor, Derek Beackon, Sutch pointed out that the Official Monster Raving Loony Party already had six. He committed suicide by hanging on 16th June 1999.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Saving for a rainy day (30.03.12)

First invented in China over 4,000 years ago when some enterprising chap took the parasol that had been used to provide shelter from the sun and waterproofed its paper cone with wax and lacquer rendering it both ugly and waterproof.

Before we had a drought the umbrella’s spiritual home was London. Originally designed as an accessory for women, it took a brave soul to promote its masculine use.

Enter writer and philanthropist Jonas Hanway who in the mid-18th century carried an umbrella for 30 years. His eccentric manner gave his name to the contraption – which previously had taken the Latin word ‘umbra’ meaning shade – and for a time it was referred to a ‘Hanway’.

His persistence came at a price for he incurred a good deal of ridicule, Hackney carriage drivers would try to splash Hanway and hustle him to the kerb because they feared the umbrella’s detri­mental effect on their foul-weather trade. The cabbies needn’t have worried you can never find a taxi in the rain to this day.

Due to our past inclement weather, the umbrella has become a ubiquitous feature of London life and one shop has done more to promote its use than any other.

In 1830 James Smith opened London’s first dedicated umbrella shop in Soho’s Foubert’s Place. When the brolly business outgrew its cramped premises, Smith’s son, also called James, opened two new shops and the one in New Oxford Street remains to this day, a perfect example of a Victorian shop with its original brass and mahogany shop front and interior fittings.

With the continuous procession of buses parked in the road with their engines running inside it’s an oasis of calm. The service from the helpful staff is redolent of an earlier, less hurried age. Choose the wood you like, select the size of the cover, be measured for the correct length and then wait for five minutes while the ferrule is fitted.

You might have to save for a rainy day for a bespoke brolly they cost £250 – £280 per umbrella. So for security, the handle should on no account be adorned with a maker’s name so that upon it can be engraved your initials – especially useful to the waiters in those restaurants in which the differentiation of customers’ belongings carries a low priority, or when you inadvertently leave behind your precious brolly in my cab.

Now you are equipped – not simply with a well-made, properly functioning umbrella, but with a statement to the world in this Jubilee Year that you are English and proud of it.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

An incorrect address (27.03.12)

While working as a cabbie how should I address you, and conversely when riding in the back of my cab by what name will you use to attract my attention?

Cabbies from previous generations I’m sure that they addressed their customers as “Guvn’r”, as the punters at the time were almost certainly male and middle class, and therefore in the manner of the day, would be regarded at a higher social standing.

Nowadays in a more egalitarian society, much of the class structure of the last century seems to have been abandoned and also our customers are more likely to be women as much as men. Moreover many modern women will direct me as their male companion stands idly by.

So how should my customers address me? “Taxi” is wrong on so many fronts, that I don’t know where to start; it is just that I don’t have 4 wheels.

“Cabbie” would seem an obvious choice, I’ve certainly earned that moniker, and it establishes our relationship; they are the “customer” and I am for the duration of the journey employee.

Or “Driver”, factually correct, but rather impolite to our native ears, and please not “Driv”, that just puts you at the bottom of the social class pecking order.

“Mate” or “Pal”, is a little, well, too intimate after all we’ve only known each other for a few minutes. Using “Guv” rather reverses the customer/servant relationship.

Our cousins from America seem to get it right, they nearly always address me as “Sir”, but curiously in a way that they retain their superiority, that is until the journey’s duration has exceeded 20 minutes, by which time Americans have usually introduced themselves and we address each other by our Christian names. And more importantly, how should I address you – the customer?

“Sir”, “Guv’”, “Mate”, for the male of the species, possibly, but many of my customers would take offence.

And it is far from easy the ladies; “Madam”, and “Dear” – both insulting or “Luv” – a bit personal or “Miss” a little demeaning?

Now all these are not just academic questions, because of our association with Europe, what becomes law in France will almost always drift across the Channel. The French it would seem are taking their famous Liberté, égalité, and fraternité to the Nth degree.

They apparently don’t like titles such as mademoiselle that set you apart from your other countrymen – or should that be countryperson? The French Prime Minister, François Fillon, has ordered that the term be removed from all official forms and registries. The decision, the report states, marks a victory for feminists who say the use of mademoiselle was demeaning to women.

They insist that their marital status need not be known every time they sign a form, or presumably hail a cab. Men in France are called monsieur, or sir in English, regardless of their marital status. The campaigners wrote on their website that they “intended to end this inequality but also to inform women of their rights.”

So will the famously grumpy Parisian cabbies find a way that suits both sexes and a term that respects all ages when they address their customer, and for we in London what is it to be?

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A match made in Hell (23.03.12)

On Fairfield Road, Bow stands the Bryant & May match factory, which in the 1980s became one of the first industrial buildings in London to be converted into apartments when it was renamed the Bow Quarter.

In the summer of 1888 what happened in this building became a pivotal moment in the history of the labour movement.

The match girls working there were regarded as the lowest strata of society; long hours in appalling conditions, were hired and fired at the will of the management, and its workers suffering dreadful industrial injuries.

Bryant & May were regarded at the time as a model employer, much the same as the Cadburys, a similar Quaker employer who built for their workers the Bourneville village.

The Bryant & May strike started when a Fabian journalist Annie Besant after having interviewed some of the match girls wrote a scathing article about their life working in the factory. Entitled ‘White Slavery in London’ Besant highlighted that shareholders’ dividends of 20 per cent were achieved only by cutting their meagre wages lower than 15 years previously.

The youngest of the women were so malnourished they still looked like children; the factory foreman would beat employees; and if they succumbed to an industrial injury they were sacked.

Far worse than those conditions was phossy jaw where toxic particles from white phosphorous used in the match heads entered the worker’s jawbones through the holes in their teeth.

Initially causing facial swelling eventually the jaw would decay with pieces of bone working through the suppurating abscesses. In the final stages, like lepers, they would live outside London as the smell from their decaying jaw became intolerable, before they succumbed to an agonising death.

Besant’s article shocked the Nation and prompted the match girls to strike – the first of its kind in the country – it sowed the seeds for the establishment of the modern Labour Party and women’s rights when employed.

Questions were raised in the House by MPs. the Times published editorials shaming the previously unblemished reputation of Bryant & May, and socialite George Bernard Shaw among others voiced his support for them. The match girls even received death threats from someone claiming to be Jack the Ripper, whose reign of fear started some weeks later in East London.

Within two weeks their demands had been met and they returned to work, but it would be a century later before Bryant & May would acknowledge any wrongdoing on their part.

Just a year after the match girl’s victory thousands of the country’s most exploited workers would gain union recognition, the most famous being after the Dock Strike which began at a short walk from Bryant & May’s factory in East London.

Next year marks the 125th anniversary of the strike which became a pivotal point in the trade union movement and employees’ working conditions. As Louise Raw remarked when interviewed on the Robert Elms show recently, now is the time to unveil a Blue Plaque alongside the one dedicated to Annie Besant, to those brave and exploited girls who had the temerity to take on a powerful employer – and win.