Southern rail strike causes worst disruption in 20 years

Southern is topping one performance table, writes Gwyn Topham.

The website Sorry for the Inconvenience, tracks the number of apologies issued by train companies on social media to passengers. Southern has apologised over 38,000 times this year, well ahead of nearest rival Great Western Railway. Industrial action could threaten that though: with no services to apologise for during the strike, it has said sorry only 36 times by 2pm – a third of the usual daily total.

A cartoon in the Times portrays the dispute as trench warfare between commuters and the rail unions.

When, where and why is the Southern rail strike taking place? Our transport correspondent, Gwyn Topham, has all the answers.

Aslef accuses Grayling of ‘playing games’

Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers’ union Aslef, said the union was prepared to negotiate to end the dispute and accused Chris Grayling of “playing games” behind the scenes.

“We offered to go to talks,” he told Sky News. Whelan added: “I would hope that we were getting round a table very very soon. We hope people listen to us, come talk to us and find a real way through this.”

Asked if he had confidence in the transport secretary, Whelan said: “He has quoted items today that I wasn’t even aware he was involved in. I had no idea that he was the guiding hand behind the scenes over the offer on Sunday that came from the company, in a private and confidential conversation, which miraculously appeared on the DfT website yesterday. So I do wonder who in all of this is playing games.”

Asked about Grayling’s claims that he had threatened the government with 10 years of industrial action, Whelan said: “Normally meetings between ministers and ourselves are [subject to] Chatham House rules. But I’m quite happy to give my version of events. I relayed our concerns over safety. He was quite intransigent about our concerns. I then quite openly said then we will have years of problems going ahead if that is going to be the case. I never threatened him. It was an open statement about the likelihood of where we would be industrially if that was the position that was maintained.”

Whelan added: “This isn’t about a victory over the government. This is about a long-held policy for over 15 years, where our members have become increasingly concerned about the ability to safely operate these trains. We are not doing it for gain. We are doing it for safety reasons. We want a safer railway.”

Sadiq Khan has more on his call for responsibility for London rail services to be handed to Transport for London.

Setting out a business case for the move the mayor’s office said:

TfL has a proven track record of making rail services better. Devolving this responsibility to TfL would allow us to work towards a fully integrated transport service, structured fares and transparent management.

Londoners – regardless of age, income or background – rely on train services to be fast, frequent and affordable every day. Services on the rail network should meet the same high standards achieved by the rest of London’s transport network. Currently this is not the case across the suburban rail network.

By taking advantage of TfL’s proven track record of making rail services better, there is an opportunity to provide a truly integrated, reliable and affordable rail network.

Rail devolution would also lead to economic benefits within communities. The biggest impact would be in south London, where house building rates are less than half the rest of London, because of poorer transport connections.

A single mother who faces travelling more than six hours to get to and from work each day during the strike has set out her plight in a letter to her MP. PA reports:

Jenny Lehane was forced to get her six-year-old son Matthew out of bed at 5.30am on Tuesday - an hour and a half early - so she could drop him at a friend’s house and travel from Coulsdon, Croydon, to Camden in north London.

The 37-year-old catering manager’s usual commute is 1hr 20min – taking a Southern service from Coulsdon South to London Bridge before catching the Jubilee line to West Hampstead.

But on Tuesday she says it took 3hr 30min. She had to get a bus before squashing on to an “absolutely packed” tram after not being able to squeeze on to two earlier ones, before taking the Jubilee line from Wimbledon to West Brompton.

In an emotional email to Chris Philp, MP for Croydon South, Lehane wrote: “I am writing this on a bus with tears streaming down my face at the utter failure of our MPs and government to do anything to stop this completely intolerable failure by Southern to run the service that my fares and taxes are paying for.

“It depresses me that the government, voted for by us, the hardworking, tax-paying commuters, will do nothing to help us.”

Lehane told the Press Association: “When I saw the sign advising people not to travel I got so cross. People have to work, businesses have to run. We can’t all march to their tune.

“I have worked hard for the same company for 15 years. I should be able to get a train and live my life without this stress.”

People who gave up trying to get into the office have been telling us what it’s like to work from home, writes Rachel Obordo.

Rebecca, 24, from East Grinsted, normally commutes daily on Southern rail. She said:

I’ve had to stay at home today because I can’t face the stress and hassle, not to mention the additional cost and time loss, of finding an alternative route to my office in London. Not that a non-strike day is much better – yesterday my journey home took over three hours, with the majority of delays and cancellations attributed to ongoing industrial action.

