As students we never had enough money, so when we were
accepted to graduate school at the
University of Toronto, getting there from Israel was a challenge. We looked for
a cheap flight and were lucky: a year earlier in 1977, the British enterpreneur
Freddy Laker started the first low-cost, "no frill" airline,
operating low-fare scheduled services between London Gatwick Airport and New
York's John F. Kennedy Airport.
The option of booking tickets in advance did not exist, and
in order to board a flight one had to line up for a ticket in one of the two
Laker Airways centers --in Victoria Station and at Gatwick Airport. We arrived at Victoria with our suitcases;
the line for tickets was very long and we were told that we might be able to
catch a flight in two days time. Efficiently people got organized into groups
and each one had a coordinator who was in charge of communicating with the
airline. Since there so many people
waiting, some groups camped around the
station in an orderly fashion.
My husband Tzvi and I didn’t look forward to the possibility
of spending two days camping in the street. We asked our coordinator if he knew
anything about the line at the other ticket center at Gatwick Airport. He didn't, but said that he
assumed that it was the same thing. We decided to check for ourselves; Tzvi
took a train to Gatwick and I stayed
with the suitcases in Victoria. It took several hours but then he came back
bearing good news: the line in Gatwick was short, there was a spacious waiting
area, and we could fly to NY that same
night.
We were delighted and anxious to share this piece of good
news with the rest of the. We were convinced that many people would choose to
take the train to Gatwick. We were wrong, no one did, the two of us left and
everyone else stayed behind.
The real reason why no one joined us remains a mystery, I
still cannot understand why people preferred to remain outside the station in
the heat and pollution of London in August.
But I could specualte, perhaps they didn’t believe us, most
of them were Americans and we were strangers and spoke with a foreign accent.
The sociologist Georg Simmel defines
"‘stranger’ as a person who comes today and stays tomorrow, whose
position in a group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not
belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it which do
not and cannot stem from the group itself." Thus even though we were part of a group, we
were viewed with suspicion.
Another reason could be that they felt comfortable and safe
within their group and didn’t want to leave; it could be that no one wanted to
be the first to go so they all stayed with their group.
Sometimes when I encounter people who are reluctant to do
the one thing that, I believe, will get them out of a difficult spot, like
leaving an abusive relationship, or quitting a job which they hate, I think of
the Victoria vs Gatwick story and
reminded once more that what seems clear to me could be far from obvious to
someone else.
PS. About Freddy Laker and Laker Airways. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/2283244.stm
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