Has Mayor Johnson betrayed taxi drivers?

David Davies explains why cabbies may not be backing Boris.

The Mayor was forced to admit in an interview last week that when he said to the Assembly that the phone hacking scandal was ‘codswallop’  he was completely wrong. Investigations have subsequently shown that there has been significant corruption, fraud and improper practice involving the media, The Metropolitan Police and Public Officials and it was not correct for the Mayor to have dismissed this in the way that he did.

The Mayor has now said that corruption should be tackled vigorously, yet he has refused to make a similar u-turn over practices at TfL (perhaps because he is chairman of TfL).

In 2008 Boris Johnson lobbied for the support of London Taxi drivers promising to ‘make their life easier’. In his 2008 campaign manifesto ‘Getting Londoners moving he said ‘We believe that the cab trade has not got the support it deserves’; ‘we will enact right away to ease the burden on the cab trade’;

Taxi Globe reported that “As the New Year began in 2008, Boris Johnson began his campaign to become Mayor of London. At the Royal Oak he told cab drivers: “Taxi drivers give London a great service – they are an institution. They work hard to earn the right to drive on the streets of the Capital and I do not believe in trying to wreck their trade in the way that Mayor Livingstone has been doing over the last eight years.”

In response to a question the Mayor said “I think that was the right decision on the twice yearly inspection. We are not going back on that. There are a variety of other measures that we are looking at to make taxis cleaner and greener and to improve the quality of London’s air, but without punishing, unfairly, taxi drivers who have invested in machines in good faith in the belief and knowledge that these are the things that are their only source of income.”

In an interview with Cabbies in 2008 he said ‘They’ve had a pretty rough deal over the last few years and there are some very simple things we can do to make life easier for the cabs and to get traffic moving again’

So his promises in 2008 of ‘making life easier for the cabs’ and removing burdens and his acknowledgement that Taxi Drivers give London a great service and had earned the right to drive on London’s streets led to the Back Boris campaign in 2008 which helped him to win the election.

Since his election he has moved the regulation of London Taxis from the Public Carriage Office to Transport for London who have done the complete opposite of making life easier for taxis. They have failed to enforce Private Hire regulation, they have taken away the right to drive on London Streets during the Olympics, they have introduced an Age Limit which puts drivers out of work and does nothing to reduce emissions and have now removed hundreds of Taxi Ranks across London.

He has not kept his promises to support London’s taxis. 

The regular Cabbies Against Boris protest  is to remind Boris of his promises and demand that he makes immediate changes and stops the persecution of the Taxi trade by TfL.

TfL have implemented a strategy of ‘Divide and Conquer’ by deliberately causing differences between trade organisations.