MICK LYNCH is no stranger to the sharp end of the class struggle.
The newly elected RMT general secretary was effectively starved out of the construction industry in the 1990s, a victim of the blacklisting that robbed so many decent trade unionists of their right to earn a living.
He is also a veteran of battles against the kind of right-wing gangster trade unionism that saw his former union – the notorious EETPU – kicked out of the TUC for sweetheart-dealing with some of the very bosses who were doing the blacklisting.
It was being forced out of construction that brought the west Londoner onto the railways and into RMT.