Going Underground

Going Underground was a project created in collaboration with Digital Works based on a series of workshops with pupils from St George the Martyr and Gateway Primary Schools in Camden. The project focused at a range of themes including the beginning of the London Underground network in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the woman tram workers strike, 1918. The groups of pupils also looked at how the building and extension of the Metropolitan, Piccadilly, Northern and Central lines, for instance, created suburban London, and how the network provided safety for residents during the blitz during the Second World War.

They also drew on stories from Caribbean migrants who worked as  station cleaners, ticket collectors, guards, drivers, inspectors and managers on the London Underground. One woman from Guyana was so ashamed to be a station cleaner that she would hide the broom behind her when the train came into the station. As a ticket collector, she received a lot of abuse from passengers including racist comments and offensive remarks such being a ‘slaver driver’ because she was dressed in a uniform.

One guard talked about being chased by a stranger with knife for no reason at all. He also said that as guard they would not normally leave the train, but one of them did and the train left him. Luckily, the train was going so slow that he was able to run outside and catch it at the next station. 

Once a station manager had to go under a train to see if a woman who had jumped in front of a train was still alive. She was dead. She had cancer and had killed her two children at home before she jumped on Underground tracks.

Theses oral testimonies were transcribed and along with creative writing from pupils from sessions that also included drama activities, and compiled in a booklet that McMillan edited and contributed to.