by Iain Spragg
Having fed the corgis and locked away the family silver, Her Majesty arrived at Victoria and, after unveiling a commemorative plaque on the station concourse, she boarded a train heading for Green Park. Rather embarrassingly, the organisers made Liz buy a ticket for her journey in a blatant breach of protocol and one of the rare times during her reign she has ever actually needed cash.
The train she rode was quickly dubbed ‘The Royal Train’ and is now housed for prosperity at the TfL depot at Acton.
Her Majesty’s most recent journey was in 1977 when she showed her familiar face at the opening of the Piccadilly Line extension and, because she’d been a very good girl, she got to ride in the driver’s cab for the trip from Hatton Cross to Heathrow.
Luckily this time they didn’t make the faux pas of asking HRH to pay for her trip.
UNDERGROUND ENTERTAINMENT AS THE BOMBS FELL
1940
When the Luftwaffe began bombing the capital in September 1940, Londoners realised that hiding under the kitchen table wasn’t going to provide enough protection from the falling bombs and all eyes quickly turned to the Underground’s deep-level stations as the perfect place to shelter from the Blitz.
The problem was that the government, safe in their purpose-made bunkers in Whitehall, decided the Tube was for passengers only, and an uneasy stand-off ensued despite the people’s quite reasonable contention that it was bloody dangerous up on the surface.
The situation reached a head on the evening of 8 September 1940 when a large, frightened crowd gathered outside Liverpool Street Station and demanded to come in. A line of Underground employees and Home Guard blocked their way but the mob weren’t willing to be blown to smithereens, whatever Churchill said, and forced their way through, starting the famed subterranean exodus of Londoners onto the Underground during the war.
By the middle of September, an estimated 150,000 people were sleeping on the network each night and the impromptu shelters rapidly adapted to their new role with beds, medical and sanitation facilities all introduced to make life that little more bearable.
But boredom was also a factor during the long nights of bombing and the Tube quickly became an unlikely hub of entertainment as Londoners avoided the explosions above them. Fifty-two stations suddenly acquired libraries, and concert parties, informal dances and sing-songs were a common occurrence. An amateur drama group toured the packed stations with a production of Chekhov’s The Bear, there was even an inter-shelter darts league, and makeshift bars were also set up to take the edge off things.
By May 1941, the worse of the Blitz was over and Londoners emerged from the tunnels to assess the damage. Some were shocked by the scenes of devastation while others were simply grateful they would no longer have to spend their evenings listening to George Formby – a regular visitor to Aldwych Station – and his bloody banjolele!
THE FORGOTTEN FACTORY THE GERMANS NEVER FOUND
1942
The Underground’s heroic role as a shelter for thousands of London’s terrified residents during the Blitz is well documented, but a few miles east from the centre of the city, the Tube was playing a different and altogether more secret role as German bombs continued to fall.
The location was a five-mile stretch of temporarily disused track that ran through Wanstead, Redbridge and Gant’s Hill Stations, and the secret it was hiding was a factory supplying radios, telephones, and shell and bomb cases for the Allied war effort.
The factory was operated by electronics firm Plessey, who needed somewhere safe to go about their vital business after the infuriatingly accurate Luftwaffe had destroyed their original building in Ilford in late 1940. They turned to the Air Ministry and London Transport and after spending £500,000 to convert the Tube tunnels, the factory was completed in March 1942.
To describe the new facility as big would be an understatement. In fact, it was so cavernous that 2,000 people could beaver away at the machines at the same time and there was a grand total of 300,000 square feet of space. It was so huge that Plessey’s foremen were issued with bicycles just to get from one end of the place to the other.
And in the four years the factory continued to churn out supplies, it was never hit in a bombing raid.
‘The Luftwaffe never got to know about us,’ recalled Dennis Barron, who worked at the factory as a stores manager. ‘We were safe. Riding my bike to work from Dagenham during an air raid was the dangerous part. I once ran like hell when a plane zoomed down and the machine guns let rip.
‘Getting to the loo in a hurry was the only dodgy thing I can remember about working in the tunnels,’ he added. ‘Sometimes it could mean a mile’s sprint.
‘I worked from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m., five days a week and half-day Saturday. And for that I got £1.50 a week, which was quite a lot of money for a boy of my age in those days.
‘Of course, these hours meant I didn’t get to see much daylight for half the year, apart from a few minutes at lunchtime sometimes when I nipped out for fish and chips as a change to the canteen’s sandwiches.’
After the war, the factory was closed down when the Central Line was brought slowly back to life and commuters rather than plucky subterranean workers once again became the norm at Wanstead, Redbridge and Gant’s Hill. An estimated 8 million shell casings were manufactured between 1942 and 1946 before this one particular stretch of Underground got back to its day job.
‘During these four years, the works operated day and night and the number of workers at the peak period was about 4,000,’ ran an article in the London Illustrated News in 1947. ‘The stations were used for offices, stores and first aid. Many millions of components were produced, among them being aircraft pumps, cartridge engine starters and breeches, aircraft wiring components, radio components, magnetos, field telephones, gear-cutting tools, gear levers and other components for armoured cars, shell fuses and so forth.’
