It was in late June 2022, as the first national rail strikes began, that the RMT union leader, Mick Lynch, emerged as a standout political figure. He had conducted a series of spectacular television interviews, first with Piers Morgan, then Richard Madeley – both are renowned for taking on leftwing interviewees, and both were given short shrift by Lynch as he ridiculed their inane questioning and picked apart their anti-trade union stance.
Consequently, many labelled him a hero – even heralding him as an alternative opposition leader. He was forthright and frank in the way he spoke, and the message he conveyed was robust and radical. Just like Jeremy Corbyn between 2015 and 2019, Lynch became a totem of the promise of social democratic renewal.
The RMT general secretary undoubtedly won the media war during these initial skirmishes, as public opinion began to turn in favour of the union’s demands for fair pay and conditions in its concurrent battles with Network Rail and the train operators. But 18 months on, despite almost five weeks of strike action in total, that considerable soft power has not led to any significant concessions.
The agreement reached with Network Rail in March this year gave a “no strings” pay increase of up to 14.4% for the lowest-paid and 9% for the highest-paid staff over two years, with a pledge of no redundancies until January 2025. The deal failed to make up adequate ground for workers who had suffered a pay freeze in 2021, with the Guardian reporting that the agreement “barely catches the coat tails of inflation”. It was even pointedly described by Lynch himself as “not a great deal”.
Despite the success of stopping the ticket office closures in October, the agreement with the train operating companies was also not great for RMT members: a backdated pay rise of 5% for the 2022/2023 financial year, and thus a wage cut in real terms. And that’s without taking into account the 18 months it took to get to this point and the weeks of wages that were sacrificed in the process of striking. Meanwhile, the job security part of the deal – which promises no compulsory redundancies – lasts only until December 2024. And the negotiation over changes to working practices will now take place on a company-by-company basis, so the fight to maintain members’ terms and conditions will be fragmented. While Lynch continues to be the most effective media performer within the union movement, there have been clear shortcomings in his political strategy and industrial tactics.
“Modernisation” of the railways has long been a quest for Labour and Tory governments. For them it meant cutting costs by introducing flexible working practices. For the unions, this translates as fewer workers doing more work as a result of redundancies and degraded terms and conditions. The opportunity to go ahead with modernisation was sensed by the government when it indemnified the rail operators during the pandemic to keep the trains running while passenger numbers plummeted. The bargain was that operators would be guaranteed a profit, but the government would accrue greater control over the operators – and an ability to veto any agreements negotiated with the RMT.
A long confrontation between the government-backed rail operators and the RMT had thus been brewing since the pandemic. Lynch and the RMT would have known that an attack on rail workers’ jobs and terms and conditions was in the pipeline. And yet the RMT did not establish a national strike fund, despite having stocks and shares worth more than £25m.
RMT members were reluctant to take more than sporadic one- or two-day strikes because of the loss of wages involved, which a strike fund could have helped to ameliorate. By contrast, the Unite union set up a multimillion-pound national strike fund in 2012, which the union has begun to use more since the election of Sharon Graham to general secretary, contributing to a high level of strike success.
Strike fund or no strike fund, the RMT’s strategy had to go beyond the immediate financial pain it could cause the rail operators. This was because the government’s financial support had shielded the operators from the bottom line-thinking that would normally force them to the table. Instead, the strikes had to be de facto political strikes, aimed at destabilising an already imploding government so that it would concede by instructing the train operating companies to settle on terms acceptable to the RMT.
During his many media appearances, Lynch repeatedly made the point that it was the government refusing to settle the strike, and the rail operators who were doing their bidding. But to voice the truth is never enough. Victory would have required a broad coalition of interests to be formed in advance of the strikes beginning. What did happen was that the Enough is Enough campaign was launched in August 2022. Bringing together an alliance of strident leftwing voices from the labour movement, including Lynch, the CWU general secretary, Dave Ward, and the Labour MP Zarah Sultana, the campaign was met with considerable enthusiasm but never developed beyond a series of well-attended rallies. By the beginning of 2023, Enough is Enough was all but defunct.
Mick Lynch’s status as a magnetic leftwing figurehead is undeniable. But he has arguably failed to stave off a government attack on rail workers under the guise of modernisation. Has he delivered for his members? Were there missteps that could have been avoided? Even if the court of public opinion understandably remains on his side, the jury itself is very much still out.
Gregor Gall is a visiting professor of industrial relations at the University of Leeds, and author of Mick Lynch: The Making of a Working-Class Hero
