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.

Not before time (07.01.11)

While waiting to enter Trafalgar Square via Admiralty Gate it occurred to me that this public space has always been about time delays.

Now that north side has been pedestrianised the flow of vehicles approaching King Charles Statute has been restricted due to the re-phrasing of the traffic lights (Red: 1 minute, 3.1 seconds; Green 8.3 seconds if you’re interested) that allows only six vehicles at a time to enter the square. This triumph of traffic managements, which creates a line half way down The Mall, has the bonus that it gives more time to study this celebration of a national hero.

The area around Charing Cross had mostly been a maze of ramshackle dwellings, alleyways and shops when the Prince Regent engaged the landscape architect John Nash to design a square in the area to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. By the 1830s it had begun to take shape, with the new National Gallery built along the northern side of the quadrangle in the spot where the King’s Mews (stables for royal horses) had previously been located since the 13th century.

The original construction of Nelson’s Column was delayed by budgetary difficulties and rows over taste and artistic merit, the time taken to begin was seen as a national disgrace. Immediately after Nelson’s death at Trafalgar in 1805 there had been calls for a tribute to over sea victory over the French. Time taken for building work for Trafalgar Square has never been “of the essence” for it took nearly 40 years to raise enough money to begin construction, even then the Tsar of Russia had donated a quarter of the monies raised while a certain Mrs. Beeby is recorded to have given 2s 6d.
The eventual cost of the memorial was £47,000 (the equivalent of £4 million today), indeed that seems relatively good value compared with some modern public monuments: the steel arcelorMittal orbit observation tower planned for the 2012 Olympic site will cost around £20 million).

At 145ft tall it is still the world’s tallest Corinthian column but not tall enough for William Railton who won £200 for his design, its full designed height was deemed to be dangerously high, and 30ft was lobbed off its proposed height. Other submissions included a gigantic pyramid, an octagonal Gothic cenotaph, mermaids playing water polo and an immense globe.

The sculptor for the statute was Edmund Baily who was forced to modify his plans when no shipper could be found to transport the massive piece of stone required, in the event the stone broke in two solving the problem at what height Nelson should finally be. While Landseer’s bronze lions, modelled from a dead big cat from London Zoo (his neighbours complained at the time of the smell from the decaying animal) were not added until 1863.

In 1888 poor old Nelson was hit by lighting and his remaining left arm broken, a temporary repair was effected using metal braces, but in true Trafalgar Square tradition it was not until 2006 that the repair was carried out properly. Fortunately, the monument being made of granite and sandstone is immune to acid rain and the 2006 inspection found the monument to be in a well preserved condition for anything made from marble or limestone would have been in a dreadful shape by now as evidenced by King Charles’ plinth by Admiralty Arch, the one opposite the traffic lights that give me so much time.

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.

Sidney Street Siege (03.01.11)

One hundred years ago today an incident occurred in east London that brought to the public’s attention a man that 28 years later would lead Britain in its fight against Hitler.

In the first decade of the 20th century London had become a hotbed for Latvian revolutionaries. In an uprising some five years earlier 14,000 men, women and children had been massacred in reprisal by the Russian army, when an uprising to overthrow the Tsarist regime was foiled. With a deep distrust of their own police who had tortured their ringleaders the survivors had come to London to organise another revolution and to raise funds for their cause.

Armed they had held up banks, shops and factories and two robbers had been killed the previous year in a London robbery which had left seven policemen wounded and two innocent bystanders dead.

At 10pm on 17th December 1910 a shopkeeper living above his premises in Houndsditch heard noises from downstairs, fearing a break-in at the jewellers next door he alerted a nearby policeman, who was joined by two constables, three sergeants and two plain clothed colleagues (in those days burglary was taken seriously). Knocking on the door they were let in by a man pretending not to understand, who was instructed to fetch someone who could speak English. The police did not know at the time but they had stumbled on the compatriots of last years’ bungled robbery, who were in the process of breaking through a wall trying to get to the jewellers safe.

What ensued can only be described as a massacre as the anarchists opened fire on the unarmed policemen, leaving three dead and two crippled for life.

For the local predominantly Jewish population, it was as if the terror they had fled from in Eastern Europe had emerged on the Sabbath amongst their own community. Within days two of the gang had been arrested and a third was suspected of fleeing the country.

In the early hours of 3rd January 1911 following a tip off 200 police officers surrounded a house in Sidney Street and a six hour gun battle ensued.

The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill (highlighted in the picture) arrived on the scene and characteristically he led from the front, directing the police (a style of leadership sadly lacking in today’s politicians), and when the criminals inside set fire to the house to cover their exit he refused to allow the fire brigade to extinguish the flames. Eventually two bodies were found in the ashes and one fireman died from falling debris.

The two arrested were subsequently put on trial but acquitted through lack of evidence as most of the witnesses were either dead or had fled the country.

One of the acquitted, Jacob Peters, remained in London returning to Russia in 1917 and became deputy head of the Cheka, the Soviet Secret Police. Thousands were killed on his orders and many of the executions he personally carried out gaining the nickname “The Executioner”.

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.

Zil Lanes (28.12.2010)

Today’s post comes with a health warning, before reading further please hold onto something to steady yourself, or better still sit down. It has taken east Londoner Paul Charman two years using the Freedom of Information Act to bring to our attention just what we signed up for when London won the bid for the 2012 Olympics.

Don’t expect to find an available hotel room for the duration of the Games, London has to provide the International Olympic Committee (“IOC”), staff and officials with 40,000 hotel rooms including 1,800 four- and five-star hotel suites, ensuring the Dorchester, Grosvenor House and London Hilton are already booked solid, in addition an Olympic Village for athletes is being built in east London at a cost of £325 million.

