Samantha Bond: 'If Ken doesn't rethink, we will sue him'

The IoS interview: Samantha Bond, actress

The actress who is spearheading the campaign against London's congestion charge is threatening to sue Ken Livingstone if he doesn't bring in exemptions for tens of thousands of the capital's workers. And, as Lady Macbeth, the part she is playing on the West End stage, Samantha Bond is used to getting her own way.

Ms Bond has plenty of toil and trouble in store for the London Mayor, whose scheme for reducing traffic in the capital, due to start in five weeks' time, she describes as "completely immoral" and "extraordinarily ill-conceived". An anti-congestion charge march would, she said, show what bringing London to a standstill really meant.

"The thing that concerns me is the total injustice of the concept of a blanket amount," Ms Bond said as she prepared to go on stage at the Albery Theatre in St Martin's Lane. "For someone on £15,000 a year, it's 11 per cent of your earnings. It's 6 per cent of £30,000 a year. The irony is that it's the very people who voted Mr Livingstone in who are going to be hardest hit. He seems to think that anybody in a car is just a City worker driving in from the suburbs.

"I think there is a terrifying scenario of a two-tier transport system, with all the rich people sitting in their cars, and all the poor people struggling in on the Tube, and what that will do to this city God alone knows." Ms Bond cited in outrage the well-paid City worker who told her that "if the charge was £20 a day, I'd be delighted, because then it would really clear the roads and I'd get to work on time".

The legal moves against Mr Livingstone have begun with a letter to him from the firm of solicitors that is working with Ms Bond and others on the anti-congestion charge campaign, Class Law. It challenges him to provide evidence that he consulted London's workers before bringing in the charge, which Class Law believes he was legally obliged to do. "If we don't force him to rethink, then we will go ahead and sue him," Ms Bond said.

The 41-year-old star of the last four James Bond films, in which she played Miss Moneypenny, is particularly concerned about the plight of shift workers, who need their cars to get home late at night but who, if they enter the charge zone before 6.30pm on their way to work, will still be liable to pay £5. Actors and other theatre staff fall firmly into that category, but Ms Bond is at pains to point out this is not just about them. "This is a huge issue for the workers of London generally – nurses, teachers, firemen."

That also raises the question of safety for women travelling alone. Ms Bond's working day ends at 10.30pm, when she drives from the West End back to her Twickenham home. "There's no way I would want to travel that late on public transport, and there's no way I would walk home by myself from the station."

Ms Bond said she had never claimed to be fighting this cause on her own behalf. "I can afford the charge. But I'm terribly aware that the people it is going to affect the most do not have a voice. I have no doubt that the workers of London will find their voice. It just needed someone to point the way." For that someone to be Ms Bond, now supported by a growing number of actors, surprises her. "I only meant to open the debate. I didn't mean to be the mouthpiece. It's not something that sits comfortably with me."

The Vanessa Redgrave of the congestion charge is no political ingenue, though. Born and brought up in London, she is of the generation that marched against racism and apartheid, and in 1997 she campaigned on behalf of the Labour Party. "I'm sure Mr Livingstone thinks I'm a right-wing shit, but that couldn't be further from the truth."

Now Ms Bond is up for leading an anti-congestion charge meeting at the Palace Theatre a week tomorrow which will reveal just how much of a movement is building. "There's always the scenario that no one comes to the meeting, that no one cares, in which case I go, OK, well, you didn't care, that's fine, and I'll look a bit silly. But I can cope with that. But with the feedback I'm getting I'd be amazed if that happens."

Full houses have meant that the production of Macbeth, in which Ms Bond plays opposite Sean Bean, has had its run extended. Can she do the same for the anti-congestion charge show?

Biography

1961 Born in London. Educated at Godolphin and Latymer School, London, and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

1986 First classical leading role in London as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric Hammersmith.

1989 Marries actor Alexander Hanson. They now have a daughter, 11, and a son, 10.

1995 Stars in David Hare's hit play Amy's View at the National Theatre opposite Judi Dench; nominated for a Tony Award during the play's run on Broadway.

1995 First appearance as Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond film GoldenEye, then in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002). Numerous lead roles on TV and radio.