Steve Butcher

Hundreds of London black cabs lined Westminster Bridge again today, waiting to take veterans home from the Cenotaph without charging a penny. The service, now called Cabs for Veterans after running for years as Poppy Cabs, began in 2009 with fifteen taxis parked on the bridge, marking the eleventh hour while they waited for veterans coming off the trains. The drivers had realised something nobody had thought much about: every London black cab is wheelchair accessible, and for a lot of veterans that is the difference between attending and staying at home. Seventeen years on it runs to over a thousand free journeys, most of them packed into about two hours either side of the service. Drivers meet veterans at the mainline stations, take them to Whitehall, then wait and take them back again. The whole thing is funded by the cabbies themselves, time, fuel and all, often with family and friends along to help. As one organiser put it, there is no more moving sight than standing on Westminster Bridge as Big Ben strikes eleven and seeing hundreds of black cabs lined up in silence.