The Battle of Belgrave Square

The ambush was as sudden as it was effective. Driver Jim Buntin had just dropped his third fare of the morning at Knightsbridge. when he received radio orders to go to Belgrave Square. As he swung his trim, tiny black-and-white Fiat Multipla into the square with its swank, yellow-white Regency houses, the enemy struck. "Baker four, I'm in trouble!" Buntin shouted over his intercom as a flotilla of tall, black, box-shaped London taxis bore down on him, their "For Hire" flags raised high, their exhaust pipes billowing clouds of diesel smoke, their cabbies shaking irate fists and shouting unprintable war cries.

"They parked all around me, boxing me in," Buntin recalled later in the awed tones of a lone survivor of Custer's last stand. "There must have been a hundred or more in the square and side streets. Traffic came to a halt. Things got a bit ugly. Then the police arrived and sorted things out."

Hat Tall. Buntin's minicab, and others like it, are pitted against 6,600 time-tested dinosaurs of the London taxi world. What arouses the ire of the traditional cabbies is that minicabs are operating without taxi licenses and thus can ignore the stringent regulations that made a London cab 1) expensive to build and 2) one of the world's ugliest but most comfortable vehicles. Some of the regulations, as laid down in the ancient Metropolitan Carriage Act of 1869: each cab must be 14 ft. 11 7/16 in. long, big enough to seat five persons comfortably, high enough so a passenger can get in and out without knocking off a top hat, and have the ability to turn within a radius of 25 ft. Even worse: to qualify as a taxi driver, a candidate must pass a "knowledge" test proving he knows the location of every back street or mews in the sprawling city of London.

The minicab owners get around this situation by claiming that the red tape applies only to cabs that "ply for hire" on the streets. They insist they answer only calls that are phoned to the main office and then radioed to a parked or cruising minicab that makes the pickup. One shrewd owner, an Irish-Indian go-getter named Michael Gotla, will allow his mini cabs to be flagged down by passengers; the driver will then hand his car phone to the customer and ask him to place his order with the dispatcher at headquarters, who will solemnly repeat it to the driver. Since the average minicab costs only half the price of a regulation-bound old-style taxi, their fares run about 14% cheaper.

Matilda's Trunk. The Battle of Belgrave Square proved a victory of sorts for the minicabs' cause. The spectacle of big taxis ganging up on a tiny minicab aroused Londoners' traditional sympathy for the underdog, as well as delight at the prospect of cheaper fares. Almost every one had a story about a rude old-style cabby who took him to his destination the long way round, or short-changed him, or passively watched as dear old Aunt Matilda wrestled with her steamer trunk. "That's the public for you," lamented a veteran cabby. "If all ten thousand of us went to hell, they wouldn't care. But I ask you: if there's a more efficient or courteous taxi service in the world, you name it. It takes New Yorkers to appreciate us."*

Last week the desperate regular cabmen swooped down on another minicab, again in Belgrave Square. But Owner Tom Sylvester is buying 75 more Fiats to add to the 25 he already has. In suburban Wimbledon, a fleet of minicabs is being expanded to 50. And canny Michael Gotla has placed an order for 800 Renault Dauphines that will be cruising the streets of London before the end of the year.

* They do.

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