The factory, of course, brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘underground resistance’.
IT’S A DIRTY JOB BUT SOMEONE’S GOT TO DO IT
1947
To those with a working knowledge of the adult entertainment industry, a fluffer is someone charged with ensuring the male stars are ‘ready for action’ when the cameras roll. For those with their minds not in the gutter, a fluffer is someone whose job it is to clean the Underground’s tracks while everyone else is safely tucked up in bed.
The problem with the Underground is the trains tend to suck in dust and other detritus into the network’s tunnels as they career along. The debris has to be cleared away because it’s a serious fire hazard should a stray spark from the carriage wheels land in the wrong place. And so for decades teams of fluffers have been despatched down the Tube at night to sweep up the mess once the last train has departed and the electricity has been switched off.
For years commuters were blissfully unaware of the fluffers’ vital contribution to the safe running of the network. Then in 1947 British Pathé finally captured them in action, complete with carbide lamps, long brushes, dustbins and scraping tools. Fluffers returned to our screens in 1989 when Molly Dineen made a TV documentary entitled Heart of the Angel, capturing 48 hours in the life of Angel Station.
The boffins at Transport for London have spent years trying to come up with a mechanical solution to the problem and while a cleaning train known affectionately as the ‘Big Yellow Duster’ does now patrol the Tube’s tunnels at night, picking up all manner of debris, fluffers are still deployed – you can’t quite beat the human touch.
Fluffers were traditionally female and the job was dirty and monotonous, forcing the subterranean crews of cleaners to make their own entertainment whenever and wherever possible.
‘I took home-made food into work on Friday nights and my friend Bernie took in whisky,’ recalled Evelyn Roberts, who worked as a fluffer in the 1950s and 60s after coming to the UK from Barbados. ‘We would have a little party and then work through the night. One weekend my friend Mertle had too much whisky and was il
l, she was sick. She carried on working, not realising she had lost her teeth. It was my other friend Rosie who found them on the platform in the morning. She worked the shift without her teeth, she was a bit tipsy.’
AIN’T NO SUNSHINE ANY MORE
1948
The arrival of the first emigrants from Jamaica on the SS Empire Windrush is a famous part of British history, but the 492 brave souls who boarded the boat in Kingston in 1948 probably had no idea they’d be forced to sleep on the Underground when they finally arrived in rain-soaked Blighty.
The Jamaicans came to post-war Britain after reading an advert in the Daily Gleaner offering transport to the UK at a knockdown rate. Jobs, housing and relentless drizzle were all on offer and on 22 June 1948, the Windrush steamed up the Thames to Tilbury Docks with its expectant passengers.
After realising it had been a big mistake to pack their sun hats and shorts, they disembarked and those who had already made arrangements headed off to begin their new lives.
‘Some of the Jamaicans who arrived in Britain yesterday in the Empire Windrush wore expensive suits,’ observed the fashion section of the Daily Mirror. ‘There were even emigrants wearing zoot-style suits, very long-waisted jacket, big padded shoulders, slit pockets and peg-top trousers costing 15 to 28 pounds. There were flash ties and white-and-tan shoes.’
The Colonial Office and Ministry of Labour, however, hadn’t really given much thought to where the rest of the new arrivals would stay and hastily decided the old deep air-raid shelter under Clapham Common Station would suffice as a temporary home for the remaining 230 newcomers.
The shelters were made of two, 1,200ft-long tunnels. A reception tent was set up at the top of the entrance shaft and after ‘checking in’, the Jamaicans were each given a linen sheet and grey blanket, allocated a bunk and taken down to their new home in a rickety lift.
‘It was the bowels of south London,’ said one of the unlucky new residents. ‘We curiously eyed the network of poorly lit, clammy, musty tunnels that had been offered as residence. It was primitive and unwelcoming, like a sparsely furnished rabbit’s warren. But in a strange new land, there were few alternatives.’
Ruefully remembering the Caribbean sun, the Jamaicans quickly took to relaxing on the Common to escape the claustrophobia of the tunnels and as soon as they could, they found jobs and got the hell out of there.
CATTLE REPLACE COMMUTERS
1960
Passengers are the London Underground’s raison d’être. Without them, the network would simply be a cavernous white elephant (and the narrow roads of the capital would have ground to a standstill many years ago).
But that’s not to say the Tube is averse to a spot of moonlighting and, when it’s not been conveying commuters to their destination, the Underground has played a major role in freight transportation across – or more accurately beneath – the capital.
There are far fewer freight trains in service today than back in their post-war heyday but every now and then unsuspecting travellers can still be waiting on the platform for the next train to West Ruislip to emerge from the tunnel only to see a scruffy freight locomotive appear, dragging its cargo of gravel or assorted building materials.
The height of the Tube’s freight foray was in the 1950s. The Metropolitan Line ran three trains a day on the Uxbridge branch to transport coal while the Circle Line was once no stranger to British Railways engines carrying goods on its tracks.
Most freight trains on the Underground ran at night to avoid clashing with their commuter cousins and causing congestion on the network. This included the engines that ran along the Metropolitan Line, which used to deliver cattle to Smithfield Meat Market right up until the 1960s.
