Alida Baxter

Renowned London journalist and author

View from Soho,

Black Taxis

and Other Endangered Species

I was sitting in a taxi the other day, as immobile as if I’d never left home, trapped by the solid wall of low-loaders and lorries ahead and behind, and the vans parked on double yellow lines on either side of us, making the roadway so narrow even a bicycle couldn’t have got through, and discussing the same problems that have topped the agenda for months.

I’ve used black cabs all my life, and always talked to the drivers, but over the years our conversations have been wide-ranging – everything from the weather to our personal lives (I went out with a cab driver for a short time in my twenties, and it was a greater luxury to find his taxi always waiting to take me wherever I wanted than having my own personal sedan chair).  But lately two issues have taken over from everything else – even the chaos caused by Crossrail, the roadworks covering every inch of London and the iniquities of property developers have slipped down the agenda.

First let’s take Westminster Council (somebody, please).  Back in 2011 the Council announced weekday parking charges would be extended till midnight, instead of ceasing at 6.30 p.m., and would also apply at weekends.  What was rightly described as a firestorm flared and burned across the media, with prominent figures expressing their outrage in the Evening Standard almost daily, and television news coverage, comment and interviews:  restaurants and theatres demanded to know how their clientele and their night-time workers would manage, families rose up to say that they customarily drove into town to attend services at some of the capital’s loveliest and most famous churches – St. George’s, Hanover Square, or All Saints, Margaret Street – and being charged to park on a Sunday would penalise them, and be a wicked disgrace.  Such was the pitch of the screaming that in December 2011 the High Court forced Westminster to postpone the extended restrictions (originally scheduled to come into force in January of 2012) until after the summer, and granted campaigners the right to a judicial review.

Westminster had maintained the extra charging was aimed at tackling congestion, but their opponents said it was all about money (understandably, as Councils derive much of their revenue from this source), and in January 2012 the Council leader at the heart of the row resigned and the proposed changes never went through.

This still left a fifth of single yellow lines in their jurisdiction converted to double yellows, traffic wardens on an incentive scheme hovering beside Meals on Wheels vans, counting the seconds, and an increase of nearly nine percent in their income that year:  in January 2013 the Evening Standard published figures which showed Westminster had made the highest profits from parking charges in 2012 of any London borough – £38,000,000.           

Yet what’s the situation as I write this in 2015?  In the centre of Soho, surrounded by massive developments every few yards and in every direction, I’m used to keeping in constant contact with the Highways Department to check which streets are going to be closed next, but an entirely new element is creating huge difficulties.  Some months ago the closure of a vital route meant that unless a certain one-way street was made two-way, nothing would be able to get in or out.  This was actually handled very well by the Highways people, who posted huge signs warning that all parking was banned – parked cars in that narrow street would have made a two-way system impossible.

But what happened?  Not only cars but vans parked along that street for hours, on what were already double yellow lines.  As cars backed up and workmen from a nearby building site intervened to direct and help with the chaos, I rang the Highways Department, who couldn’t understand why Traffic Wardens didn’t pounce.  Just one little problem:  I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a Traffic Warden.

The same applied when I rang in despair because scaffolders had barred a vital stretch of pavement close to my home yet again.  Whilst some building sites are impeccably run, many scaffolding firms are (in the terms used by the relevant Council department) absolute bandits.  If they take over stretches of pavement, they’re obligated to provide a safe route for the pedestrians who’d normally walk along it, using barriers to annex an appropriate section of roadway.  But the bandit firms don’t.  They spend a day or two throwing up scaffolding, with yard upon yard of their lorries parked alongside, forcing pedestrians even farther out from the pavement into the traffic, and by the time an inspector has been sent to deal with them, they’ve disappeared.  And the same thing happens all over again when the scaffolding’s taken down.  If scaffolding goes up and down repeatedly, as a development progresses house by house along a pavement, the effect is enough to drive the most patient pedestrian stark raving mad, and if the patient pedestrian happens to be pushing a wheelchair, or relying for support on a shopping trolley, they’re driven more than mad, they become homicidal.  Teetering about with a low-loader bearing down on you, desperate for a pavement, isn’t conducive to loving your fellow workman.

