Rail strike brings the country to a standstill
Early starts for workers and added stress for pupils taking exams as rail staff bring network to a halt
Renae English, six, passing through an empty Waterloo Station yesterday morning on her way to Stansted with her mother for a holiday flight. The country was paralysed by walkouts across 13 lines, leaving one train an hour on major routes and the promise of a week of misery, with further strikes scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday
GETTING 16-year-old Alfie Williams to his History GCSE exam during the biggest rail strike for 30 years took planning akin to a military operation.
For a journey into central Birmingham that typically takes 40 minutes by train, he and Charlie Byfield, his mother, were obliged to leave their house in Warwickshire at 6am to be sure of making the 9am start.
They even had a back-up driver on standby, in case of punctures or other mishaps.
Such were the levels of stress across Britain yesterday, the longest day of the year, as the safety net of a functioning train network was withdrawn by the RMT.
In short, the country was paralysed by walkouts across 13 lines, leaving one train an hour on major routes and the promise of a week of misery with further strikes scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday and massive disruption on the days in between.
Today, there are no strikes but commuters will still be forced to endure a Sunday service.
Talks between the RMT and Network Rail will continue today as sources said progress had been made yesterday.
Thanks to their early start, Alfie made his exam at Birmingham Ormiston Academy after a journey lasting one hour and 45 minutes. But at what cost to his performance?
“The kids have all been through so much with the pandemic,” Ms Byfield said. “They haven’t had a normal schooling year for the last two years and when they are taking their GCSES the last thing they should be thinking about, and getting stressed about, is how they get into school.”
A hair stylist who had to sacrifice four clients to yesterday’s chaos, she recounted how another family had been obliged to drop their child, also an exam candidate, at the school gate at 6.15am because the parents had to get to work.
“Are they [ministers] going to give them extra marks for the anxiety and stress they went through,” she asked.
“I don’t think they should have moved the exams, I think they should have moved the strike.”
Her frustration was shared by millions, in particular those unable to work from home.
In east London, tempers boiled over early in the day as dozens of commuters queued at bus stops, unable to get on board because services were already full of passengers.
One man stood in front of a 123 service between Ilford and Tottenham after it had refused to stop. The incident was filmed by an NHS worker
called David who had been waiting since 6.30am.
“My patients and co-workers are still waiting for me because of the rail strikes,” he said. “We are not allowed to strike. And my salary is totally worse than the ones striking.”
Wazhma Mansouri was another healthcare worker exasperated by the effect of the industrial action.
The palliative care nurse living in west London said she had no idea how she would get to work last night.
“We’re talking about patients’ lives, and the emergency workers who are already stretched, low-paid and going through the trauma of the pandemic,” she said.
Predictably, the roads in many areas were gridlocked.
Data from Tomtom, the satnav manufacturer, showed that a 30-minute car journey was typically taking almost an hour in the morning, with the volume of traffic almost 30 per cent higher than on Monday.
However, for the retail districts of inner cities, which can ill-afford any economic slowdown, yesterday was almost as quiet as lockdown.
Analysis from Springboard showed footfall in central London was down by 49.2 per cent on average and it saw a drop of 29.8 per cent in regional cities compared to 2019.
Standing in a silent Waterloo station, Andrew Haines, chief executive of Network Rail, described it as a “wasteland”.
Meanwhile Dee Corsi, of the New West End Company, which represents 600 retail, restaurant, hotel and property owners across central London, said: “This will be a particular blow for commuters and retail and hospitality businesses that are already struggling with rising costs and staffing shortages.”
It wasn’t just retail. Across the country the entertainment industry was wincing at the possible damage wrought by this week’s strikes.
Jon Collins, boss of Live, which represents the UK’S live music businesses, said: “This is one of the biggest weekends of the year for live music fans, with Glastonbury and British Summer Time [Festival] both taking place for the first time in three years, due to the pandemic.
“On top of this week, any additional action will have hugely negative impacts on a sector that is already on a cliff-edge.”
The frustrations were not confined to those struggling to get to work, as Zoom, the online conferencing platform, suffered an outage affecting those working remotely.
Despite the obvious chaos, RMT members on the picket lines appeared unmoved.
Outside Surbiton station, in south west London, one union member called Joanne said the public was on her side. “We’ve had buses beeping their horns in support and people passing by who would normally be getting trains expressing their sympathy for us,” she said.