The Tube no longer feels safe. Violent attacks on the platforms and carriages of the London Underground are soaring. So are theft, harassment and indecent exposure – and, most concerning of all, sexual assault.
But instead of stepping up police patrols or increasing the presence of staff, Transport For London [TfL] is dumping the responsibility for safe travel on to the public, its passengers.
Like countless others who ride the Tube every day, I have been physically assaulted while using the service – as I shall explain.
Though I continue to commute on the Bakerloo line every day, it doesn’t feel secure. I’m constantly on the alert. And, like millions, I’m disgusted by the state of the carriages, which are dripping in muck and graffiti.
But when I tried to do something about it recently, I found myself under fire from the head of TfL, who outrageously accused me and my friends of dishonesty.
So I have little time for the rail network’s inane slogan, ‘See it. Say it. Sorted,’ which is parroted more often than ever.
Introduced in 2016, this week it was plastered over new posters, featuring a number to text: ‘If you see any unusual behaviour, speak to a member of staff or text 61016.’
‘Unusual behaviour’ – what a mealy-mouthed euphemism. They mean abuse, muggings, threats, vandalism, drug abuse and much worse. And sadly, there’s nothing ‘unusual’ about any of that on the Tube today.
A London Underground passenger sits in a Bakerloo Line carriage covered in graffiti in June
Criminal behaviour on public transport is never going to be resolved, as long as it is the public who have to deal with it. Thugs, drunks, perverts, thieves and louts know they can get away with anything.
Commuters are in no position to stop them. Quite apart from the justified fear of knife violence, most of us are aware that, if we lay a finger on a pickpocket or a groper, we might easily find ourselves charged with assault, instead of the perpetrators.
Then there was the horrific case of 28-year-old AI engineer Samuel Winter, killed by a single punch to the head by Rakeem Miles, 24, last August, after brushing past him on an escalator at Southwark station. Miles was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Perhaps a more truthful slogan would be, ‘See it. Look away. Say nothing. Get off at the next stop – or you might regret it.’
That’s very different to signs in Singapore, where rail travellers are warned that sexual assault will be punished swiftly and harshly.
There, the slogan reads: ‘If you molest, we will arrest,’ adding, ‘The penalty for Outrage of Modesty is a JAIL term of up to 2 years, fine and/or CANING.’
Police there are aggressively committed to finding sex attackers and administering justice.
As a result, the Singapore underground is one of the safest networks in the world.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan on board the first Night Tube train on the Victoria line in August 2016
But under London’s useless mayor Sadiq Khan, the chances of Tube criminals being caught are negligible.
TfL effectively abdicated all responsibility in January 2023, when it brought in a new set of guidelines, in partnership with British Transport police and the Metropolitan police.
These urged bystanders to intervene if they saw a sexual assault happening, with a three-stage strategy.
First, ‘make a distraction’ – for example, by approaching the target of the attack and asking a bland question, such as: ‘Do you know what the next station is please?’
Second, ‘make a note’ by recording anything you can about the perpetrator.
Third, offer support, by asking the victim: ‘Are you OK?’
None of those interventions is necessarily wrong, though vulnerable people might be at risk of becoming the object of an assault themselves.
What is far more shocking, however, is how normalised sex attacks have become on the Tube. TfL is effectively admitting it is powerless to prevent them.
The fact is that many people, especially women, are now too afraid to use the Tube because of the prevalence of sexual incidents such as groping and flashing.
AI engineer Samuel Winter (left) was killed by a single punch to the head by Rakeem Miles (right), 24, last August, after brushing past him on an escalator at Southwark station
While most cases go unreported, one recent video went viral on social media: it showed passengers bundling a disturbed and screaming man off a carriage after he dropped his trousers in front of children.
It ought to be surprising, but isn’t, that British Transport Police stated the flasher had been the victim of an assault by passengers, and interviewed at least one of those who confronted him.
The depressing certainty that police would do nothing useful meant that, when I was assaulted outside a Tube station on my way home earlier this year, I didn’t bother to tell them.
A lanky, dishevelled man was bounding near the entrance, shrieking and shouting. I made the mistake of looking in his direction.
He met my eye and started yelling at me, ‘What are you looking at?’ and other choice remarks. I turned away and, as I started walking briskly up the street, was sent reeling by a blow across the side of the head. He’d followed me and lashed out.
The pavement was crowded, but nobody did anything. Understandably, they didn’t want to be involved. I took the safest option and dodged into the nearest Sainsbury’s, waiting in the aisles for 20 minutes and reflecting on the irony that, an hour earlier, I’d been at a meeting for the Crush Crime campaign group.
I didn’t file a police report. Frankly, I didn’t want to go through the hassle when I knew the police would do nothing about it. Part of me regrets not filing that report, because the more hard evidence there is of violence on the Tube network, the more TfL will face pressure to do something about it.
And I’m aware this is unlikely to be the last time my assailant attacks a stranger for no reason.
At the time, I decided I wanted to get on with my life, rather than waste hours on a complaint that would lead nowhere.
Instead, with a group of friends at the Looking for Growth Campaign, I resolved to set about cleaning up the Underground in a different way.
Arming ourselves with eco-friendly cleaning products, we set about tackling the graffiti that spreads like fungus through the trains.
And we didn’t have to look very far for it. The first carriage we stepped on was festooned in crudely sprayed, lurid tags. All hastily and repetitively applied with zero artistic skill or merit.
For the next hour we went up and down several trains, and all of us were surprised at how simple it was to get the job done.
Spray the carriage walls with cleaner, apply some elbow grease, and off it came. I recorded a video for GB News, urging TfL: ‘Come on – if a couple of guys with some graffiti remover can make trains look slightly less terrible, you can do it too.’
For fun, we wore high-viz tabards with the slogan, ‘Doing What Sadiq Khant’.
The rail network’s slogan, ‘See it. Say it. Sorted,’ was plastered over new posters this week
Our efforts were not appreciated. Andy Lord, the TfL commissioner, hit out at a London Assembly meeting: ‘I would ask anybody not to take this matter into their own hands.’
He then claimed in a moment of true disgrace: ‘We also have evidence of people creating graffiti and then removing it, so that is being investigated by the relevant authorities.’
Why shouldn’t volunteers clean up the Tube if TfL won’t? They pay to use it every day. TfL should be grateful some Londoners still take pride in the Underground.
But the implication that we had defaced the carriages ourselves, just to film the clean-up, was despicable. For Mr Lord to say he had evidence we vandalised the trains was an outright lie.
A Freedom of Information request for this ‘evidence’ revealed TfL does ‘not hold any recorded information in relation to this’.
I’m still waiting for my apology. Meanwhile, the graffiti spreads, adding to the air of menace on the Tube. We can all see it. We’re all saying it. Why isn’t it being sorted?
Tom Harwood is Deputy Political Editor at GB News