Unfortunately my workload doesn’t disappear just because I can’t be in the office. This is far from ideal in the run-up to Christmas. The stress and anxiety this dispute is causing passengers is shameful. I feel for tourists visiting the UK who are met with this turmoil and are unprepared to make alternative arrangements, and for passengers with disabilities, or those more vulnerable, who have to put up with chaos and dangerous conditions on a daily basis.

Luckily for Lee, an understanding employer means working from home is not really an issue.

But, for Fiona and her partner, working from home has been tricky.

Under Southern plans drivers will be solely responsible for the safety of up to 1,500 people, according to Aslef’s Graham Morris.

Speaking to Damien Gayle he said that level of responsibility as well as driving the train is “unacceptable”.

He added: “This is about them saving money.”

Southern has confirmed that none of its trains are operating today because of the strike. Passengers are advised not to travel, it says.

This map shows the lines hit:

Google Trends has a list of the top five Southern rail related queries on its search engine.

Mark Colombini, Aslef executive committee member for south London and the south-east, has been outlining the safety concerns behind the strike. Speaking to Damien Gayle he said:

It’s important to understand that it would be quite a crass oversimplification of the dispute to boil it down to one issue.

It’s multifaceted, but safety is certainly one of the key factors and that’s in terms of operational safety of the railway. At the moment we have trains that are dispatched by the guard or conductor and the guard is responsible for monitoring the safe dispatch of those trains.

The guard will ensure it is safe to dispatch those trains and will tell the driver it’s safe to do so.

What they are looking to do under driver-only operation is to transfer those duties to the driver so the driver would have full responsibility for dispatching the train. How that would work is that there are bodyside cameras that view down the side of the train and the driver would have to view down a set of monitors to check all the doors.

There are issues relating to that because, particularly with very long formations of coaches, effectively 24 sets of doors, for the driver to do that in a short period of time. The images produced by the bodyside cameras are really unreliable, particularly in poor lighting, whether that be at night or just dusk or when it’s overcast, particularly in the rain – even light drizzle has caused some of the images to be really poor. That’s quite clearly an unsafe method of operation.

The other thing of course, in terms of safety, is that the guard performs other safety duties, for example at a time when a driver might become incapacitated, particularly looking at worst case scenarios like in a train crash.

The reality of a train crash is that the driver is often the first casualty; who is in place to ensure that safety duties are being conducted?

That’s the safety angle, but there is also a customer service issue. If you think about access for the disabled, there might be a Good Samaritan to help someone in a wheelchair on board, but not necessarily. What Southern have said is that they expect people with a disability to give them advance notice so there can be someone at the station. I think they have said 48 hours notice. That’s frankly discrimination. I would suggest that’s contrary to the Disability Discrimination Act.

Tory MP Nick Herbert, who represents many Southern commuters as MP for Arundel and South Downs, has backed measures to end strikes on the rail network.

Speaking to BBC News he said: “We should look at what more can be done to prevent essential public services being disrupted in this way. It is deeply unfair on the travelling public and something really has got to be done about it.”

When it was pointed out that banning strikes would flout human rights laws, Herbert said:

There are a range of things that could be looked at. For instance it might be possible to have some kind of ‘no strike’ agreement in return for compensation, or some kind of arrangement for binding arbitration on pay claims. There are options and they should be looked at, because what he have here is a few hundred militant staff effectively bringing a key public service to a standstill on a completely unreasonable demand.

The former home office minister added: “Their claim is bogus, it is a political campaign. That’s why the government does need to look at the options for dealing with it.”

The Association of British Commuters has set out its demands ahead of Thursday’s protest outside the Department for Transport.

It has three main demands:

1. Urgent and transparent intervention into the industrial dispute.
2. A fully independent public inquiry into the collapse of Southern rail.
3. Transparency from the government in the form of answers to our crowdsourced questions.

If these can’t be met it is calling on Grayling to resign.

It says:

We demand that the secretary of state for transport not only intervenes but does so openly and transparently. Our message to the government is this: we are not only commuters, we are citizens for whom his department is responsible and we have urgent questions that need answering.

The British public should know that southern commuters have experienced a year-long nightmare with the collapse of Southern rail. We have desperately called for government action and have been repeatedly ignored; even while many of us have lost our jobs, or relocated our homes because of it. Our thousands-strong network of commuters has been at the centre of this catastrophe throughout; and with the complete lack of government action on the matter, many have put all their efforts into investigating the true story behind the crisis. What is rotten in Southern rail started long before the current industrial action, which now takes place on top of a broken infrastructure, chronic understaffing and a company whose relations with the public have irretrievably broken [down].