I was told, by someone I sobbed to, that Traffic Wardens have the power to deal with this rogue behaviour immediately, and being constantly on the streets are in the best possible position to stop it.  Except that they aren’t constantly on the streets.  In fact there aren’t just less of them, where I live they’ve vanished.  It’s unbelievable, given the revenue they can generate, but apparently Westminster has cut their numbers as a cost-saving measure!  This is a bit like saving on heating bills by setting fire to fifty-pound notes.

Not that anything should surprise me, given that the fate of London’s black taxis is currently hanging in the balance.  They may be iconic, but they’re endangered – this is the other hot topic between concerned passengers and cab drivers, and how such a situation can have arisen is completely beyond me.

The regulation of Hackney Coachmen in London goes all the way back to an ordnance approved by Parliament in 1654, and UK regulations still use the term “hackney carriage” to define any vehicle allowed to drive through the streets looking for passengers, in contrast to private hire cars or mini cabs which must be booked.  But the strict rules governing black taxis ensure the comfort and safety of passengers, and their drivers pay lengthily and dearly for the right to ply for hire.

Ignoring the advent of sat navs, would-be cabbies still have to pass what is believed to be one of the hardest examinations in the world – The Knowledge.  For countless years I’ve seen earnest young men driving around the West End on mopeds, a clipboard fastened to their handlebars as they learn by heart every tiny little cul de sac and turning in the capital, and its hundreds of routes.   The wonderful playwright Jack Rosenthal based a TV drama of the same name on the gruelling multi-phased test would-be cabbies have to go through for the sake of their green metal badge, and how the process affects them and their nearest and dearest;   the play was hilarious, but you couldn’t help wondering why anyone wouldn’t try for something simpler, like being a nuclear physicist.

The hurdles to be cleared were set out very clearly in an article in The Telegraph in September, 2015.  In addition to the written examination, the series of interviews modelled on the pioneering work of the Spanish Inquisition, and a practical driving test, anyone actually wanting to embark on this quest must stump up an £80 application fee, £200 for the written assessment, £400 for the verbal cross-questioning, as much as £112 for the driving test (having an ordinary driving licence doesn’t count – this test must be taken and passed perfectly in an actual taxi) and £192 for the licence fee itself.

They must also pass a criminal records check to establish their good character (about another £60) and a medical examination.

And that’s all before they’ve gone near the cost of buying their trademark vehicle.  A cabbie had told me it would set him back at least £41,000 to get a new cab, but The Telegraph’s September 2015 piece gave an exact figure at that date of £42,795, and the price can only go up.

Time was, though, at least when they’d finally got their metal badge they were kings of the road.  Skimming through the London streets, they had no rivals, and marooned pedestrians in downpours desperately tried to out-wave one-another and flag down a rare cab that still had a light on.   The only alternative was what many people regarded as the distinctly dodgy world of the mini-cab:  something you had to book in advance, usually by phone.  You couldn’t suddenly decide it was too wet or too cold to walk, or too dark and scary to wait for a bus.  And though there was an alternative – the high quality hired car with a courteous driver – that also had to be booked, at an appropriately wallet-aching cost.

But then came the Smart phone.  And the app.  And Uber.  And what broke out were cab wars.

Uber started in America, and quickly spread worldwide.  The idea seemed so simple:  a customer registered with Uber, used the app to call for the company’s nearest minicab when one was needed, and enjoyed (or not) a cheap trip.  No cash changed hands, because Uber deducted the cost of the journey from the customer’s credit card.

But as with budget airlines, you get what you pay for, and what you get with minicabs can be, let us say, interesting.

I knew that London’s black cab drivers had been staging massive demonstrations against Uber that repeatedly brought the capital to a halt, but I didn’t really take sides until early in 2015, when I heard what was to me an incredibly worrying story – and I should add here that apparently London isn’t the only city where there have been problems.  There are reports of protests, investigations and even bans in many of the countries which initially welcomed Uber as a great innovation, but although I only know at first hand about the situation where I live, here in the capital, I find it quite alarming enough.

