In Memory of Bob Crow
Posted: 12/03/2014 | Author: The Political Idealist | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bob Crow, Labour, London Underground, Politics, RMT, socialism, trade unions, TUC, TUSC |Leave a commentOn Monday night, the outspoken General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) trade union, Bob Crow, died at the age of 52. It is believed that he died of a heart attack.
The self-styled “socialist communist” led the RMT for 12 years, during which the union grew threefold; went on several strikes (particularly by drivers and staff on the London underground); disaffiliated from the Labour Party and established the No2EU: Yes to Democracy coalition for the European elections. Crow would have been top on the London list of No2EU in this year’s elections.
But Crow was so much more than the union man who shut the Tube for a few days every couple of years and tinkered about with on the fringes of the Left. He was a working class Londoner who worked tirelessly for the 80,000 workers who elected him. He absorbed much of the public anger the RMT’s strikes caused, with the media more keen to work against him and portray him as a dinosaur than to offer an objective account of his actions. Balding loudmouthed men with east London accents are not supposed to shake the Establishment, so it responded by making him into a hate figure. It has yet to be explained to me, for example, why Crow was a champagne socialist for having annual pay of £90,000. That figure is about twice that of the pay his train driver members receive, and on a par with an upper-level manager. That’s about the level a successful general secretary of a medium-sized union should receive.
Crow could not have been as effective as he was without being strong. He had- and needed- thicker skin than any MP. He was attacked as belonging to a bygone era of heavy-handed militant unions dominated by dictatorial leaders. But that could not have been further from the truth: Crow was acutely aware that strikes had a cost to them, and any industrial action taken by the RMT had overwhelming support from his members. If Crow did not live in the modern age, how come he could get what his members wanted when negotiating with employers? Why is the RMT thriving when, even as workers face the biggest threats to our livelihoods in generations, other unions have to work hard to grow? Bob was a great trade unionist and he knew it.
Bob Crow might have had healthy self-esteem. Anybody so frequently criticised would have needed that. Yet he always struck me as a polite, respectful man. Passionate about his cause, but fair to his opponents. Society has lost a powerful working class voice, a socialist and a man of the people.
