Bonnie and Carol Martyn at the DAC dinner and Ball.
The 40th anniversary of DAC atthe Guildhall CS: So you had made Lords into a successful radio circuit.
Suddenly you caused a major sensation by resigning and going to Bermuda. Why? |
At the same time, Pye introduced me to someone
from Bermuda who asked me f I could do the same thing for him in his home country. I told
him that I could but assumed that the question was theoretical. After all, back then the
average driver was still going to Southend for his holidays! But he was serious. There was
no language barrier so Carol and I went out there in 1957 and returned in 1960. In those
three years, I built up the largest fleet that the small island of Bermuda had seen - up
to 200 cabs. We named it after the owner of the land and the franchise holder for Austin
cars, Conway Trott. It was called Trott Taxis and RadioCabs (Bermuda). CS: When you returned, did you come back to DAC? BM: Oh yes, but only as a driver. There was some antagonism towards me for having left to go to Bermuda. |
CS: Did you ever go onto another circuit?
BM: No, never, never, never! Lords is my baby. I could never have worked on another London circuit.
CS: Moving to the present day, at our EGM, it was mentioned by a driver that our founders would have been horrified if they thought that we would have ever even contemplated moving from a mutual trading organisation to a plc. As the original founder, do you agree with those sentiments?
BM: I always considered that we had made a mistake running ODRTS as a FriendlySociety. Looking around at the time, I strongly believed that we should have become a Limited Company and while I am immensely proud of what we achieved, I will always believe that we missed out by not converting. We were always so busy doing other things that the opportunity to investigate the situation just never materialised.
Giving DAC to it’s drivers would have been a wonderful thing. But there you are. I’m sure that DAC will still be just as successful albeit in a slightly different way.
CS: Thank you Bonnie.
BM: Please give my best wishes to everyone…
