Colonel Blimps live

Published: 18 November, 2010

• IN 1940, the great David Low drew a cartoon London Sleeps depicting Colonel Blimp declaring “We must show Hitler we have command... of the underground”. 

It depicted shelterers in a Tube station called Dreamland. We still have our modern day Colonel Blimps as the letter (Action on the Tube, November 11) makes clear. And still in dreamland. 

The strikes are not about Bob Crow but about safety. Cuts of almost 2,000 jobs, including station, engineering and 450 ticket office staff are being proposed and these are safety-critical jobs. Since the Oxford Circus and King’s Cross fires, safety for passengers and staff has been top of the agenda but now Underground seems to think safety can be downgraded. In the 1980s, when cost- cutting was rife, over 2,000 guards jobs were lost, making passengers much more vulnerable. Are we going to return the bad old days when stations were neglected and dangerous places?

The reasons for the strikes are not mysterious at all. 

The Campaign Against Tube Privatisation (CATP) is still actively supporting the tube workers because as passengers we believe the system needs to be public-owned and fully accountable to Londoners. 

We’re not getting that from City Hall.

DAVE WELSH
CATP, WC1