A friend phoned me to say that when her new neighbours had moved in, the husband had got a job as a minicab driver, which would be nothing worthy of comment if it weren’t for the fact that the man spoke no English.  Not a word!  How could this be legal?  Enquiry at the local corner shop, where the multi-lingual staff provided news far more detailed than the national dailies, resulted in the information that the man had been allowed to take a translator with him when he went to get his licence.

WHAT?  Always a busybody, I telephoned Transport for London, and learned that “there is no requirement for minicab drivers to speak English” and it was perfectly legal for them to have a translator with them when they applied for a licence.  In fact all they had to do was to hand over the £200 fee before they were let loose in a vast city of which they know nothing, with a sat nav and passengers but without an interpreter.

Little wonder, then, that black cab drivers were up in arms.  They’re put through Hell before it’s considered safe to entrust the public to them, but a minicab driver has only to slap down £200:  no way, surely, to ensure customers reach their destination without feeling like Little Red Riding Hood in the London woods.

Nor is life actually all that wonderful for the minicab drivers who work for Uber, as was reported by ITV news in the summer of 2015.   Uber classify them as “partners” and not employees, neatly obviating any necessity to pay them the minimum wage or provide holiday pay, (a passenger’s credit card is debited by the firm for any journey and the driver sees no cash).  In fact Uber’s drivers may work as much as seventy hours a week, according to the BBC in November, when an employment lawyer representing the drivers told Victoria Derbyshire that Uber were not complying with employment law, and that more than a hundred drivers were looking to take action over their rights.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, had gone public in March, 2015, to demand a crackdown on minicab drivers who couldn’t speak English, and within days Tfl at last proposed a public consultation including questions about an English language test and other minimal requirements, such as a basic knowledge of London’s geography, for minicab drivers.  The black cab drivers hailed this as a triumph, but Uber reacted as though they were being persecuted by a police state.

And since then?   In fact, nothing.  No more word about any public consultation, which (if it is actually happening) must be going on in a subterranean bunker.  With the end of 2015 only a couple of weeks away, Tfl tell me there’s still no requirement for minicab drivers to speak English and they can still take a translator with them when they apply for a licence.   Worse, and unsanctioned, many of them don’t even observe the regulation that only black taxis are legally allowed to ply for hire – prosecutions of minicab drivers clustering at every kind of venue trying to pick up customers are at an all-time high, but the figures still only represent a fraction of the numbers getting away with it.

And when it comes to bad behaviour of all kinds it would be completely unfair to leave the impression that Uber is alone in providing minicabs which may not be all one would wish:  they aren’t.  In March this year a journalist named Sean Dilly booked a Hailo cab, using their app, and phoned the driver to explain that he was blind and had to be accompanied by his guide dog.

But when the driver arrived he refused to pick up the blind passenger and his dog, saying he could refuse a job for any reason.  The journalist reminded him of his legal responsibilities and warned he would be taken to court if he hadn’t got an exemption certificate, but the warning had no effect.

In November the driver was charged at Hammersmith magistrates’ court with failing to carry a guide dog accompanying a registered blind person.  He was fined £200, with £200 costs and £100 compensation for the man he had left stranded.  It seems very little, but afterwards Sean Dilly said that the day in court had been about those who might not have the confidence to take offenders to task, and went on “Refusing guide dogs quite literally ruins lives”.

And here we should bear in mind that black cabs have to be ready to accept disabled passengers of all kinds, including those in wheelchairs.

If my bias in favour of traditional black cabs has been clear from the start, there’s good reason for it.  It isn’t only that I feel safe in them, and always have, or that they’re comfortable vehicles driven by someone who knows where they’re going, no matter how obscure the address.   It’s that, living where I do, I know what Transport for London are ignoring – their status as a tourist attraction, iconic as red buses, Buckingham Palace and Big Ben.

When a disconsolate cabbie tells me that the huge increase in virtually unregulated minicabs is spelling the end of his once highly respected trade, and with it a unique feature of London life, my heart sinks as much as when I see another bit of the capital’s landscape being demolished.

The loss of traffic wardens could be termed a mixed blessing, but the loss of black cabs would be a tragedy.

I can only hope that Transport for London come to their senses and take steps to rectify a situation in which those who know the least, and about whom the least is known, make their living at the expense of those who know the most and are the most regulated, and I’ll keep you updated on this crucial issue.

© Alida Baxter

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