We who work on London Underground know just how finely a line is daily trod between organised chaos and unbridled chaos in the functioning of the transport system.

We know of the potential dangers to which passengers are exposed daily in their use of the escalators and lifts, the platforms and stairwells.

We know also of the dangers that go unseen but which are still very real such as fires, the dangers which but for us and our vigilance might go unnoticed - I'm thinking here of the fraudsters who clone credit cards at POMs, and terrorism.

Everyday we do what we can to lessen dangers, to reduce the threats of danger wherever possible, and we do it tremendously well; we can do it because of our numbers.

The travelling public's safety is in our numbers!

Bob Crow said that Management's plan to send 800 jobs to the guillotine would be to turn LU into a mugger's paradise. Mugging is just for starters.

Statistics that I have obtained from the British Transport Police show quite clearly the dangers facing passengers from other members of the public, which ranged from a surprising number of sexual assaults against children, racial assaults, assault and battery, and grievous bodily harm to name a few. Who do these victims of crime turn to in the first instance? US!

Who will they turn to if we are not there?
Will they be further prey to the violent, desperate and rapacious?

This table shows the number of crimes against the public since 2005:
Calendar Year Number of Victims
2005 10,160
2006 9,521
2007 9,225
2008 7,915
2009 7,809

The question we have to ask here is, “is there a correlation between the number of visible staff on stations and the decrease in crimes against the public?”

I’ve attached two other sources of information, one which details crimes against the public committed on my own group of stations, and the other which presents a breakdown for the whole combine.