Anti-spitting enforcement officers at work in Waltham Forest (Jeremy Young)
A woman is chasing a man down a crowded street. He is walking quickly, so she is following him as fast as she can without breaking into a run. Her high-visibility jacket, stamped with the crest of her local council, makes a plastic rustling sound. “Excuse me, sir,” she calls, repeating the phrase like a kind of officious birdsong.
The man turns out to be in his mid-fifties, wearing dirty clothes and speaking broken English with a strong eastern European accent. He looks tired and poor. The woman, who is employed by Waltham Forest council in northeast London, has just seen him spitting on the street. As of last week the council classes this as an offence. The fine is £80, reduced to £50 if paid within 10 days.
In so far as anyone can understand what the man is saying, he apparently has no fixed address. That means he cannot be given a ticket. Again and again he says, “Sorry, boss, sorry” like a Polish Uriah Heep. The woman and her colleague eventually let him go and he scuttles into the throng.
Local support for the spitting ban seems almost universal. Many people in Walthamstow market mention it without prompting.
“It’s disgusting,” says one trader. “They’re animals. It’s good news if the council catches anyone.”
“It’s got worse since I moved here in 1986,” says a woman outside the shopping centre. “I avoid this area now which means local businesses suffer. It’s about people’s attitude. Urine, vomit, spitting — it’s all here.”
Clyde Loakes is the councillor behind the scheme. Without irony he claims he is “on a moral crusade”.