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Tube Strikes

Protesting against meat...

London is an amazing place. At least to young Singaporeans who've never known of strikes or street protests. Kids in Singapore studying social studies might actually think of them as the same or at least share the same elements but that's not true.

At the point of writing, the London Tube, which refers to the underground transport service, is experiencing a strike and would suffer from service disruptions in many locations. The beginning of their advice for passengers reads:

The RMT and TSSA unions have called a strike on the Tube starting on the evening of Sunday 3 October. If the strike goes ahead, disruption is likely throughout Monday with services returning to normal on Tuesday 5 October.

It's amazing how robust their system is, capable of planning for such a disruption and working so hard to ensure that the public transport service don't quite fall into disrepute (at least in short run). The website prescribes alternative means of transportation and even expectations of the performance for each service. As a smart student should infer, a strike is then a mere stoppage of work, usually as a means to get a pay rise across the labour. In this case, the strike is organized by the unions.

A street protests/demonstration, on another hand, is a mass of people walking on the streets to show support for a certain idea or a stand in a certain issue. Yesterday, during a walk from Piccadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square, I experienced first-hand a protest march where the people were campaigning for people to be vegetarians. To me, it was pretty surprising that people actually do this. They were handing out flyers, holding banners and protest boards, making loads of noise from their drums and chanting 'Meat is Murder, Stop the Slaughter'. As a means of raising awareness about the movement, I guess they've achieved it. The police had to guide the mass of people and traffic is held up by them as they walked through the cordoned roads slowly, chanting. The peaceful march went on as I returned to my hall.

Londoners seem to have become quite acquainted with these things. The bicycle shop I passed by had a poster that says 'Tube Strike Promotion', featuring a foldable bike at something like 50% discount. At the same time, the drivers drove on the roads, waiting for the mass to pass without horning (which would probably be the case of any minor inconveniences to the driver in Singapore).