Rail strike: It’s back to the days of flexible rogering ...

When I arrived in Fleet Street in the late Seventies, the two evening papers had printed billboards at every main railway station reading: Rail Strike Threat!

They didn’t bother taking them down because in those days rail strike threats were like London buses. You could wait an hour, then three would come along at once.

I know, I was that soldier — Rail Strike Threat Correspondent of the evening Standard. More often than not, Threat turned into Rail Strike proper, either on British Rail or the London Underground.

I spent half my life camped out at the national Union of Railwaymen’s hQ near euston station. (Or rather, in the exmouth Arms pub round the corner. Only to use the phone, you understand. no mobiles in those days.)

So the current industrial chaos on the trains gave me a warm nostalgic glow. It took me back to the series of strikes over so-called flexible rostering — a dispute which was dubbed ‘flexible rogering’ because it gave stranded commuters the perfect excuse to stay in town and conduct office affairs.

The row over who closes the doors reminded me of the ‘two men in a cab’ dispute, which hit the Bedpan (Bedford to St Pancras) line 30-odd years ago.

The drivers’ union ASLeF, aka Asleep, was insisting on retaining a firemen in the cab alongside the engine driver — even though the new trains were all-electric. Something to do with ‘safety’. There’s nothing new in the world.

Whoever is running Southern Rail should summon up the courage to do what Ronald Reagan did to the truculent American air traffic controllers — sack the strikers and train a brand new staff. It would only take a month or two, and as commuters are already suffering regular misery, it would be well worthwhile.

I also recall fondly a nationwide strike by the nUR, then being led by my old mate, the late Jimmy Knapp.

When he walked into the bar at the union’s annual conference, Fleet Street’s finest serenaded him with a version of Martha And The Vandellas’ Motown classic Jimmy Mack:

Jimmy Knapp, Jimmy! oh, Jimmy Knapp, When are you going back?