The day Boris Johnson went strikebusting

As the RMT threatened to bring London to a halt, Stephen Robinson spent 24 hours with a Mayor intent on keeping the capital moving...

By common consent, Boris Johnson botched the first weather emergency of his mayoralty when the entire bus system, and much of the Tube network, was shut down by a snow shower.

Sceptics who wondered whether an old Etonian journalist was up to running the world's most daunting metropolis appeared vindicated when it emerged that the capital's main arterial routes had not been gritted in advance of a widely forecast snow fall, and the buses could not get out of the depots.

This week, Bob Crow ordered members of the RMT out on a 48-hour strike, setting the biggest challenge of Johnson's regime. Stephen Robinson got on his bike to see how the mayor rose to the challenge ...

Tuesday, 19.45

If you want to see the Mayor at the moment the Tube shuts down, get to Walthamstow, his staff say.

At first, I assume that in the manner of a Cold War prime minister, the Mayor is moving his key personnel to a safe location to oversee the crisis from a secure situation room, but it turns out Boris is intent on attending a previously arranged Mayor's Question Time with "ordinary Londoners" about the Olympics.

Boris's attitude to the strike is a gritty Blitz-style business-as-usual, stay-at-your-station response, even if your station happens to be closed due to industrial action.

The roads are becoming grid-locked and drivers' tempers' are fraying.

Ken Livingstone is on the radio, telling anyone who will listen that in his day, he'd have had the RMT round for beer and sandwiches and saved Londoners from 48 hours of hell.

Boris hits back, saying this is a "demented" strike and that there can be no concessions to the hard men of the RMT at the wrong end of the barrel of their gun.

Resolution seems within reach but the RMT allegedly raised two unrelated disciplinary matters just as the two sides seem to be finding agreement on pay and conditions.

Tuesday 19.00

Walthamstow municipal headquarters is a weird neo-fascist confection, with plazas and a central fountain so oppressively 1930s that you expect Mussolini to be addressing the locals from below the columned façade on the Abyssinian question.

At the precise moment London's Tube system falls silent, there is visible consternation among the Mayors' aides.

This is because Boris arrives, on his bicycle, direct from City Hall, bang on time.

This is regarded as one of the most astonishing developments of his mayoralty.

Boris looks as though he can't believe it himself.

He insists the meeting begins promptly at the appointed hour, partly so he can go on stage and announce that he has beaten the strike by sensibly using his bicycle, while Lord Coe, "the fastest man on earth", is stuck in traffic somewhere around Canary Wharf.

"I'm an Olympo-maniac" he tells the residents of east London, adding that it will "deliver 2,800 new homes for Londoners".

It is odd to hear Boris talking like a New Labour minister on the Today programme but these are unusual times.

Wednesday 06.15, Islington

Nothing stirs outside the Mayor's Islington home, just joggers and the sound of the odd QC making toast in the Georgian terraces, as Londoners trudge to work on foot or bicycle, or wedged into the armpits of fellow commuters in overcrowded buses.

The City Hall staff say Boris will be leaving to take control of the transport crisis at 6.30 sharp, and 55 minutes later, he emerges through his front door, in his helmet. "OK, we'll have to leg it," he announces.

I am a cyclist only in the strictly limited sense that I happen to own a bicycle, a clunking Raleigh which I very occasionally pedal around Regent's Park.

Boris is a proper cyclist, with an aerodynamic machine with thin racing tyres.

He cycles as he once played rugger for Balliol's First XV at Oxford — head tucked into his shoulders, pointed purposefully into the fray.

The last time I interviewed him he was so hungover that he could barely speak and he suggested instead that we played a game of table tennis — or "pingers" as he called it — in his Mayor's office, and I could see he really wanted to win.

No quarter will be offered as we head off towards the City as he dodges buses and lorries, and the occasional red light.

Boris has the sort of general popular appeal that people feel they have to shout something at him as soon as they recognise the blond mop.

He is particularly popular with white van drivers, who invariably holler something like "Go for it Boris"; until Ken Livingstone develops a strategy to win back White Van Man from Boris, his ambitions to return to City Hall will come to nothing.

While we are still in Islington, a pedestrian shouts out as we peddle furiously past: "I'm teaching classics at Eton next year." Boris seems to recognise him. "Good man," he says.

7.25 Embankment

We are going to the Embankment to take the Thames Clipper to Canary Wharf to show we won't be cowed by the RMT. Boris is a terrifying cyclist.

When he sees traffic, he speeds along on the inside lane, scooting along the curb with his left foot as he squeezes past lorries and buses.

The Embankment Tube station is virtually deserted but Boris heads in to thank the handful of staff who have turned up for work.

I ask the Mayor how many trains are running. He looks blank but concedes it is a good question, and goes off to ask one of his aides.

We take the 8.05 Clipper to Canary Wharf. As part of Boris's "strike mitigation strategy", he has persuaded the river boat operators to lay on extra services, and we have a delightful voyage east while Boris glad-hands the commuters, thanking them for defying the strike.

08.50 Canary Wharf.

For the cycle ride to the Excel Centre, we are joined by Isabel, the Mayor's environmental adviser.

She looks terrifyingly fit in her Lycra gear. East London cycle lanes leave much to be desired, and soon we are lost.

There should be a cycle lane somewhere but Boris announces firmly that we will be taking the direct route, which happens to be the A13.

When he sees a thundering herd of lorries, he wants to get in there among it.

Mercifully, Isabel puts her foot down. There is a major policy disagreement between the Mayor and his environmental adviser but being a New Yorker, she prevails and forces Boris back from what would have been a suicidal and statutorily illegal short cut.

09.30 Excel Centre

As part of his "we will not be cowed" strategy, Boris is going ahead with his planned address to the annual convention of the Recycling and Waste Management community.

Since becoming Mayor, Boris has developed an acute interest in a field to which previously he had seemed indifferent.

He thanks the exhibitors for beating the strike, and then listens intently as a man explains everything anyone could want to know about the science of waste compacting.

"Why can't we have some of those?" he asks Isabel as he inspects a fleet of zero-emission vans.

Word is coming in that the strike has been far less successful than Bob Crow would have expected.

The Northern and Jubilee lines are running almost normally. Aslef men have crossed the RMT's picket lines, and perhaps a quarter of RMT staff have reported for work. Boris is buoyed.

I complain that I want to see his situation room, with maps and crisis strategy briefings, but Boris looks perplexed.

It turns out that Boris has next to nothing to do with overseeing the strike, which — perfectly sensibly — is left to Peter Hendy and the Transport for London staff.

15.05 Mayor's Office, City Hall

Boris looks tired but ebullient as he telephones around town, thanking people who have put on extra services, the man in charge of river boats, and the official who was responsible for laying on extra buses.

"The key thing to note is the essential fragility of this strike," he says.

I was expecting to see flow charts and briefings on his desk but he appeared to be seeking inspiration in a different form, a collection of Imperial and Commonwealth ­Obituaries.

Boris has won the political battle. True, millions of Londoners have had a terrible day but picket lines have been crossed, the RMT unity has been shattered and there is no public support for men on £40,000 a year who, in the teeth of a recession, are demanding jobs for life.

"The scales have fallen from the eyes of many members of the RMT about what their leaders have been doing,"

Boris says, adding that he thinks it very unlikely this sort of strike will be repeated. He is probably right.

As London commuters shuffle back home, it was clear that the RMT had failed in its ambition to paralyse the capital.

Boris, by keeping away from the fray of a 1970s industrial dispute, seems to have won the day.

Anyone who has experienced at first hand his terrifying determination on a bicycle knows it would be foolish to underestimate the Mayor's will.