Service with a Smile

[This article appears in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette, with thanks to the editor, Tim Petchey]

This murky photo of Jubilee Class No. 45661 Vernon was taken on Birkenhead sheds on 2/2/64, around the time that we met Billy J Kramer.

“All right, lads?” Billy J. Kramer volunteered with a smile, as he approached the stage door at the New Brighton Tower Ballroom, sometime in 1964. We felt so chuffed with that. We were now virtually mates with a pop star, having already gained his autograph in the same spot on an earlier occasion and we liked to think he had remembered us from last time.

Billy J. was managed by Brian Epstein, of Beatles fame. He had burst onto the scene during the previous year with the Lennon and McCartney number, “Do you want to know a secret?” I think we probably met him around the time of his subsequent hit record “Little Children.” A grown-up singing about little children might earn you a visit from Operation Yew Tree today and, at the very least, closer scrutiny of the lyrics.

For the intervening fifty years, I believed the story that we had heard at the time, which was that Billy J. had formerly been a porter at Liverpool Central High Level station. However, as he himself confirmed in an interview broadcast on BBC1 TV’s Breakfast programme in 2013, he left school to join a railway engineering apprenticeship scheme and was actually a fitter at the sheds, “I used to take steam engines to bits and put them back together again.”

Porter or fitter, it is hardly surprising that a young man leaving school in the 1960’s could still find a job with one of the big employers. Steel making, coal mining, ship building, dock working and textile manufacturing all accounted for vast numbers of traditional, male-dominated, manual occupations then and the railways were no exception.

The locomotive works that we trooped round in our school uniforms, lead by our statutory member of staff in possession of a group visit permit, were just bulging with men in overalls in the various workshops, breaking off to grin at us and making the odd asides between themselves that were not meant for our ears, once they had looked up from their tasks and noticed our presence. Locomotive sheds and station platforms were also generally very well manned and some, including Doctor Beeching, had already concluded that they were actually heavily over-manned and that something needed to be done about it. 

The restructuring of British industry that has since become known as de-industrialisation – some would prefer dismantling and dismembering, others just destruction and devastation – certainly represented one of the major changes that have taken place during my lifetime. Manual labour for men has largely been replaced by high tech’ office jobs for most, with the obvious big exception being public service sector jobs, which are often still comparatively low paid.

In the 1960’s our whole family only required the services of a railway porter [and indeed the fitters, come to think of it] on two days in the year, for going on holiday and for coming back. Suitcases were big and heavy to begin with and were then packed to bursting and strapped up for added security. Dad booked a taxi to take us to the station. We never owned a car and so I was always beside myself with the excitement of it all by the time that the big day finally arrived.

I remember how older folk used to moan about station porters standing around talking to each other rather than springing into action when they saw car-loads like ours pulling onto the roadway provided for that purpose between the platforms at the big terminus stations. I don’t think that was ever a problem for us, but Mum and Dad did need help to get us on board our train with all our things. Dad would then tip the porter, who would then touch his hat in Dad’s direction.

I think I probably suppressed a momentary feeling of superiority by association, at that point, which I hope I then felt a bit guilty about. Later on, in life, this turned into an agonising tussle in my head over the whole business of “tipping” and its connotations, one which I have not yet completely come to terms with to my own satisfaction. “There should be no need for it,” became my bottom line, as I wrestled internally over promoting the notion of an adequate and truly “living wage” whilst at the same time often denying those concerned an extra few bob “on principle.”

My three children, all of whom have worked in cafes or bars at one time or another, will always take me to task, big time, for attempting to put half-baked political gestures before any preparedness to dispense with hard cash in such instances. As it has often been the case that I frequently seem to be the one who is buying the meal, my get-out clause has usually been to say to them, “Well, you leave the tip, then.”

On Amtrak trains today, you can choose to use the “free” Redcaps baggage handler’s service, except that in reality those guys work for their tips, as appears to be the case in large parts of the American service industry. My son reminded us that bar attendants, for example, are so poorly paid that they rely on a substantial tip every time you order a drink from them and that a less than generous one might earn you at least a withering look, if not a derogatory comment.

The Redcaps will move your gear for you with some alacrity, but still only up to a certain weight, beyond which they will not touch it with a barge-pole on health and safety grounds, and who could blame them for that. It is potentially and literally back-breaking work. Without them you are on your own. The tour company impressed on us the importance of taking suitcases of a manageable size, which had been totally ignored by a minority of the party, who then went on to provide us with some added entertainment throughout the trip as they did battle with their own belongings every time the next leg of the journey was embarked on. They were always very smartly dressed each night for dinner, I noticed, when we joined them in our tee-shirts, shorts and trainers.

We were “Have a nice day” recipients frequently as we made our collective way across the continent. It was said with genuine good humour, I felt, rather than corporate compulsion. It was certainly delivered with a smile and we found almost everyone working in a service capacity from whom we needed help to be most gracious in providing it. It was quite refreshing. I know there are some grumpy UK check-out assistants, but I sense a change for the better over here, too. People shouldn’t need a company policy to know how to behave towards customers. Not that that is always one-way traffic, either.

I’ve witnessed Brits behaving badly in France towards service providers a number of times and not youths but middle aged, middle class morons, who apparently believe that the louder you shout in English the more easily you will be understood in a foreign language. On one camp site in Brittany, a tent had been bedecked with bunting made up of Union flags, which might have just been acceptable had it been an Olympic year, but it wasn’t. In the Vendee, one Little Englander had swept up a wall of dust around the boundary of his camp site emplacement to make a more formal demarcation zone. Given another fortnight’s holiday, I imagined that he would have had a six-foot wall with broken glass along the top and a pair of those “keep your distance” spiked metal gates as well. It struck me that France was actually one of the last places that people with this mindset would normally have chosen for a vacation. Perhaps they saw themselves as part of some sort of expeditionary force. The much quoted, legendary newspaper headline “Fog in Channel – Continent cut off,” came to mind.

Present-day logistics throw up some seemingly random manoeuvres for the service industry. A delivery man arrived at our door clutching two parcelled clothing items that my wife had ordered online. “Do you know where these have come from?” he asked. I expressed bewilderment and he answered his own question before I’d finished pulling inquisitive faces, “Calverton.” That is very nearly the next village to ours. “Via Birmingham and Lincoln” he added, as he turned tail with a smile that told me he was very pleased with his punch line.

When I was a teacher the typical day was made up of a battering of individual social interactions. Exhausting as it was, I miss that now. Sometimes, the only meeting outside the house that I might have in a whole day is a few words with the supermarket check-out assistant. How important it is, suddenly, that that goes well and that it is a good-natured encounter. It sounds daft but it’s true. Next to the till is a notice reminding us that the staff do not tolerate abusive behaviour towards them. How sad that such a notice is necessary.

I find the railways a generally welcoming environment these days. Though the traditional allegiances to the old railway companies may be a thing of the past, perhaps the heritage lines often lead the way in retaining “old fashioned” levels of service because they are largely manned by volunteers who choose to be there and are clearly enjoying making a contribution. Our recent visit to the Swanage Railway certainly bore that out. I would like to think that such relationships are based neither on subservience or deference as was often the case in the past, nor on corporate insistence and empty rhetoric, as in the supposed American business model. They should be based instead on mutual respect and a belief that we could all be a little happier if a bit of effort is made in that direction. I’ve never forgotten how kind and pleasant Billy J. Kramer was to us when we were kids, yet that coming together was all over in a matter of seconds and it is now more than half a century ago.