MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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‘I cried like a baby the first week I was here’
PETER MASON is captivated by snapshots that build up a strong feel of what it was like to live and work in those now far-off times, when strong unionisation and an enlightened attitude from LT nurtured camaraderie
MEMORY LANE: (L to R) Bus conductor Agatha Claudette Hart, 1962; Food Production Croydon, 1971
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Legacies: London Transport’s Caribbean Workforce
London Transport Museum, Covent Garden
WHEN London Transport had a recruitment problem in the late 1950s and early ’60s, it turned to the Caribbean to find bus conductors, Tube station staff, maintenance workers and canteen assistants.
The initial target was Barbados, though recruiting sergeants were later sent to Jamaica and Trinidad, as well as some of the smaller islands such as Grenada and Dominica. Around 6,000 people were directly signed up from the Caribbean between 1956 and 1970, and many more came over on their own account, taking up work on the Tubes and buses once they arrived.
Now a new exhibition at the London Transport Museum is celebrating the contribution those willing hands made to London life – while also looking at the bittersweet impact of emigration on their own existence.
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