Freight could yet enjoy a renaissance on the Underground. With London’s roads slower and more congested than ever, the ‘London Freight Plan’ is already investigating alternative ways of getting goods to where they need to be. At night-time particularly, the Tube could well be the answer.
FA CUP TAKES THE TUBE
1964
You’ve probably got more chance of spotting alien life on the Underground than catching a glimpse of a modern Premier League footballer who, naturally, wouldn’t be seen dead on public transport and absolutely must travel everywhere in a car that costs at least £100,000.
It was different in the old days, though, and if you happened to be on the Tube on 2 May 1964, you might just have witnessed a bizarre sight as West Ham United manager Ron Greenwood headed home after the FA Cup final.
In front of a crowd of 100,000, Greenwood’s Hammers side had just beaten Preston North End 3-2 at Wembley with a dramatic 90th-minute winner from Ronnie Boyce, and there was no shortage of champagne in the dressing room after the game as the celebrations began.
But Greenwood wasn’t the party animal and as his players prepared to find the nearest nightclub, he picked up the FA Cup and jumped on the Tube. Cunningly, he wrapped the trophy in a cloth to avoid getting mobbed and both he and the famous silverware made it back to chez Greenwood unscathed.
There were even more celebrations later in the year when a West End cinema decided to show highlights of the victory and Greenwood and the trophy were the guests of honour. But rather than book a limo for the event, the Hammers’ boss took the Tube with the legendary silverware cunningly wrapped in a cloth to avoid undue attention.
There is, for those who may doubt the story, a famous black-and-white picture of Greenwood sitting on a bench at Tottenham Court Road Station, with the incognito FA Cup nestled safely on his lap.
The beautiful game and the network did come together again in 2005 with the release of the film Green Street but it was a less-than-beautiful reunion with the movie depicting graphic football hooliganism.
The Underground scenes were filmed at East Finchley Station on the Northern Line and against the critical odds the movie won a number of awards, including the Best of the Fest at the Malibu Film Festival and the Special Jury Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival.
Football and (play) acting have continued to enjoy a close relationship ever since and most modern players have now perfected their ‘shot by a sniper’ routine and happily entertain the fans with it every time they stray into the opposition penalty area.
VICTORY FOR THE VICTORIA LINE
1968
The problem with building new Tube lines is that as soon as the tunnelling is finished, the new ticket barriers have been installed and you’ve trained up an army of Evening Standard distributors, the whole thing gets clogged up with pesky passengers and the problem of congestion rears its ugly head again.
Such was the dilemma in London after the Second World War as the Underground struggled to cope with the number of commuters spilling in and out of the carriages, so in 1948 the British Transport Commission set up a working party to investigate the feasibility of running a track from Victoria to Walthamstow. They didn’t know it, but the Victoria Line was now in the pipeline.
The idea was not met with universal approval and the debate on how to alleviate the capital’s growing public transport crisis dragged on for years, culminating in a radical alternative proposal from Harold Watkinson, the MP for Woking and a government minister.
‘It [the Victoria Line] would cost £55 million,’ he argued in 1959. ‘The question to be decided, and upon which I wish to take the advice of the London Travel Committee, is whether this £55 million would pay a better dividend were it spent on off-street parking.’
The car park idea had supporters in Westminster, but Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was worried about unemployment and reasoned a new Tube line would create more jobs, particularly for the Northeast shipyards who would land the steelwork contracts, than simply concreting more of London to accommodate cars.
Macmillan’s intervention was decisive and in 1962 work began, the Victoria Line opening six years later. The National Car Parks company weren’t happy but the newly connected residents of Vauxhall and Pimlico, Seven Sist
ers and Tottenham Hale were over the moon.
History has certainly vindicated Macmillan’s decision to ignore the vocal car lobby. Today an estimated 200 million passengers use the Victoria line each and every year, which would require an awful lot of multi-storey car parks – not to mention the driving gloves, mints and fluffy dice – were the commuters forced to make those journeys by road rather than rail.
These days the Victoria Line even has its own Twitter account, reflecting its status as one of the network’s newest and most ‘with it’ lines, although the Tweets do tend to focus on service updates and passenger information rather than abusing celebrities or the sale of dubious medical remedies for the older gentleman.
PLEASE MIND THE GAP
1968
The London Underground is an engineering and architectural masterpiece that still stands as testimony to the skill, ingenuity and vision of those who conceived, designed and ultimately built the world’s biggest subterranean transport system.
It’s got its faults, though. The stifling heat in the summer, the constant noise levels and lack of space are all definite negatives and then there is the curious case of the dreaded gap, the ominous and life-threatening void between the carriage and the platform at certain stations on the network.
The gaps are the result of various engineering oddities. Some arise when ‘straight’ rolling stock arrives at a station with a curved platform, while other spaces are created because of platforms which have to accommodate both deep-level and sub-level trains, which are marginally different heights. The gap at Bank Station is reported to be so big because the tunnel diggers had to ensure they didn’t encroach on the nearby Bank of England vaults.
