The sign by the entrance to Clapham South Underground station, in south London, gave the impression of a city close to lockdown. “This station will remain closed until further notice due to operational restrictions,” it read, testifying to the impact that coronavirus is having on the transport network’s staff.
Next to it were posted instructions that only critical workers should use public transport, reinforcing the message Boris Johnson delivered on Monday night.
The prime minister had imposed the most draconian clampdown on public movement in the UK in decades, telling everyone to stay at home unless they had an urgent reason to go out, as his government seeks to contain the pandemic that by Tuesday had killed 422 people across the country.
Yet away from the closed station, the picture was far less clear cut. Many shops were shut — but there were also plenty trying to balance the need to restrict the virus’s spread with the imperative to serve society and make money.
Tentative British politeness was the usual approach. “Two people in the shop at one time — thank you!” read a blackboard outside the Ginger Pig butcher’s shop in Abbeville Road. Outside the nearby Moxon’s fishmonger, a man in a tweed jacket patiently maintained a gap at least twice the recommended two metres behind the woman in front. “Please wait here — keep a safe distance apart,” pleaded a sign.
The economic distress inflicted by coronavirus was evident. Round the corner from Moxon’s is Shed, which normally operates as a coffee shop, co-working space and wine retailer. It had posted a sign pleading for customers to remain loyal. Yet, like most other businesses in its parade on Balham Hill, the business had been forced to keep down its shutters on Tuesday morning.
“Please please keep coming back and following the safe rules,” read the sign, posted after the operation was obliged to close its sit-down coffee space. “We’d love to keep seeing your face for take away.”
However, one did not have to go far to see how many loopholes and ambiguities Londoners were exploiting in the prime minister’s orders to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Just north of Clapham South station, people sat in bright sunshine around Clapham Common pond. Many others strolled to the shops while underneath them, according to social media, Underground trains were heaving.
No council officers or police were seeking to disperse the people on the streets and send them home.
More typical of how the authorities were enforcing the prime minister’s orders were the tactics of two police officers trying to remove a homeless man from the doorway of a dental practice in Clapham High Street.
They tried stern voices and persuasion. “You need to leave, sir,” they told the man.
But he refused to budge. The officers menacingly pulled on blue rubber gloves. Yet, rather than invoke the tough new powers that the prime minister promised that officers would enjoy to enforce new lockdown rules, they simply dragged him away a few metres. They left him propped up against a wall.
A rare sign of government heavy handedness was the closed shutters of the many outlets of Sports Direct, the sportswear and fashion chain owned by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, found across the capital.
Executives had told staff on Monday evening that, because the shop had a vital role to play in keeping British people fit, it would open on Tuesday morning and they should report for work. They only reversed course, according to Michael Gove, Cabinet Office minister, when the government said it would be wrong to open.
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Pockets of economic activity that seemed far from essential to fighting coronavirus persisted across London, nonetheless. The sound of drilling and other construction work echoed around the luxury flats being built near the historic Battersea Power Station, on the south bank of the Thames. Dumper trucks rumbled into and out of the site, off Nine Elms Lane, much as normal.
The work there and in other parts of the vast Nine Elms regeneration site was an example of the building industry’s response to the confusion that had been generated following Mr Johnson’s announcement of restrictions on Monday evening. The prime minister had said people should travel to work only if they could not work from home, while official advice had said only key workers should leave home.
Robert Jenrick, communities secretary, had sought to resolve the ambiguity by saying that construction workers could go to their sites. But he insisted that they must observe rules demanding they stay at least two metres apart.
Like others, however, construction workers seemed to be struggling to match the unseasonable warmth and fine weather with the danger posed by a sharply escalating number of infections and a rising death toll.
In the receiving area for trucks at the power station site, two workers stood laughing and joking. They were wearing high-visibility vests and helmets to protect themselves against the traditional risks of working on a building site. But they were standing barely 50cm apart, a quarter of the recommended distance.