Dedicated traffic lanes nicknamed “Zil Lanes” from Soviet Russia will provide 250 miles of traffic free travel, even the Royal Family doesn’t enjoy that privilege, and one lane stretches from London to Weymouth to facilitate access to the sailing events. Using those Zil Lanes (no buses, bikes or taxis allowed) will be 500 air-conditioned limos, complete with uniformed drivers.

All advertising for the duration of the Games can only contain material approved by the IOC, so unless you are a sponsor, to the Games your product may not see the light of day in London. Even spectators may not wear clothing advertising a non-Olympic sponsored brand, so forget wearing your football stripe to east London. Journalists and photographers are not allowed signage of any kind, and so if a photo-journalist used Nikon cameras presumably if Nikon is not on the approved list, tape will have to e placed over the camera’ identity. London police have to be made available to enforce any infringements to these draconian requirements, so for the duration of the 2012 Games most of London will remain a state within a state with many of our right and freedoms subservient to the requirements of the International Olympic Committee.

Every lamppost in the Capital looks to have hung from it what the IOC call pageantry, and because French is the Olympics second language expect the “pageantry” to appear in England and French.

This post can only be a taster for what is expected by the IOC, if you still have the need for more information to what London has signed up for, read the excellent article by Ed Howker and Andrew Gilligan in the Spectator.

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.

Derailed (23.11.2010)

Kensington Palace is undergoing cosmetic architectural surgery and a total facelift to the grounds. The ambitious plan to remove most of the railing to “encourage a more intimate connection with the Palace and the Park itself”, by removing the physical and some might feel mental barrier between the great house and the public.

Republicans might rejoice at another barrier being removed between the privileged few and the citizens of England, but what next? Daily I see crowds of tourists, noses pressed against Buckingham Palace’s railings, are these to be removed to provide a more intimate connection.

During the war most of the fashionable houses of London were shorn of their railings, the metal was needed for the war effort, so to retain one’s own was at the very least unpatriotic, in fact very little of this wrought iron was ever used – but hey, there was a war on.

Now cast your mind back to late September of 1997, Tony Blair had recently won a convincing victory for New Labour and the young were optimistic of a brave new world for Britain.

Then tragedy struck the young icon (and that’s not an exaggeration) of their generation – Lady Diana died in a Paris underpass. Within days a sea of flowers had been placed around Kensington Palace, each bearing a note expressing the outpourings of so many lives.

We were living through a seismic moment in our nation’s history, not just in the perception of the English character but also in our attitude to the Monarchy. Britain almost overnight lost its stiff upper lip and we started acting like, and here it pains me to say it – Europeans.

Day after day I would be taking distressed; grieving girls to lay flowers in what had become a very visible break with our staid Victorian post.

And those railings became the focus of the media; every day the field of flowers grew, and the railing began to symbolise the division of Queen and her subjects. The railings became a secular altar as a place to grieve for the loss of the hopes and dreams for England. So those railings are in short history.

We often have to decide what to keep and what to obliterate, only time can judge our decisions which we make today. But I fear that the Simon Schama of future generations when educating our great grandchildren about the late 20th century might say a few words of criticism at the decision to destroy this symbol of England.

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 Black Day for Black Cabs (16.11.2010)

I’m sorry to come over all cabbie centric here, but if you want the answer to why there aren’t any cabs are to be found soon on a wet Friday night, stick with me so you’ll know who to blame, now here is a clue: Our London Mayor Boris Johnson is proposing to put a 10 year limit to the age of London Black taxi fleet.

A leading trade journalist has estimated that at a stroke 7,500 cabs will be taken off the road equating to one third of the fleet. Followed by another 1,500 every year after that, so in just over two years nearly half of London cabs would be scrapped. These scrapped cabs are the vehicles approved by TfL and in fact until recent they were virtually the ONLY vehicles cabbies could use with TfL approval.

Not long ago to gain our green credentials every older cab had to undergo an expensive modification to bring it up to Euro 3 compliant. Apparently Boris doesn’t think the £2,000 conversion goes far enough and wants to run fleets of Euro 4 or higher compliant vehicles.

His proposition to cap the age of cabs at 10 years means that their residual value would reduce by approximately £4,000 a year and that dear reader would mean increased fares just at the time of austerity measures for many London business and residents.

Setting aside the environmental impact of dismantling perfectly serviceable vehicles only to replace them with imports from China, yes China, many components from London’s cabs are produced in Asia and the vehicles are only assembled in Birmingham, how can that be a realistic option for the environment when many much older cars are allowed into London?

What our passengers don’t realised (and why should they), is that many vehicles are rented. Again the London Taxi Drivers Association (“LTDA”) estimated this older fleet of rented vehicles will diminish by up to 50 per cent and the operators would be unable to survive this catastrophic blow to their equity. These garages owned by fleet owners would just shut up shop with their staff being made redundant.

Many older drivers, including this writer, would simply retire having decided that to replace their cab or the increase in rent was too a higher price to pay, for what a part-time job is for many. Some younger drivers, particularly firemen supplement their income as cabbies, and would have to consider the viability of replacing their vehicle or seeking alternative employment.

The LTDA have commissioned a report to counter some of the dubious claims made about London cabs green credentials by TfL, and hope to persuade Boris of his folly. But if reasoned persuasion doesn’t work (and Boris is not renowned for about-turns) expect to find an awful lot of empty cabs blocking traffic flow while demonstrating in central London.