Tube staff strike for station safety

Maintenance workers essential for running almost every London Underground line downed tools as the capital's massive evening rush hour began at 5pm.

They were joined hours later by thousands more train drivers, station staff and crucial signalling workers walking out for 24 hours in a fightback against the cuts.

Tube bosses admitted that the effects of the first capital-wide transport strike since June 2009 would continue to be felt into Wednesday - despite management's desperate attempts to lure unqualified volunteers into acting as strikebreakers.

The Tube shutdown, sparked by Transport for London executives' plans to slash 800 station workers' jobs - and inflamed by Tory Mayor Boris Johnson's threat to ban strike action by the capital's transport workers - is set to be followed by more 24-hour walkouts on October 2 and November 1 and 27.

Tube workers' union RMT leader Bob Crow hit back at the attacks to declare that "there do not appear to be any corners that London Underground are not prepared to cut in order to bulldoze through their lethal cocktail of job and safety cuts."

Mr Crow asserted that management's attempt to recruit strikebreakers was "a disaster waiting to happen.

"Instead of playing fast and loose with safety, it is about time that the mayor took the safety issues at the heart of this dispute seriously, removed the threat of these savage cuts and cleared the way for meaningful talks aimed at protecting safety and safe staffing levels," he insisted.

Station staff union TSSA leader Gerry Doherty accused Mr Johnson of spearheading the Con-Dem coalition's cuts in the capital and pointed out that "the mayor's plans to slash ticket-office opening hours go considerably further than the cuts he claimed to oppose when he was trying to get elected.

"But the view of the members of both unions is that enough is enough," Mr Doherty stressed.

"Cameron's mantra of 'we are all in this together' is nonsense - but we are all in this together as far as the RMT and TSSA are concerned," he emphasised.

London mayoral hopeful Ken Livingstone backed the strikers and highlighted that Mr Johnson had also given a "fantasy promise" to negotiate a no-strike deal with the capital's transport unions and had "spectacularly broken" his election pledge to protect station staff from cuts.

"His policy for employee relations on the Tube is a mess and his calls on the government to bail him out by banning strikes show the weakness of his administration," Mr Livingstone charged.

"The mayor needs to bust a gut through talks to resolve this dispute so that Londoners are not further inconvenienced," he added.