© Yusuf Ozkizil
Time Out has one for the road at Saturday Night's Circle Line party
© Yusuf Ozkizil
Tell us what you think about Boris's booze ban and the results
It’s 7.30pm, and Ryan Sampson is worried. ‘On my way here I got stuck on a tube full of punks punching up the carriage. It was like a horrible dystopian vision,’ he complains.
A few weeks ago, Sampson set up a Facebook group inviting his friends to party on the tube the night before Boris Johnson’s alcohol ban came into place on June 1. Membership soared to over 8,000. Now the party is in full swing and the concourse at Liverpool Street is filled with costumed revellers convinced we’re heading into a new era of prohibition. ‘We like to think we’re putting the “civil” into civil disobedience,’ explains coordinator Alice Moss.
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After a half-hour wait, the crowd has swelled to around 300. When it’s announced that eastbound trains are temporarily suspended, everyone crams into the first westbound train. People stand on seats and hammer out a rhythm on the ceiling. A chant of ‘Boris is a wanker’ goes up.
‘This is one of the greatest experiences of my life!’ somebody yells. ‘And I never thought I’d say that about a tube journey!’ At stops, drinkers hop between carriages; beleaguered TfL employees stalk the platform. A few stations later, Circle Line maps are being torn down and worn as scarves, train doors are used to crush beer can and Ryan grabs one ne’er-do-well as he starts tagging the wall. Unfortunately he’s not quick enough to get to the person who scrawls ‘Boris sucks cock’ across the carriage.
Whatever their motivation for being here, the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that Boris’s ban on tube drinking is little more than a crude attempt set out his stall as a public-school Giuliani. ‘In the past, his politics have been libertarian,’ accuses Alice. ‘To immediately go in with illiberal zero-tolerance policies is quite hypocritical.’
But isn’t there a good argument for zero tolerance? Last week, Merseyside Police announced a 38 per cent drop in violent crime and 23 per cent fall in robberies since introducing hardline policing in 2005. As we disembark at Moorgate, I approach one policeman to discuss zero tolerance, but his dog starts barking. ‘I’m not being funny, but don’t come near me or my dog will bite you,’ snarls the handler.
‘This whole ban is encouraging fear,’ says Ryan. ‘That produces more hatred and the kind of incidents that you’re trying to squash in the first place.’
One by one, stations are closed and trains taken out of service. After prolonged hammering on carriage ceilings, black dust is falling from the ventilation grills, leaving participants streaked with filth like extras from ‘Oliver Twist’.
Or it would be if ‘Oliver Twist’ featured numbers like ‘Boris won’t let us drink’, ‘If you all hate Boris clap your hands’ and, erm, ‘Boris is a sailor’. Even those who voted for BJ join in.
‘Look, I just voted for him because I hated Ken, all right? I didn’t know it would come to this,’ says someone in self-justification.
By 11.30pm, it’s all over. The Circle Line has shut down and there have been 17 arrests after a series of assaults. Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT and reliable bête noire of Boris, knows who to blame: ‘Johnson should apologise personally to all those who were assaulted thanks to a half-baked gimmick designed as a publicity stunt and without a moment’s thought for the people told to implement it.’
It’s hard to know whether the evening bolsters BoJo’s argument that public boozing encourages antisocial behaviour, or whether it’s evidence of what happens when you patronise your electorate. One thing’s for sure, though. It was one hell of a night.
Tell us what you think about Boris's booze ban and the results
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3 comments
The ban on drinking alcohol on public transport is foolish. But then Boris is a fool.
It is foolish simply because it is ineffective. The act of drinking on a tube or a bus is, in itself, harmless. What causes antisocial behaviour and accidents is drunk people. Take note of the difference. It is important.
The sad thing about this law is that it is meaningless - It does nothing to improve our city. And a law with no beneficial function represents an (albeit small) infringement on our liberty. Which is a shame.
The law doesn't really affect me, I have rarely, if ever, supped from a carafe of Bordeaux's finest, or indeed from Cornwall's worst whilst travelling with TFL. But I am irritated by it. And by Boris. The question is, what pointless mess will he create next?
"Look, I just voted for him because I hated Ken, all right? I didn’t know it would come to this,’ "
People need to consider more carefully the candidates/parties they elect. The Mayor has the power to make a difference in London. It worries me that Boris was voted in by an electorate that didn't really do its research. I may be wrong. I hope I am. But in the near future we will all be choosing our next government: consider carefully, choose wisely, and think of the community you live in, not just yourself when you vote.
I feel very proud do be referred to as a ne'er-do-well in this article. Thank you Alexi.
As far as I'm aware, I've only spent at most three or four tube journeys in my life clutching an open container of alcohol. But as soon as someone decides to ban it, I'm there like a shot, vodka bottle in hand, asserting my rights and sticking it to the man.
Really? No, not really. I wasn't making a political statement any more than I was condoning the violence and vandalism that took place. I, like most of the other people who crowded the Tube on Saturday night, was simply up for a good time, and the right to say "I was there". If we had *really* wanted to make a stand and refuse to go down quietly, the party would have taken place on Sunday night, not Saturday; after the ban had been put in place, just to see what they would do. Now THAT would have been two fingers up at the establishment. It's all very well yelling "Boris is a wanker" (incidentally, I refrained from that particular chant) but we the fact is that we WEREN'T doing anything illegal or, in all honesty, pushing real social boundaries. And in terms of statistics, most of the people there probably voted for Boris anyway. I know I did.
It's not Boris's "fault" that people chose to get trashed and vandalise the Tube; in any situation involving alcohol, a confined space, and large numbers of people (many of whom have limited intelligence and no empathy for the poor folk who had to clear up the next morning), this is inevitable. I was pretty wasted myself but I never developed violent tendancies or a desire to rip up the seats on my carriage. It wasn't alcohol - it wasn't "yoof culture" - it wasn't Boris. The responsibility for those actions lies solely with the idiots who chose to do it, and nobody else; what's Boris supposed to do, hold the hand of every prat with a can of lager in his hand?
In the end, bearing in mind the vast amount of people who were pissed on the Tube that night, the number of arrests - 17 - was astonishingly low, and the injury count equally so. Ok, so a couple of stations were closed, but is that the end of the world? Hardly. The most amazing thing about this event is the fact that the word spread *entirely* by Facebook, showing once and for all the astonishing power of the online word. If something can be dreamt up on a whim by one person with a fun idea and a penchant for cocktails, which makes the front page of national newspapers and shuts down local transport networks, what else can we do? The potential is massive! So, we can't drink on the Tube any more. Big deal! Now that we know how easy it is to collect such vast numbers of enthusiastic and eager partygoers, the world, as they say, is our oyster . . .