'The public may have gained the impression (which he wishes to convey) that Mick Lynch of the RMT is the voice of the organised working class.
The truth is not so grand. Mr Lynch, who wraps himself in the same ideological anorak as Jeremy Corbyn, is of Irish descent and a great admirer of James Connolly, the IRA revolutionary and trade union leader. One of Connolly’s obsessions was the unity of all labour in all disputes: “The capitalist cannot be successfully fought … unless we recognise that all classes of workers should recognise their common interests …[so] that an employer engaged in a struggle with his workpeople should be made taboo or tainted, that no other workers should co-operate in helping to keep his business growing…that he should, in effect, be put outside the pale of civilisation, and communication with him should be regarded as being as deadly a crime as correspondence with an enemy in war time.”
This one-out, all-out doctrine is not working for Mr Lynch, not even within the rail industry. The clerical TSSA union settled with Network Rail on Thursday. In an interestingly tetchy interview with Mishal Husain on the Today programme on Wednesday, he dismissed her point that the union Unite had also settled with management by telling her that it has a mere 100 members in the industry. This was misleading: Mr Lynch failed to mention that these select few are the electrical control-room operators. If they walk out, no electric train can run.
Besides, although Mr Lynch still commands a majority of those who vote in his union, that support is now declining because of his hard line. If Sir Keir Starmer was still feeling wobbly about not backing Mr Lynch, then the sight of him picketing with Mr Corbyn this week will have settled that question. If Rishi Sunak fears that Mr Lynch has the backing of the floating voter on the 7.45, he should reconsider.'