Its relationship with the Department for Transport is that of a subcontractor, not a typical franchise; therefore, it is firmly within their remit to step in, and their urgent responsibility.

We’ve been hearing from commuters who have been forced to find alternative ways of getting into work, writes Rachel Obordo.

Richard, from Tattenham Corner, had to spend extra time and money to get into central London.

Another GuardianWitness contributor shares a picture of an overcrowded train.

Despite the crush, reader GydaGwen, still supports the strikes

The RMT’s Steve Hedley insists the strike is about removing the “safety critical” role of guards on trains.

Speaking to Damien Gayle at London Bridge he said hoped the government would allow Govia, which operates the Southern rail franchise, to negotiate in good faith. “As you can see there is a total shutdown today of the entire network,” he said.

The strike continues to divide politicians along party lines. Labour MP Rob Flello reacted with anger after Grayling suggested the government was considering changing union law to ban strikes on the rail network.

Former Tory MP and children’s minister Tim Loughton pointed out Labour’s financial ties to the unions involved in the dispute.

The SNP’s Gavin Newlands calls for a more geographical perspective.

Chris Grayling has dismissed Sadiq Khan’s call to switch control of Southern to Transport for London as “simply nonsense”.

Speaking to LBC he said:

“What the Mayor is doing is promising one thing to people inside London and another thing to people outside.

“The Mayor’s just said we’ll provide faster more frequent services. Well the reality is if you get a suburban train in the morning, you know that these these tracks are jammed full. The challenge is getting any space for any more trains. He’s also promised people outside London that he won’t actually introduce more trains because of the fears outside London that actually there might be fewer services from the coast for example. So I don’t buy this.

“He’s been Mayor for four and a half months, he’s got some significant problems with Transport for London having big financial difficulties, the Piccadilly Line is in a state of chaos, he’s running out of money for projects already in the pipeline and he’s making grand promises about things like bridges over the Thames he hasn’t got the money to build.

“So I’m afraid people should take what the Mayyor says with a pinch of salt.

“Let’s concentrate this week on trying to get a resolution to the Southern rail dispute, which is all about services in Cambridge to Brighton not services that are just within London.”

Damien Gayle has been talking to pickets outside London Bridge station.

One driver, who preferred not to be named, said the issue they were
striking over was safety. “If you’ve got a 12 carriage train coming up
from Brighton, it could have a thousand people onboard.”

One driver without a guard was not able to ensure the safety of so
many passengers, he added.

The Press Association has stories of commuter woe:

A man who will miss telling his two young children a bedtime story because of the Southern strike is just one of the thousands of angry commuters to vent their frustrations.

Jim Boyden, a management consultant, from Shoreham, West Sussex, said he will be forced to stay in a London hotel until Thursday because of the lack of trains between his home and Victoria.

The 38-year-old shared a photo of his one-year-old son Zac and wrote an emotional tweet to Southern: “Because of your strike, I am unable to travel home until Thursday and read him and his sister a story. Because of your strike, we will not discover what animal is hiding in his favourite book tonight, or tomorrow night.

“Because of your strike, he will be unable to take me by the hand and show me his favourite toy, which is ironically, a choo choo train.

“Because of your strike, I will miss his smile.

“You can refund me my Season Ticket. You can refund me my hotel. I can even make up time at work, but how – how – are you going to give me back the things money can’t buy? “For God’s sake, sort it out.”

Another parent who took to the social media site to complain was a mother whose six-year-old daughter was left in tears after a school trip to the British Museum was called off at the last minute due to the train chaos - which included problems on TfL’s Victoria Underground line.

Monica Corduff-Gonzalez, 44, from Forest Hill, south-east London, said: “With the anticipated extra pressure on the Overground created by there being no Southern service, and severe delays at Highbury and Islington, the school decided to postpone the trip to the new year.

“I was going to be going on the trip with my daughter and my husband was taking the day off work to look after my toddler. My daughter was super excited about the trip and having her mum with her, and there was flood of tears this morning at finding out the trip was cancelled for today.”

One commuter who usually uses Southern Rail to get from Sydenham in south-east London to King’s Cross left the house more than two hours early to avoid overcrowding on the alternative Overground service.

