Working on the frontline
Richard Adams
Parking attendants are among the most maligned figures in the British workforce - ranking with estate agents and journalists in the depths of public esteem. But on Friday morning they towed away a Mercedes in central London that carried a deadly load. They were doing their jobs - but they may also have saved lives as a result.
It was car park workers - another lowly-regarded profession - who noticed the strange smell coming from the car. And it was Westminster council employees who appear to have joined the dots between the towed car and the one discovered in Haymarket earlier that morning.
The other car, parked by a nightclub near Piccadilly Circus, was first clocked as suspicious by ambulance crew members, noticing smoke inside the car and alerting the police. And the first people on the scene at Glasgow airport - according to eyewitnesses - when an SUV was rammed into the terminal were airport staff and taxi drivers, who bravely tackled two men from the vehicle, putting out the fire on one and helping the police subdue the other.
The three events - which appear to be linked as terrorist attacks - show once again the dangers of the times we live in. Good luck and poor execution seems to have averted a death toll in Glasgow and London. But they also show that public safety relies not just on the police and security forces but also on some unsung heroes: the airport staff member who was outside on a cigarette break who went to help, the car park attendant who warned co-workers about a suspicious car, the ambulance crew already busy treating an injured clubber.
What these incidents reveal is that for all the talk about the fracturing of British society into individuals concerned only for themselves, in moments of crisis people are still prepared to put aside their own safety. The Glasgow taxi driver could have been confronting an al-Qaida suicide bomber, yet he rushed forward, along with other members of the public, to assist in the fire and confusion. Council workers are by reputation not the speediest minds but Westminster seems to staff its car pounds with quick thinkers. The traffic warden was on duty at 2.30am, and the tow truck was operating at 3.30am. The ambulance crew was in action after 1am treating a man out having a good time on a Thursday night.
Without knowing the details of the individuals involved, we do know that parking attendants and airport staff are among some of the worst paid jobs in Britain. NHS ambulance crew earn as little as ￡18,000 in central London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. Yet all these workers are dealing with domestic terrorism, as the last two days have proved, alongside the police. This is not to disparage the work of the police - with one brave officer said to have removed the potential trigger on the Haymarket car. But while they at least get training, equipment and support - and higher pay in most cases - to do so, the others do not.
US commentators are often highly critical of the British approach to tackling threats of domestic terrorism, which they see as too laid-back. The latest events have caused some to say Britain needs to hire and train 2,000 to 5,000 extra agents for its security services, given the number of suspects that MI5 needs to monitor.
Perhaps that money would be better spent training and aiding those workers - the unheralded parking attendants and taxi drivers - who are operating in the public areas likely to be targeted by terrorists. Because the evidence is that they are also on the frontline.
