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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.
Howard Beckett, assistant general secretary of Unite, is among those vying to replace Len McCluskey
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Bob Crow, the late boss of the RMT transport union, was undoubtedly a controversial figure.
London commuters late for work due to seemingly endless Tube strikes would curse his name. Politicians and journalists who clashed with the left-wing firebrand would call him a “dinosaur” or, owing to his whopping £142,000 salary, a “champagne socialist”.
But when Crow died suddenly in 2014, it was notable how tributes came from not just those sympathetic to left-wing politics but from across the political spectrum.
WE IN the in the Musicians’ Union (MU) find ourselves facing bleak conclusions when it comes to the state of things they are not good but it’s not like we have any other choice.
That bleakness is underlined by the prospect of an industrial nightmare ahead of us, with the West End dropping musicians for the sake of profits, education being cut by 50 per cent and gigs still being a tentative dream because of the pandemic.
So how on earth do we remedy this? What can be done?
Throughout the past 10-12 years, as a result of austerity, there have been dogmatic attacks on the trade union movement as a whole. They have had to assume an even more defensive position than had already been adopted thanks to New Labour and Thatcherite policies, which saw the unions drift from significance.