The Last Dinosaur

There is a social convention that we do not speak ill of the dead so it was unsurprising that following the premature death of National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) leader Bob Crow at the age of just 52, those who had disparaged him in life came to praise him in death. 

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: "He made an important contribution to the debate around the future of rail services in this country." Mayor of London Boris Johnson said : "He played a big part in the success of the Tube and he shared my goal to make transport in London an even greater success." While Mr McLoughlin's words are neutral in tone and may be damning Bob Crow with faint praise, Boris Johnson's remark is at odds with his comments during the recent dispute over ticket office closures when he said that he could not negotiate with Mr Crow while he (Crow) was holding a gun to Londoners' heads. Whilst one might not have expected Boris to maintain an antagonistic stance towards Mr Crow after his death, his remarks were nonetheless surprisingly fulsome; it reminiscent of the comedy sketch in which one politician is maligning an opponent, only for that opponent to drop down dead, at which point the diatribe segues seamlessly into an eulogy.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and a Muppet.

It is of course appropriate and decent that (with a few exceptions) we do not vilify someone in death no matter what we thought of them in life, as difficult as it may be. Even the most obnoxious and intransigent of opponents was still a human being with friends and families whose memories of the man ought not to be sullied; it is after all a difficult enough time for those family members, colleagues and friends without the scoring of cheap points against someone who can no longer answer back. Not that Mr Crow had any qualms on that score, however. On the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher he said that he hoped she rotted in hell. Whilst this was insensitive and crass, disregarding of those who cared for Mrs Thatcher and might better have not been uttered, regardless of what he thought, at least one could not accuse him of hypocrisy.

Bob Crow's tenure as general secretary of the RMT was marked with a number of disputes with London Underground (LU). Whereas many people feel that the withdrawal of labour should be the last resort in a dispute, one always had the impression that for Bob Crow it was the opening gambit. Certainly more disputes between LU and the RMT ended with strike action than in most other industries and while it is undoubtedly true that Mr Crow had the best interests of his members at heart, this did not extend to the workers in industries who were affected by his members' walkouts. Businesses threatened with bankruptcy as a result of transport strikes were dismissed as ‘casualties of war’ disregarding the fact that the collateral damage might include ordinary workers and union members just like his own.

Bob Crow has been called a dinosaur; indeed in an interview shortly before his death, he was called one by Jeremy Paxman, to which Crow retorted that "they were around for a long time," but in the end he was a dinosaur; he was very much the last of his generation. The days of the firebrand union leader, presiding over strikes and work to rules of the type Britain saw in the 1970's, when power cuts, uncollected rubbish and the three day week were commonplace are now gone. The days when Britain was dubbed "the sick man of Europe" are behind us and the union reforms introduced by Mrs Thatcher's government mean that there are now few areas of industry and commerce where trade unionists can hold companies or the country to ransom. The downside of the union reforms has been that the pendulum has swung perhaps too far from the unions to management and while no one would deny management's right to manage it is equally true that without union opposition there are many industries in which workers' rights, be they pensions, security of employment and other terms and conditions have been seriously eroded. RMT members continue to enjoy benefits that many in other industries do not, but of course the rail industry is a very different animal to manufacturing or finance. Rail bosses do not have the weapons of outsourcing or offshoring open to say, banking or insurance. Unlike in a private concern where union demands may be tempered by the realisation that immoderate requests, if won in the short term, might in the long term bring the company to its knees and ultimately lead to members becoming unemployed, railway workers know that whatever their demands their jobs could not be shipped off to India or Malaysia and that the government could not allow their employers to fail. Had Mr Crow been leader of bank workers, or shop workers or those in some manufacturing industry, he might have found the benefits he won for his members more difficult to come by.

The right wing press were critical of Bob Crow's January holiday to Brazil just three days before the first of the union walk outs, which struck me as somewhat desperate; they almost made much of the fact that despite his generous salary, reported to be £145,000, he continued to live in a council house. Famously he said that he had been born in a council house and would die in one. As a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, his continued residence in social housing, when he could quite obviously have afforded to buy his own property, struck me as being at odds with the socialist doctrine " From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

For London's commuters in particular, and for LU bosses as well, it will be interesting to see who succeeds Bob Crow at the RMT and whether they have the will, the power or the mandate to continue in a similar vein. Transport for London (TfL) have announced that they have advertised a £16bn contract to introduce driverless trains on the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City lines by the middle of the next decade, which Bob Crow had already said "would not happen." This because of safety concerns despite the proven track record of such systems in many European and Asian countries and in North America. Whoever takes up the reins at the RMT will doubtless have to take up the cudgels with TfL on that one. The fact is that driverless trains already run on parts of the London underground network; the extension of them to other lines is a logical step.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu makes a valid point when he says "Good governments govern well only when there is a strong opposition. Good governance requires strong opposition and fair representation." This is equally true of employers and their relationship with trade unions. Bob Crow might have tipped the balance too far in favour of the workers and where unions have been too powerful in the past we have seen the excesses and problems that this has caused, but equally employee rights and conditions will often be eroded by employers who do not have to face union negotiators seeking to protect the rights of their members and with the strength to do so; there can be no doubt that Bob Crow did just that. For the sake of all concerned however, strong opposition still needs to be reasonable opposition and in many ways it would be difficult to describe Bob Crow as having been reasonable in his negotiations with employers.

Whatever you opinion of Bob Crow, I've no doubt that public sector workers who have been offered a below inflation pay deal this year probably feel that they would have done better with someone like him batting for them.