Bus violence flares in North and South
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• What appears to be an upsurge in the number of violent attacks against busmen is causing concern this week within the passenger transport industry. In the North and North West some crews have refused to operate certain services following recent attacks against them or their colleagues. In London the same tactics seem to have successfully stemmed the violence, on one route at least.
In Hull on Monday evening bus drivers employed by East Yorkshire Motor Services Ltd stopped work after a driver was attacked by a youth on a local Hull to Hessle service. The driver, Mr W. E. Cole, said that he was attacked after an argument with the youth over his fare. Some out-of-town services were later resumed, although city services were abandoned for the rest of the day.
Only a week before this incident, the same drivers and conductors held a meeting aimed at formulating plans to cope with violence on buses (CM last week). It resulted in a call to East Yorkshire to install a direct "hot line" between Hull coach station and the central police station, to fix audible alarms to buses and to prosecute anyone who assaulted bus crews.
On two Liverpool to Huyton routes, Merseyside PTE crews recently refused to take buses between the city boundaries following several cases of violence. After a meeting between PTE officials and police the services were eventually resumed. A spokesman for the PTE said that in this particular instance it was not the result of any increase in violence because the two routes had always had a bad reputation.
Tyneside PTE is equipping buses in the Sunderland and South Shields areas with two-way radios. This is an attempt to curb attacks on bus crews and follows a curfew operated by busmen after a conductor was attacked. Services were withdrawn after 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays for two weeks but are now back to normal. The attacker has since been jailed for six months.
In London, late-night services along Kilburn High Road were halted for three weeks following a series of attacks. In the past two weeks, since the services went back into operation, there have been no incidents reported. A London Transport spokesman told CM this week that, despite misleading press reports, levels of violence of the capital's bus fleet had not risen markedly. In 1972 there were 723 assaults on crews. In the first six months of this year, there had been 397. LT's police force estimates that violence is increasing at no more than the general crime rate.