Free-for-All

Ever since the middle of the war, well behaved Londoners have patiently queued at recognized bus stops to await their chance, in order and decorum. To its friends, queueing up is a symbol of British fair play; to its enemies, a sign of genteel regimentation typical of the new British welfare state. Either way, only the vulgarest opportunists ever sought to bypass the queue by climbing aboard the open rear platform of a halted bus between stops. Last week, however, once respectable middle-aged businessmen and elderly ladies were kiting after stopped buses like hounds on the scent.

The race began when a conductor on one of London's big two-deckers tried to throw off a passenger who boarded his bus when it stopped at a red light. The ensuing battle landed them both in court, where, after due consideration, Magistrate Paul Bennett decided "that a citizen has the right to board a bus whenever it is stationary." The magistrate's decision knocked EDC out of the headlines and rattled teacups all over London. The outraged London Transport Executive ordered conductors to defy the court and to go right on discouraging between-stop boarding in the interest of safety, but to do so with delicacy, tact and common sense. The bus drivers' union demanded a "fight to get this bus jumping made a punishable offense," which would take an Act of Parliament.

London's Economist, called the right to bus jump "one of the symbols that distinguishes Britain from Prussia." But letter writers complained to their favorite papers that bus jumping "by athletic, predatory men" was un-English. Bus drivers themselves met the crisis with the required tact. At Trafalgar Square traffic lights, when one Londoner leaped aboard, the conductor grinned and addressed the passengers, "Shall I chuck him off or give him a medal?" As lights halted another bus at Lower Regent Street, the conductor bellowed cheerfully, "Stand by to repel boarders."

As the futile battle raged on, the eventual solution appeared likely to be the characteristically English one proposed by the London News Chronicle: "The public should retain its right to board buses where it pleases, but the public should not be foolish enough to exercise its right."

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