Mick Lynch is the commerce union icon who practically wasn’t. Leaving college at 16 to coach as an apprentice electrician, he labored in development till being blacklisted for his union actions. Unable to seek out work within the constructing commerce, in 1993 he took a job at Eurostar and have become concerned with the RMT. Development’s loss was to be the labour motion’s acquire.
Lynch was elected common secretary of RMT in 2021, and a yr later, the UK’s first nationwide railway strike since 1989 catapulted him into the general public eye. He rapidly turned the face of a revitalised commerce union motion. Greater than that, to his supporters – like those that purchased T-shirts along with his face on them – he turned the combative, unapologetic working-class chief the left has been lacking.
On Thursday, Lynch introduced his retirement, leaving the duty of representing the transport union’s 80,000 members to somebody new. His reputation is in no small half as a result of he has been a fighter. “This union has been by way of a whole lot of struggles lately,” he mentioned in his retirement announcement. “I consider that it has solely made it stronger, regardless of all the percentages.”
In his quick tenure, these struggles have been fixed. There was the sacking by P&O Ferries of 786 UK seafarers through Zoom, earlier than “handcuff-trained safety, some carrying balaclavas” marched the crew off the ship. The union fought a marketing campaign towards ticket workplace closures in England that compelled the Tory authorities right into a U-turn, and is now combating the same battle in Scotland. Much less well-known however equally very important has been the union’s wrestle to finish outsourcing throughout the rail community, which noticed cleaners out on strike all through 2022.
Underneath Lynch’s stewardship, the RMT was instrumental within the combat towards Tory minimal service ranges rules, which sought to severely prohibit strike motion within the public sector. Labour has now repealed these rules, scrapping them earlier than they’d ever been used. Their speedy disappearance could make it simple to overlook that they posed an existential risk to employees’ rights. “Meek compliance with this laws,” Lynch warned, can be “the highway to oblivion for this motion.”
3:46After which there’s the nationwide rail dispute itself, which Lynch referred to as a “wholesale assault on the rail business” by the Tory authorities. It ended after a yr, with a settlement that he admitted was “not an incredible deal”, however one which he argued was the very best that his members might hope for, in strained circumstances.
Lynch can be the primary to say that his job was to be accountable to RMT members, not journalists, however his persuasive, candid argumentative type received him acolytes far past transport employees. Explaining his union’s industrial disputes within the media, he was routinely confronted with broadcasters and MPs who might barely conceal their contempt. By no means fazed, Lynch calmly dismantled TV and radio pundits one after the other, typically making his case explicitly by way of class battle. “I need a settlement to this dispute,” he advised then Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis. “I can’t do this with a backbench MP who’s simply realized it off a script.”
When confronted with Piers Morgan’s fixation on why Lynch had the bald Thunderbirds villain The Hood as his Fb profile image, he shot again: “Is that the extent we’re at? Don’t you wish to discuss concerning the points quite than a little bit vinyl puppet from the Sixties?” He referred to as junior minister Chris Philp a liar on air 15 instances, advised Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley that he was speaking “outstanding twaddle”, and requested Kay Burley if a superbly jovial picket line outdoors Euston station “appears to be like just like the miners’ strike?”.
It was these interviews that established Lynch’s place as that uncommon factor: a distinguished, in style leftwing chief. And in turning daft questions on their head, he was in a position to upend their primary premises: why ought to his members have to simply accept below-inflation pay settlements? Why will we hear endlessly from “atypical individuals” inconvenienced by strike motion, however not the atypical individuals hanging for respectable pay and situations? Why is poverty solely flawed till employees resolve to do one thing about it?
When responding to disingenuous pundits and interviewers, Lynch constantly set out core commerce union rules: that the office is a crucial web site of wrestle, that organised labour can and needs to be political and that when you’re not bargaining, you’re begging. To individuals of an older technology, these rules might sound apparent. However for younger individuals, having a common secretary talking like this did essential work to demystify why commerce unions exist, and what they will obtain.
It’s essential to not overstate the affect of 1 man in a motion based on collective motion; and in any case, he solely represented a small portion of Britain’s workforce. However I used to be struck by a waitress I met who, after her colleague was unfairly sacked, made tens of pretend restaurant bookings for New 12 months’s Eve to spite her employer. Once I requested her what gave her the concept, she advised me: “I did it for Mick.”
When Lynch took the RMT union’s high job 4 years in the past, I doubt he had any concept that his time period would coincide with the largest outbreak of business motion the UK has seen since Margaret Thatcher – nor that he’d retire having gained cult standing. Every time I’ve met him, he’s struck me as somebody bemused by the next he’s amassed. I’ve heard him say greater than as soon as that there are many individuals who might do what he does. Now we’ve obtained the possibility to see if he’s proper.
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Polly Smythe is labour motion correspondent at Novara Media