Carmen Butterworth left at 5.45am instead of 8am to avoid being late for work.

Butterworth, 33, a personal assistant, told the Press Association: “I knew that everyone would be forced to use the already overcrowded Overground and it would probably be a struggle to even board and I can’t be late to work.

“The blame doesn’t just fall with Southern. However I do not think much of how they have handled the strike – telling half a million people not to attempt to travel on a work day isn’t practical.”

People’s tweets caused #southernstrike and #southernrail to trend on Twitter.

Natasha Gourlay-Harris took to Twitter to call on Southern to refund her pre-paid 30 Christmas work lunch, which she feared she would miss because of the strike.

Gourlay-Harris, 45, travels from Cheam, near Sutton, to London Victoria via Hackbridge and was stuck on a bus “in appalling traffic” for half an hour before finding the main entrance to Sutton station had been closed - with commuters being funnelled through a smaller second entrance.

The personal assistant said: “When will the Government step in?! I pay over 2,000 a year for a really awful service and then I read the company that owns Southern are taking in 90+ million in profits? It’s criminal. And criminal that these profits are not going back into the system that makes all this money.”

Some car drivers have been tooting support for striking train drivers at the Selhurst depot picket in south London, PA’s Jemma Crew reports.

The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, has rejected London mayor Sadiq Khan’s proposal to put Transport for London in charge of the suburban rail services currently run by Southern and other operators.

In a letter to MPs, Grayling said: “Transport for London has no experience of running a mainline railway like this.”

He also claimed the rail unions were being unreasonable. The letter says: “I wish we were dealing with reasonable people on the union side. For all the shortcomings of the train operator – and there have been many – and the failures of the infrastructure – also many – it is difficult to resolve any of the other problems on this network while the union leadership seem hell bent on fermenting this dispute.”

At London Bridge station, a key Southern rail terminus, every platform was marked with a large red X, writes Damien Gayle.

A few passengers were waiting, scratching their heads.

Benan Yolcu, 21, a law and criminology student at Brighton University, said the strike had affected her “horribly”.

“I have an exam today and I don’t think I’m going to make it on time.”

She said she knew a strike was coming, but added: “I thought it was not going to be today, and when I checked online [on a rail timetable app] it said that everything was running normally.”

She held up her phone to prove her point.

Yolcu said she had no idea why the train drivers had gone on strike. Still, she had some sympathy for them.

“I understand that they might have their reasons,” she said. “However, [Brighton trains] every hour? Come on. People have things to do. I understand people have their situations, but other people have jobs.”

Departure boards at London Victoria and London Bridge make grim reading.

Damien Gayle at London Bridge says there are very angry passengers on the concourse. His snap of the departure board explains why.

If you’ve been affected by the strike we’d like to hear from you. Are you using alternative means to get into work or are you staying at home? If you won’t be making it into the office, what are you doing instead? You can share your experiences, photos and videos with us by clicking on the blue ‘Contribute’ button on the blog.

Opposition politicians continue to blame the government for the strike.

The Green party joint leader, Caroline Lucas, urged ministers to do more to resolve the dispute.

Labour’s former shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher says the strike highlights systemic problems with the rail network.

Shadow Welsh secretary, Jo Stevens, is also backing the strike.

But the Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who had the party whip withdrawn after a sexting scandal, is sceptical about the strike.

The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, has been giving a series of broadcast interviews expressing his view that the strike is “futile”.

His department has also posted a defiant video address in which Grayling says: “We are not prepared to end the modernisation of the railways.”

He said he didn’t understand why the unions were so resistant to modern technology.

Julian Glover, the former special adviser at the Department for Transport, insists the strike is about union pride and their control of the railways rather than safety as the unions claim.

Commuters at Balham station are being forced to take taxis to work, writes Damien Gayle.

Andrea Dunn, 24, and Gemma, who declined to give her surname, 32, were
waiting outside Balham station to share an Uber taxi. “We’re total
strangers waiting to share an Uber now,” Gemma said.

Dunn, who works at Sky, said she had no idea what the
strike action was about. But Gemma, who said she would miss a client
meeting as a result of the strike, had stronger opinions. “I’m blaming
the RMT,” she said. “I think they are too aggressive, too frequent.”

Asked what she knew about the reasons for the strike, Gemma said:
“Train guards and locking doors, I think. Not having enough train
guards; they want to take train guards away so there’s no one to lock
doors in person.”

