London's Tube remains a `soft target'

TERRORIST THREAT

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It is impossible to protect a mass transit system, such as the London Underground or ritain's other metros and suburban train networks, against an attack like yesterday's poisoning in Tokyo.

Even given all the precautions against the IRA, such as the removal of rubbish bins at stations and well-rehearsed procedures to deal with "suspect" packages, London Transport has always admitted it is a "soft target" for terrorists. As a spokesman said yesterday: "You cannot stop people using the Tube as this would run counter to what our business is all about." Nor, he said, could LT stop people taking packages on to the Tube: "That would mean you couldn't serve places like King's Cross [rail station] or Heathrow."

Trying to search all 2.5 million people using the London Tube system every day would also be unrealistic, as anyone who has taken an aircraft will realise. The consequent delays at, say, Victoria Station at 8am would force people to find alternative means of travel. And, as LT said: "What would they look for?"

During the 25 years of Irish terrorism, LT became very adept at combating the threat with the minimum disruption of services. Nevertheless, each year there were around 1,500 incidents which resulted in the closure of a station or part of a line, mostly caused by forgetful passengers leaving bags and packages lying about. Christmas and the summer tourist season were peak times for such closures, which the IRA exploited by issuing threats that were usually not backed up by any action.

LT has contingency plans and procedures for coping with the kind of attack launched in Tokyo yesterday. Even busy Oxford Circus in central London can be evacuated in four minutes and ventilation systems are available to disperse any gas. The spokesman said: "We are used to evacuating stations for a variety of reasons and we do this efficiently."

LT has been particularly sensitive to any possible problem on the Underground since the King's Cross station fire of November 1987 when 30 people died. The slightest sign of smoke leads to station evacuations and investigation by fire officers.

ut privately LT accepts that, had it wanted to, the IRA could have left a bomb on a Tube train, with the potential to kill hundreds of people if it exploded in a tunnel. The main reason the IRA refrained from such action is that it knew that it would be counterproductive. The subsequent outrage could have led to legislation even more stringent than the Prevention of Terrorism Act, passed after the 1974 irmingham pub bomb attacks.