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Let's hear it for traffic wardens

Spectator, The, Jul 5, 2003

They are among the most hated people in urban Britain and - because many of them are from west Africa - often the victims of racial abuse. But, says Andrew Gimson, without their bravery and dedication our civilisation might collapse

Get a proper job, get a life, sod off back to Africa, black monkey, African prick, storm trooper, German scum. These are among the many insults thrown at parking wardens as they go about their daily work. The jibes about Africa reflect the curious fact that in London about 60 per cent of traffic wardens arc from west Africa, while the jibes about Germany reflect the German ownership of Apcoa, one of the main companies in the parking business. The hatred and contempt which enforcers of parking regulations inspire among motorists would be hard to exaggerate, and they have also received a very bad press, with a number of my more intrepid colleagues going undercover as trainee wardens and filing horrific tales of unscrupulous wardens picking on innocent motorists.

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So it is with a certain sense of professional inadequacy that I find myself obliged to report that traffic wardens are human beings. The Nigerian and Ghanaian wardens whom I interviewed are delightful people, staunch and good-humoured enough to withstand the torrent of physical threats and racial and other abuse to which they are subjected. They tend to be educated far above the level one would expect in a traffic warden. Many of them are university graduates who find that the qualifications and professional experience they have acquired in west Africa are considered worthless by employers in London. They need to start earning money as quickly as possible, so in many cases they take a first full-time job as a traffic warden, in which role if one is reasonably diligent and reliable one can earn L16,000 to L18,000 a year.

In this article the words 'traffic warden' are used to signify people more accurately known as 'parking attendants', the feeble term used to describe the on-street employees of the private parking firms which started tendering for business from local councils in 1991. In that year parking offences were decriminalised under the Road Traffic Act, which meant that enforcement no longer had to be exclusively in the hands of the police, and of traffic wardens employed by the police.

In Peckham in the south London borough of Southwark I met four traffic wardens from west Africa employed by Apcoa, which has ten contracts with London councils. One of the wardens, a 32-year-old Nigerian who is married to a British-born wife, came to London in 1998 after completing a masters degree in public administration and applied to join the Metropolitan Police, but found that while they wanted to know what he had been doing for the last 15 years, they were unwilling to check his Nigerian references. His lack of any record of full-time employment in Britain meant he could not join the Met, so he became a traffic warden instead. He has risen to the rank of supervisor, which means he supervises eight other wardens while also issuing tickets him-self, and he looks a happy man. He said two great advantages of the work were prompt payment of wages - 'by Friday the money's in the account' - and direct access to his boss.

The Nigerian went on: 'What I've noticed I'm sorry to say this - is that the majority of motorists in this country are ignorant about the existing parking laws. Most of the time they don't know why they've got a ticket. Some of them don't even know the difference between the pavement and the kerb.'

It struck me that the Nigerian might be underestimating the capacity of British motorists to pretend to be more ignorant than they really are. But he takes their protestations at face value and believes his task is to 'educate' them. He reckons 'the organisations that run parking arc not doing enough to educate the public' and became enthusiastic at the idea that this article might help in that respect, though I suggested that a film about life as a traffic warden made by some enterprising television journalist might be of more value. I asked him if he had been physically threatened, to which he replied: 'Yes, some of them, they threaten you, then you see them the next day, you give them a ticket. After a time they conform.'

On being asked if he suffered racial abuse, he said: 'It's like my daily bread. Every day. Like this,' and to the laughter of his colleagues he moved his hand up and down in an obscene gesture. 'It makes no meaning to us,' he said. 'In Nigeria if you do this to someone they think you're mad.'

The notion began to dawn on me that these west Africans are, in effect, on a civilising mission to our shores. The police who rejected my Nigerian friend have also rejected the practice of walking the beat. During the day, you are far more likely, in London at least, to see a traffic warden patrolling the streets on foot than a police officer. These wardens place their courage, education and sense of duty and discipline at our disposal. One could imagine them making excellent soldiers or policemen. Armed only with radios, with which they can summon help if needed, they go forth to bring a degree of order to the urban jungle, helping to keep open the routes which ambulances and fire engines and also our motorised police will need to use in an emergency. The wardens may bring a tiresome pedantry to the task of enforcing the parking rules, but by doing so it can be said in their defence that they are adopting the fashionable approach known as 'zero tolerance'. As so often in London, Africans have taken on essential work which few of the indigenous whites are any longer prepared to contemplate doing.

Let's hear it for traffic wardens

Spectator, The, Jul 5, 2003

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