Lucy Masterman’s London from the Bus Top with sketches by Dorrit Dekk was published back in 1951, though I came across it rather later in a second hand bookshop, where it cost me only a little more than the original 5s net. Sub-titled ‘A guide for the impecunious traveller’ it remains an interesting read though some of the 16 routes it travels have changed since then. Even by the time my copy was first sold it had a pasted in correction that ‘TRAM ROUTE 70 has been replaced by BUS ROUTE 70’.
Since then others have followed the same idea, and I think somewhere in the house I may have an earlier similar book by a Japanese traveller, though that may be a false memory as a short search failed to locate it.
London is now of course plagued by open-top pseudo buses giving tours for tourists at inflated prices and cluttering up the city’s already overloaded roads, but we can still enjoy our own tours of London on the city’s many bus routes, reaching places where those tourist buses never go and for those of us blessed with bus passes totally free after 9.30am.
A few of those buses have some small opening windows through which you can stand and poke a camera, but mostly, unlike on those tourist buses your view is through glass, not always very clean. And while its usually fine to see through, taking photographs isn’t always worth the effort.
But on Wednesday 25th September 2019 my luck was in as I took the 243 from Waterloo to Shoreditch for a protest by the the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union, and again on my return journey.
The highlight of the journey was the Old Street roundabout, still four years later undergoing the drastic changes that had recently begun and are still clogging traffic in the area. It’s hard to imagine how roadworks like this take so long in the UK, I’m sure that in other countries the job would have been finished in weeks. This one seems to be trying to drag on even longer than HS2 which seems unlikely ever to be completed.
More pictures at Clerkenwell Road & Old St.
Wework stop victimising cleaners – Shoreditch
Members of the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU) protest noisily outside the offices of global office rental company Wework calling for it to end the victimisation of union members by their cleaning contractor CCM.
5 CAIWU members have been dismissed in recent months, without proper process and with Wework using its contract with CCM to press their dismissal.
Wework are a global office rental company, with various sites in London where offices can be hired. The cleaners in these offices are outsourced to cleaning company CCM but the union says that Wework staff have pressed CCM to sack some of its members.
CAIWU is one on several small grass-roots unions which have grown up largely to support migrant workers in low paid jobs, particularly in cleaning, in London. The traditional trade unions had largely failed to represent the interests of these workers and they left to form their own unions. These unions are led largely by former workers who are paid at much the same rates as those they represent.
Many of these workers are Spanish (or Portuguese) speakers and their were few Spanish speakers in the larger unions, leading to a failure to communicate and understand the situation of the workers.
They get results through high-spirited and noisy protests which embarrass those working in the premises where the cleaners work, often including high-profile companies with reputations to protect, who put pressure on the building owners to ensure that the companies who actually employ the out-sourced workers do so more fairly. In many workplaces they have gained workers the London Living Wage and better conditions of service including proper sick pay.
They also fight for members – as in this case – who are unfairly treated and improperly dismissed, which often happens because of their trade union activities, both by protests and by representation at industrial tribunals. Many outsourcing companies act unlawfully, particularly with low paid migrant workers, and the unions stand up for their legal rights.
This loud protest attracted both criticism from a few individuals who resented the disturbance, one of whom pushed some of the protesters, and also support from many passers-by on their lunch breaks, and CAIWU were actively supported by one of the companies who have their office in this Wework building.
Eventually police arrived and talked with both Wework secuirty and Alberto who was leading the protesters. They were told that this was a peaceful protest and would be ending in a few minutes and after some argument they walked back to their car and drove away. At the end of the lunch hour the protesters left too and I caught the 243 back to Waterloo.