Very little surprises me about Sadiq Khan’s London anymore. It’s now a city in which low-level lawlessness is implicitly tolerated via the complete absence of enforcement. Where the fetid smell of cannabis pervades the streets, where phone-snatching is endemic and where shop-lifting goes unpunished. And now, people are smoking crack cocaine on the Victoria Line.
Yes, really. In a video posted on Reddit, a tube passenger appears to be smoking the Class A drug in front of commuters. The Reddit poster said, ‘every few moments he’d spit yellow liquid onto the floor below him whilst constantly clicking away at his lighter trying to get his crack to smoke, which was largely burnt up mass but still pungent enough to recognise it was crack.’ When station staff were alerted, they allegedly said he is a known addict in the area and there are complaints about him every other day, but there is nothing they can do.
‘There’s nothing we can do’ may as well be Transport for London’s strapline at this point. Presumably there’s ‘nothing we can do’ about the increasingly blatant fare-dodgers who cost the taxpayer an estimated £130 million a year in lost revenue? Is there really ‘nothing we can do’ about the rampant graffiti that covers both the inside and outside of many carriages? And I’m guessing ‘there’s nothing we can do’ about the huge number of violent crimes now committed on the underground, either?
When asked about the Victoria Line crack-head, the London Mayor could only muster the mildest of condemnations: ‘you shouldn’t be breaking the law, whether it’s on the underground or on the surface’. This from a man who has overseen a 30 per cent increase in violent crime since his election in 2016. Instead, Khan pointed to the ‘500 enforcement officers employed by TfL who wear body-worn cameras for their safety, but also to capture evidence’ and promised that ‘when good citizens, Good Samaritans report things, actions are taken’. And yet this incident was both recorded and reported, but it still appears no action was taken.
Many Londoners, including myself, still have a soft spot for the tube. From the Johnston Sans typeface to the ‘mind the gap’ tannoy announcements, the underground has become part of the city’s iconography and remains the fastest and most convenient way to navigate the capital. But whereas once it compared favourably to the brooding menace of the New York subway, now it shares many of the same faults. Riding late at night or first thing in the morning can be a distinctly disconcerting experience, with passengers often drunk, drugged up or aggressive. The lack of many, or any, staff on most platforms adds to the sense that you’re on your own if things kick off.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Anyone who has ridden the metro in Hong Kong, or Berlin, or Singapore, will have had a glimpse into how a modern underground system can be run. But more than air-conditioned carriages or punctual trains, the most basic provision the tube should offer is public safety. Instead, commuters are increasingly at risk. In 2023, the number of crimes reported on the tube hit a record high of 22,562, up a massive 52 per cent from the year before.
In January 2024, a man was filmed whipping a woman in the face with a belt at Green Park station. A month later, a homeless man pushed an innocent stranger onto the tracks at Oxford Circus just seconds before the train pulled in. And in November, a machete attack at Edgware Road saw ambulance crews called to save a man who’d been stabbed multiple times. These may be among the most extreme examples, but it is now virtually impossible to be a regular commuter on the London underground without witnessing all manner of illegality.
So no, I’m not surprised that crack cocaine is being openly smoked on the Victoria Line. I bet it’s happened on every other line, too, by now. If there is one consolation for Sadiq Khan, it is that his approach to crime has achieved a dystopian form of consistency. His London is now the same both above and below street-level: unsafe.
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