IT has been 15 long years since alcohol was banned on the London Underground…. just slightly longer than it takes to wait for the Northern Line on a Sunday morning.
But before ‘time’ was called forever, revellers were determined to go out with a bang – and with the biggest parties the Tube may well have ever seen.
Organised by kids via their new love, known as “social media”, thousands of youngsters from all walks of life (and in all sorts of garb) went subterranean for the ‘Last Orders on the Underground’ party. One piss-up to end them all (on below ground public transport in London anyway).
Girls dressed up in 50s gear sipping champers, nudged up to hippies, pirates and people dressed as terrorists. Half naked men sloshed back Stella like life would never be the same again, and it quite possibly it hasn’t been.
Some even took part in the hit game of the time, not beach volleyball, but ‘Edward Cider Hands’. It involved Sellotaping bottles of Strongbow to their hands which couldn’t be removed, even to pee, until they had been consumed. Sounds a lot more fun than watching Edward Scissorhands to be fair.
But who do we have to thank for this ban happening?
Yes you’ve guessed it, party animal No1, Boris ‘de Pfeffel’ Johnson, the then Mayor of London.
Critically failing to read the room in classic BoJo style, he grandly declared at time: “I’m determined to improve the safety and security of public transport in London and create a better environment for the millions of Londoners who rely on it.”
As someone who never uses the Tube it’s no great surprise that Boris decided to ban drinking. And perhaps he knew it wouldn’t be long could before he’d be knee deep in cheese and wine at Number 10, smashing a few drinks, then smashing a few swings in the Downing Street garden, while the rest of us were banned from any kind of party at all. Allegedly.
He had no need to drink with the plebs on the Tube so its days were numbered. But before it was made illegal on 1 June 2008,. there was one last opportunity to stand cheek by jowl, crammed in with hundreds of other revellers supping and sweating the evening away.
One commuter who was determined to make it a night to remember was 20-year-old software developer James Darling, whose event was one of the first to ever go viral on the then nascent Facebook.
“I was inspired by a Space Hijackers party I’d been to,” Darling told Vice.
“They’re an anarchist group that used to throw parties on the Circle line.
“I just thought it’d be fun, I remember thinking the ban was a mildly authoritarian move by Johnson, so I wanted to poke fun at how silly it was.”
What started out as a bit of fun quickly ballooned beyond control when Darling realised he had over 10,000 attendees to his Facebook event.
“Naively, I suggested we meet at the rear carriage of the Circle line train,” he continues. “It ended up being a lot bigger than that.”
As 8pm approached Liverpool Street station was rammed with thousands of revellers ready to jam and go underground for one last time.
The mood was good and mostly well-behaved, although there were small skirmishes and some people did start trashing the carriages and pulling stuff off the walls.
Swedish photographer Ann Törnkvist told Vice: “It was chaos, but fun chaos. At the time, there was this atmosphere of like, ‘Why would Boris do this? What’s the benefit of being a killjoy?’ So everyone there was ready to have a good time.
“In the carriage I was in, someone brought a bongo drum and people were standing on the seats, which – other than being unhygienic – was fine.”
One memorable photo Törnkvist took of the evening is of a shirtless man being arrested, mouth agog in hysterical laughter.
“I think you can tell from the photo the guy is there for the havoc, but he’s not aggressive,” Törnkvist said. “Drunk and disruptive, maybe, but not violent.”
It wasn’t long though until police stepped in, and last orders were called early. They had had enough and the Circle Line was closed down for being overcrowded.
Darling recalled the ending: “The media tried to suggest afterwards that it was really rowdy, because they’d made some arrests. But in my mind, it was just another Saturday night out in London – that’s pretty standard.”
Not any more it isn’t… more’s the pity.
