By Abigail Pollock
Every January 2nd , the first working day of the year, it is a London Labour tradition that activists will remind grateful Londoners that Labour mayors make fares fairer. This year, with a mayoral election on the horizon, and a mayor who actively disengaged from Corbyn’s campaign, the loyalty of many leafletters to the cover star, Sajid Khan, was severely tested.
At Beckton bus depot in East London, the morning shift was desultory: it would appear that for many 2020 was slow to start. Two lone Socialist Sisters, the sort of young mums who gave up sleep when they had their first-child, took on the onerous task of giving out 300 leaflets in one hand a half hours. It is pointless to speculate how many the Sisters would have shifted had Corbyn won, but the disdain for more politics was palpable.
Just before 8am a group of black and Asian men in the livery of their trade, approached the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and steadfastly refused to take a leaflet. “I’m not taking anything, with that man’s face on it “ opined a tall Nigerian man, with a stature befitting of a Routemaster bus commandant. A smaller sub-continental man with an excitable manner chipped in, “He’s a Khan you know, you know what that means”, before adding, “born to rule”.
It was clear that this group of working men had no use for Sadiq’s propaganda. “Now listen love, seriously nothing against you, and we always vote Labour, but the mans’s no good. We had high hopes for him as the son of a bus driver, but we’re worse off now than we were under Boris”
“We get spat at, threatened…”
Tony, the Nigerian, gave his men a look, and Sabia broke off from her billet on the left-hand side of the entrance. “You’re hardworking ladies, I can tell” said Tony. looking at his colleagues for concurrence, “but these bigwigs don’t understand the nature of our job. We get spat at, threatened, jumped by teenagers and every year our pay and conditions get a bit worse – we work too hard”.
The instinct of every good Labour Party member is to defend the candidate: “would it have been different if Corbyn had won?” asked Sabia. The faces of Tony and his posse lit up with the joy of a child at Santa’s Grotto. “Yes” said one of them, “then we might not be going on strike”.
Unite the Union has almost one hundred percent coverage across the bus garages of East London and the Newham routes. The support for an integrated and functioning public service is universal but what angers the drivers is the chaotic patchwork of deregulated routes. Constant swapping of service providers and franchises encourages the neglect of “non-competitive” routes in favour of the money-runs. Consequently, a pecking order of 12 franchises ranges from the national names, like Stagecoach, Arriva and Go-Ahead, to the less-well-known, low revenue Sullivan Buses.
Bus-driver exhaustion
Big- Ron from the Go Ahead Blue Triangle garage at River Road in Barking took time to explain it. ”There use to be a route for life if you stuck with the London Transport. I’ve been driving the 104 for over 20 years, but then it switched to a new franchise and I went from Upton Park garage out to River Road. Now there’s talk of pulling my route or even closing it down”.
He spoke with the weary tone of an old-hand desperate for the good old days or retirement. A head of steam was gathering, so I asked him about Unite. “You can’t blame Unite really, the problem is there’s so many bus companies that it’s hard to get everyone around the table but this strike is going to be massive”.
In Autumn 2019, following on from a Government enquiry into bus-driver exhaustion and a failed Private Members Bill, Unite tabled its own report on the issue of undercutting and wage depreciation in the sector. A deadly combination of too much pressure on the network and shortage of drivers is creating a ticking time-bomb of industrial collapse. London Buses are always one double-decker away from grinding to a total halt.
In truth, the London bus driver is the last of a dying breed, the fully-signed up, unionised and militant public transport operative – as immortalised by Reg Varney’s character, Stan Butler, in On the Buses. This is due to the anomalous status that London still enjoys as the only place in the United Kingdom where the state regulates the bus system. After Thatcher deregulated the regional buses in 1986, the hopes and dreams of Northern TGWU shop-stewards were dashed by constantly-shifting terms and conditions. In Manchester and Liverpool the free-market led to a cut-throat scramble for routes that decimated collective bargaining.
Sustainability success story
But even though London buses are a sustainability success story; with mileage increasing by 75% and usage up 100% since 1986/87, the drivers on London’s 675 routes have not necessarily benefited from this success. On the 7th February they voted 97% in favour of a mass walkout this Spring. But there is a huge political conundrum at play – Sadiq Khan is up for re- election in May and privately, the more radical garages are saying that they can see Unite quietly shelving the strike until after the mayoral elections.
The London mayoralty, introduced as part of Blair’s devolution mandate in 2000, has become a behemoth of an office. Rory Stewart, “the caring conservative” with anti-Boris credentials, is now vying for the so-called ‘centrist’ and suburban vote. After a spike in terrorism and a resurgence in knife-crime, Khan’s hold on office is looking shaky. At stake is the post-Corbyn credibility of Labour. Londoners whisper that Khan has fudged policing, can he use all his political flair to at least deliver on Transport ?
Beckton staff disillusioned
It is somewhat of a miracle, given the 2016 Trade Union Bill’s strict thresholds, of 40% support on a 50% turnout, that employees of 12 different private companies can coordinate the “sick and tired” campaign, but then Unite is no ordinary Union. But herein lies the problem facing Labour this Spring. Unite’s hierarchy is so closely enmeshed with the NEC, Formby and McCluskey, it is easy to see why the boys at Beckton were so disillusioned. There is a sense that the “boys-on-the-buses” may not trust the “boys-in-the-boardroom”
Moe, a Unite activist and bus driver, has seen these sort of climb-downs so many times he has drawn a radical but well-substantiated conclusion, “the real support Khan can get from bus drivers is the return of support for bringing buses back into public ownership and away from private greed. Ken Livingstone created jobs for bus drivers”.
Sadly the Blairite idea of Public-Private Partnering is endemic to the franchise and tendering system. Any substantial improvement to conditions can be off-set through pay, according to Moe “the recent retention payment only gave the bus companies a reason to not increase wages, lump sums are short term measures”
Bus drivers resoundingly gave their verdict
The official Unite press release on 10th February confirms that a full postal ballot will be prepared but the valedictory tone pales by the last paragraph. Unite regional Officer John Murphy starts off well, stating “London bus drivers have resoundingly given their verdict” but by the closing paragraph, “strike action is being considered as a last resort…due to the work patterns our members are being forced to endure” Moe’s words ring very true. “Union Leaders believe if we put on to much pressure Labour can lose elections”. If politics is all about timing, I can forgive the footsore Beckton bus-drivers who told me in all earnestness on the first day back to work …..“with Corbyn we thought our time had truly come“
March 2, 2020
