A whole new meaning to bus shelter

Had you asked me yesterday what a bus shelter is, I would have said: “A bus stop that has a roof, three walls and one open side”.

In doing so, I would have tried to suppress the disdainful condescension Londoners tend to feel about ignorant out-of-towners. Fancy not knowing what a bus shelter is! I’d be amazed if that country bumpkin has ever even seen a double-decker, I would have thought with the snobbery characteristic of a capital city dweller.

Thus I recall once overhearing an American ask a bus driver whether he was going to Holborn, which word came across as Hall-born. “It’s Hoebn, mate,” said the driver, and the contempt in his London voice had more layers than one would expect to find in a millefeuille at a French patisserie.

Anyway, in my hypothetical case, it’s I who would have been ignorant. For I would have missed a whole new meaning Mayor Sadiq Khan has added to the concept in question. In his capable hands, a bus shelter now means offering protection not only for people waiting for a bus, but also for those riding in it.

The good mayor has introduced a direct bus route in North London, running from Stamford Hill to Golders Green. That development sounds unremarkable in itself. However, what makes it astonishing isn’t that it was introduced but why.

Both neighbourhoods are home to large communities of Orthodox Jews, who often shuttle from one place to the other. But until the new route came on stream, they had had to change buses at Finsbury Park, an area predominantly inhabited by gentiles, many of them of the Muslim persuasion.

Jews waiting for the next bus to arrive were routinely subjected to abuse, both verbal and physical. Hence the new route was opened not so much for their convenience as for their safety.

“For 16 years now the Jewish communities in Stamford Hill and Golders Green have been lobbying for a direct link between those two communities, said Mr Khan. “They were frightened because of a massive increase of antisemitism since October 7 last year.”

That is, since a murderous Hamas attack on Israel, which, according to some London denizens, wasn’t murderous enough.

‘Massive’ is the right word for the rise in anti-Semitism. The Met Police recorded 2,065 anti-Semitic crimes between October and July, a 278.9 per cent increase on the same period in the previous year. Hundreds of anti-Semitic attacks occurred even in Westminster, the central area not known for a large Hebraic presence.

“I don’t want any Londoner to be scared to leave their home because they’re worried about public transport,” added the mayor. “I think we’ve got to recognise the fear that Londoners feel who are Jewish, we’ve got to recognise the tremors of hate that are felt by Jewish people across the country.”

Reports say the Jewish community is “delighted” with the new route, but I would have been happier with another word: enraged. The whole thing is so sinister as to make me wonder in what place and period I live.

If London, circa 2024, even remotely begins to resemble Berlin, circa 1934, the problem has degenerated beyond a point where a new bus route could provide a solution. A local or national government that can’t keep any group safe is in default of its raison d’être, and palliatives just won’t do.

Far be it from me to advocate rough homespun justice, but it’s better than no justice at all. Perhaps London Jews should take their cue from the events in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Between 1903 and 1905 a wave of pogroms swept over Kishinev, one of the centres of the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Dozens of people were killed, hundreds were wounded, hundreds of women were raped, thousands of homes were robbed and trashed.

The government did little to stop the violence and in fact tacitly encouraged it. Therefore the Jews of Odessa, another centre of the Pale, realised their turn would come next. Knowing they couldn’t rely on the government for protection, Odessa Jews decided to protect themselves.

They created self-defence units and, when the marauding mob barged into their neighbourhood, the thugs were greeted with pistol shots. Having left a few bodies behind, the rioters retreated, tail between their legs.

Now, unlike the Russian Empire, Britain is ruled by law. Hence there’s no place here for responding to violence with extralegal violence – provided the law does its job. Yet I’d maintain that responding to such sinister attacks by opening a new bus route isn’t a case of the law doing its job.

It’s the Met reneging on its remit of protecting Londoners from villains, and Mayor Khan being too cowardly (or reluctant) to solve the problem, not just mitigate it. And you don’t solve the problem of mob violence by playing with buses.

You do so by putting more cops on the streets of North London, where most Jews live, empowering the police to do what it takes to stamp out anti-Semitic attacks – and the courts to pass stiff sentences.

After all, England, unlike Russia, has no history of pogroms, not recent history at any rate. The last – or shall we say the latest – such riot happened in York, in 1190. It won’t stay the last one for long, however, if the government acquiesces in anti-Semitic attacks by refusing to deal with them as severely as they demand.

If Jews are forced to do in London what they did in Odessa in 1905, London won’t be London, England won’t be England, and – on the plus side – Sadiq Khan won’t be the mayor. Not much of a silver lining, but still.