I strolled to the underground on Sunday morning without a care in the world, or so I thought. Things can change quickly on Britain’s underfunded, creaking transportation network. Among Britons it is beloved and despised, usually both at once.
The station was shuttered, the Northern Line out of action. The sign outside read “a person is on the track,” which is often a euphemism for something sad and dark that most people who use the network instinctively understand. I contemplated the likely meaning of the sign for a moment.
Then my mind turned to my own, very first world problem. How am I going to get to Euston station in time for my train to Liverpool and the Labour conference? Of course, I knew I wouldn’t. The train had departed by the time I made it to Euston via a circuitous route. Every other train to Liverpool was sold out as the Labour hordes flooded north for their big bash.
My only chance was a train to Crewe, a northern rail hub, and try to connect from there. Somewhat surprisingly, there was still a ticket available for the next departure. I purchased a ticket all the way through to Liverpool. Several hundred people stood around the concourse as I waited for the platform to be called. “Surely they can’t all be going to Crewe of all places?”, I thought. “Crewe?”
Other trains were called and the bulk of the crowd remained. As I caught other people’s furtive, nervous glances at the scene unfolding around us, I began to suspect that many were thinking the same as me: that this wasn’t going to end well.
The platform number was called and a mass of people, unlike anything I had ever witnessed in a rail station, shuffled towards it. I’d experienced huge, slow-moving crushes like this exiting, say, sports arenas such as Croke Park or Old Trafford. But never heading for the 12.45 to Crewe.
Clearly, London Northwestern Railway had oversold the train by a horrendous multiple. By the time I reached the ramp to the platform, the first few carriages were already packed beyond capacity with people standing on every available inch. Others lined up on the platform in desperate, futile queues.
It was everyone for themselves, utter chaos. Groups of panicked people broke off at speed for the carriages further along. I panicked with them. There was no other option. I had to get on that train. A short sprint later, past young people and old people and families and children and people whom I would never normally try to defeat, I was the third last person to squeeze on to the top carriage. It was like Armageddon on the platform. The train was dangerously overcrowded. Staff apologised profusely over the loudspeakers: the inspector was “disgusted”. But at least we were on.
Standing in such conditions for almost 2½ hours felt like a Herculean feat. There was a camaraderie among the wedged: most Britons tolerate these things with remarkably good humour.
When, finally, we reached Crewe, the same thing happened all over again for the train to Liverpool. And judging by the scene that had greeted us on the platform on arrival at Crewe, the same thing was also happening on our train’s return leg to London.
On the second leg of my torrid, dystopian train journey to Liverpool the fatalistic camaraderie returned. I was, again, in the front carriage. A little old lady miraculously picked her way through the crowd. Mistakenly, she believed she had to get to a carriage further along to get off at her stop, which had a short platform at which not all the doors would open. She tried the door at the top of the carriage. This was the driver’s door. “Let her in,” bellowed a Scouser. “She’d do a better job.”
The crowd adopted her as our granny. At least 20 people offered her a seat all at once. When the doors opened at her stop, I watched an earthy-looking kind of man, the sort you might dread meeting down an alleyway, help her off the train as if she was his own mother.
Laughter rippled through the carriage again a few minutes later. Merchandising staff in green overalls were picking their way through, handing out free jelly beans to promote National Rail. “Nothing beats being there,” read the slogan on the packet. Tell us about it.
The train arrived in Liverpool and the crowd, exhausted, annoyed but also entertained, spilt out on to the platform and headed into the city. One night later, I bumped into the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, at the Labour Party Irish Society’s conference party. For a moment, I considered lodging a good-humoured complaint about my journey with the ultimate authority, but I decided against it.
Haigh is going to nationalise the entire train network. It is one of the new Labour government’s most popular policies. Brits love their trains – they’re a national symbol. But, by God, don’t they hate them as well.