Gemma’s assessment of the strike was even shared by one
Southern rail worker directing passengers to alternative routes.
“These drivers are never happy, but they earn £55k,” the worker said.

“They are making these problems up. I saw my manager … normally the
RMT and him, they should be different things, right? But they go out
for drinks together. It’s all planned, we know that.

“They are going to have a very nice Christmas.”

In his video message, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, urged the government to give Transport for London control of commuter lines such as Southern, Southeastern and South West.

Addressing commuters, he said: “You pay too much for delays, cancellations and disruption. You deserve a better service. Southern commuters have been abandoned by the government. You’ve had months of chaos. But it doesn’t have to be like this.”

The mayor urged commuters to write to the transport secretary and the prime minister for TfL to have control – promising a “more frequent and more reliable” service “with fewer strikes” and “more affordable fares”.

“This is far more important than party politics. Together we can secure the decent and affordable commute that you deserve.”

Chris Grayling says the government will look “very carefully” at possible changes to strike rules on railways to prevent the kind of action taking place today.

Paul Plummer, chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operators, claimed rail companies were trying to modernise the way they worked to give customers better services.

“Hundreds of thousands of passengers are suffering needless disruption because of these strikes – despite independent expert evidence that safety isn’t at risk. Trains where drivers close the doors are safe.

“The truth is that these strikes are not about safety, not about jobs and not about customer service.”

Mick Whelan, general secretary of the train drivers union Aslef, has accused Grayling of being “less than honest on all counts”, PA reports.

He also referred to a speech made at a public meeting in Croydon earlier this year by a DfT official.

“Earlier this year Peter Wilkinson, the £265,000-a-year director of rail passenger services, said on a public platform that the aim of the DfT is to force train drivers – men and women he derisively referred to as ‘muppets’ – ‘out of my industry’.

“Mr Wilkinson said he was determined to provoke industrial confrontation and, indeed, was looking forward to ‘punch-ups’ with trade unions.

“The strikes this week are not, whatever Mr Grayling tries to suggest, politically motivated. We have a trade dispute with GTR/Southern, and only a poor government would seek to spin it any other way. I think their motives are clear.”

Back on Balham station, Joseph Volcy, 32, is wondering how he will get to work at a digital marketing company.

“I just didn’t know [about the strike] and it’s awful. By the way I’m seeing it I won’t get to work until 11am, because it’s in Kingston.

“I need to get on my phone, talk to all my clients one by one.

“It’s not the first time. I’m really disappointed. The train is never on time, sometimes it says it’s coming and just disappears. I’m thinking I have to move house. It’s bad because it really affects your morale.”

Damien Gayle has been talking to angry commuters at Balham station in south London.

Jessica Knight, 23, was on her way to work at Saviles estate agent in Richmond.

“It’s a pain in the arse,” she said. “I’ll have to work from home. My boss won’t be happy.

“I didn’t realise it was completely not working. It’s really annoying because there’s so many people trying to get to work and do their jobs. They need to sort it out really.”

Asked if she had any sympathy for those taking strike action, she replied: “No, I couldn’t care less.”

The RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, has rejected government claims that the strike is political and urged Chris Grayling to end a “misinformation” campaign about the action.

In a statement he said:

This morning Chris Grayling claimed again that the action on Southern is political – it isn’t, it’s about safe train operation for both passengers and staff alike. The transport secretary wants to ask himself why the unions have been able to resolve disputes and reach agreements on Scotrail and elsewhere if our motivation is purely political.

Mr Grayling also claimed again that the RSSB is an independent safety body - it isn’t, it’s funded by the private train companies.

Finally, Mr Grayling claimed that there is a campaign of unofficial action organised by the unions – there isn’t, and the evidence points to Southern sabotaging services to try and turn the blame on to the staff.”

Now is the time for Chris Grayling to make it clear that all of that rhetoric and misinformation is being swept away and that both him and his contractors, GTR, are serious about talks with the unions involved in today’s action.

Cash’s statement added:

RMT drivers on Southern rail are standing shoulder to shoulder with their Aslef colleagues this morning in a fight for safe train operation. This strike action is wholly the responsibility of a government and a company that have sought to bulldoze through changes that are ill-conceived, finance-led and fraught with danger.

RMT remembers only too well the words of top government transport official Peter Wilkinson who told Southern passengers he wanted a punch-up with the unions, that train drivers were muppets and that he would starve our members back to work.

That was the top government rail official making it clear he was hellbent on confrontation and it is that position which has led us to today’s shutdown.