If 30 People Can Stop an InterCity Train, then Barnet Residents can Stop the Brent Cross Regeneration Scheme (From Times Series)

If 30 People Can Stop an InterCity Train, then Barnet Residents can Stop the Brent Cross Regeneration Scheme

9:13am Friday 19th March 2010

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By Gordon Kerr  »

One freezing morning in December 2002 I and about thirty other frustrated commuters were boiling up inside. We had been standing on an icy platform at Hadley Wood train station waiting for about 40 minutes for a train to hove into view and trundle us down towards Finsbury Park and Moorgate.

Nothing was happening. Train after train was cancelled. Almost as annoying as the interminable delay, the cold, and the knowledge that we all could have enjoyed leisurely breakfasts with our families had we known, was the sight of inter-city trains whizzing past us every 20 minutes or so. These silver beasts were luxurious modes of transport. Smooth, effortless, no overcrowding and so fast. Oh, how envious were we of their incumbents!

By December 2002 I knew rather more about train sets than it is fashionable to admit. Little over a year previously, in October 2001, I had formed the Hadley Wood Commuters Action Group. My devilishly cunning plan was to use my exalted standing as a representative of 30 season ticket holders to demand concessions from the venerable West Anglian Great Northern train company. The plan appeared actually to be working. I had visited WAGN at their resplendent Kings Cross HQ a couple of times and we had agreed on more frequent and less crowded trains for my fellow travellers.

The experience had been most encouraging and was to prove my first of community campaigning. I was delighted when WAGN acceded to my request to display a poster on the important southbound platform advertising our little club. All they asked in return was that I drop the word “Action” from our name, a trade off to which I readily agreed. (I think WAGN felt that “Action” conveyed a little too much sense of Citizen Smith of Tooting Bec).

More trains and more carriages were in due course provided and an email warning system about service interruptions was set up. My fellow commuters seemed happy, and the existence of the club actually prompted the odd conversation between people traditionally too staid to contemplate interrupting each other’s quiet contemplations.

And so, on this freezing trainless morning in December 2002 I felt I had to do something. I climbed the bridge stairs and returned to the ticket office, manned as ever only by Doris (name changed to protect her anonymity).

I demanded that she stop the next inter-city train. If she did not I could not be responsible for what would happen. I hinted that there might be a riot. Doris made some calls. To my astonishment the ruse worked. 5 minutes later a magnificent sleek beast from Leeds glided into Hadley Wood....and stopped. To bemused looks from the ‘high end’ travellers in first class we piled in. I held the doors open for one or two stragglers who felt, out of politeness, that maybe they should not board.

In a reversal of the tradition whereby a ship’s captain is last to leave his sinking ship, I made sure the platform was empty before being the last to board the InterCity train. 10 minutes later we arrived at King’s Cross and decanted onto the tube, bus or taxi network.

There was fallout. WAGN tracked me down later that day in the office by phone and email. They were unhappy. Other timetables had been disrupted, reports would have to be written, etc. etc. I said sorry but I didn’t really care. 30 people, one representative, the plan had worked. My only regret was that Doris received a ticking off. I apologised to her the next day and bought her a present.

Back to Claremont Road and the Council’s plan to render the wider Brent Cross area uninhabitable. This week’s achievement of the outstandingly well co-ordinated Barnet Residents Associations in halting the horrendous Brent Cross Regeneration Scheme is magnificent. There is no significant shortage of housing in Barnet (See previous article “Shortage of Ferraris”). There is no need for an enormous incinerator in the middle of one of the most densely populated parts of London.

My clarion call to my fellow residents is this. Keep pushing forwards. In every campaign with which I am proud to be associated there are significant turning points. This week we witnessed one such. If 30 people can stop an InterCity train then this insubstantial juggernaut can be laid to rest. Do not forget, at the moment the Scheme is only a pile of papers and a lot of hot air.