LESSON FROM HISTORY

By Phil Phillips.

Reprinted by kind permission of Taxi Globe,

The question is; are those in a position to do something about uniting our trade prepared to learn from the past? To once again make a point let me go back over old ground. It is almost forty years since Michael Gotla invented the word minicab, up until then they had just been pirates. When I first started driving you could go on a Saturday night to somewhere like Dagenham Heathway, and if you used the type of vehicle picking up at the station as a guide, it was difficult to determine whether you might of wandered out of the Metropolitan Police District. Even before that there were court cases, the ODA (which was absorbed into the LTDA) had taken Petchey’s car hire of East Ham to court. Also there was an ex copper, ex knowledge examiner called McKay who worked from Hammersmith rank, and took a firm in Great Windmill Street successfully to court. Please note the fact that these cases were either taken by a small organisation, or an individual driver.

Gotla changed the boot to the other foot, because he set out to challenge the law, instead of waiting for the law to challenge him. He even tried picking up on the streets, and creating mobile booking offices, yet the trade organisations were prepared to sit back and wait for the authorities to enforce the law. The authorities were either working to a hidden agenda, or because there was no concerted protest from the trade, so we were thought to have accepted what was occurring.

Gotla launched a huge advertising campaign full of inaccuracies about the trade, and because he spent a lot of money with the national press they of course were prepared to encourage him to spend more, by perpetuating the lies. After all the only people that got annoyed were cab drivers, and they don’t count. The Union had always loathed spending money, yet possibly seeing possibilities of recruitment adopted a policy of wait and see, ( The exact words of Jim Francis cab section Secretary),we are still waiting.

This caused the first splinter group, which was the London Cabtrade Crisis Committee. Being that I was minute secretary of this organisation I feel that I am in a position to say that we did not want to challenge any existing organisation, we just wanted to assist them into joining the fight. You could say that we were prepared to take the flack as the militant arm of the T&G. This could never be because many of the established union officers, were either the Mayor or Councillors in their local boroughs, and saw this as a threat to their positions.

The downfall of Crisis Committee was that they were forced to take cases to court, which was something that richer organisations refused to do, they were successful in the oft-quoted case of Rose V Welbeck Motors, also their defence of cabdrivers who had been sent to prison. Being forced to do all the work, they of course went broke.

They were followed by the 12,000 group, so called because that was the number of licences in circulation at that time. They also started as a ginger group within T&G, through frustration they called a meeting at the Royal Festival Hall, taking chance that they would be able to pay for it. They had no worries there was a huge attendance, and a bucket collection more then paid for the venue. There was a feeling from the hall that what the trade needed was a new strong new union consisting only of cab drivers, which lead to the immediate formation of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA).

Not as many drivers as one would hope were prepared to pay the subs of one shilling a day (5p), although they would follow the leadership anywhere, so the association had to find other forms of income, hence an insurance company, a garage, Taxi Newspaper, and a Credit Union. Among other good ideas a radio circuit, came about mainly through the demands of suburban drivers who felt that they were not getting a fair deal from the existing circuits. It was an LTDA circuit, so it was expected that all subscribers would be members of the parent organisation. This was a time of great expansion in the radio world, the various committeemen seeing them selves as executives, rather then elected officers, and suddenly we had men with suits.

It all started to go wrong for the LTDA when the radio circuit started to expand, firstly the were greedy for space, and as there was very little money they took up more and more of the associations existing floor space. Then they needed money to modernise, the easiest way to raise it was by cutting back on some benefits to members, and selling off the subsidiary businesses one at a time. It solved the radio circuits problems for a while, but it created new ones for the association.

Other radio circuits were jealous, so they either stopped Association members from holding office, or muddied the waters by starting their own trade bodies such as SPLT. Then there was a group formed to fight on behalf of Metro Cab owners, they were very good in what they set out to do, so they were joined by other drivers and grew into the LCDC. This must have pleased the authorities because they found it a lot easier to control a divided trade. Soon we found JARTA coming to prominence to represent radio drivers, don’t forget that most of their members were already represented by other bodies. At this point we must consider the proprietors association LMCPA a small group who wanted more say, so they floated the LTB they sought to combine all groups together, they brought in a number of other groups such as the manufacturers, but excluded others. A very good way to cause resentment, then there was the WXYZ, OK I made the last one up.

We now come to recent times, when we see the largest driver group (LTDA) leaving the LTB, which in turn led a lot of men on the street resenting that the body purporting to represent them in fact only now speaks for what they see as vested interests. I have said many times that we all need to belong to a trade organisation, It would be a lot easier if most people joined the largest cab based organisation, and gave them real fighting power. It would help if we returned to proper democracy, with branch meetings properly publicised so that those who want it can be properly informed, and given their say. It is most important now that we are going to have to fight the Mayors office, and the officials with airy-fairy ideas, that the cab trade stick together and are not to be messed with lightly