The RMT’s latest industrial action reveals both the problems and the potential power of Britain’s trade-union movement
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskBritons should expect to see more of this visage. From June 21st Britain’s railways are in effect due to shut down, after thelaunched the sector’s biggest bout of industrial action in three decades. The strikes will all-but close the network for a week. Cuts worth £2bn are coming to Britain’s railway budget, bringing probable job losses, service alterations and changes to working conditions.
Bigger unions were also preoccupied by their fractious relationship with the Labour Party. Jack Jones, a former trade unionist, once said of their relationship with Labour: “Murder, yes; divorce, never.” By contrast, thedisaffiliated years ago. Now other unions are beginning to pursue a more distant relationship. Unite’s new general secretary, Sharon Graham, promised less “Westminster politics” when running for office.
Changing commuting patterns also weaken the rail unions’ leverage. Leisure travel has recovered to pre-pandemic levels but commuters are moving around less. Inconveniencing people on the way to Glastonbury has less impact than ruining the week of City workers. Likewise, strike-breaking has never been so easy. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher’s government spent years plotting how to counter miners, stockpiling coal and preparing for metaphorical and physical fights.
And Britons may sympathise with demands to keep pay level with inflation. The Conservatives have swung from promising a high-wage economy to a much less popular position: warning against pay rises to ward off a potential wage-price spiral. Union barons are less unpopular than they were: a plurality of Britons think trade unions have a positive impact. Only the over-65s, who remember the 1970s and 1980s, have a negative view of them.
Get it wrong, however, and the results for workers and their industries may be dire. The history of Britain’s trade-union movement is one of formidable organisations brought low by hubris and misjudgment. Britain’s miners once seemed impregnable. An advert in 1975 for a career in the coal industry showed miners kayaking, shooting and skiing after work. It ended with the slogan: “People will always need coal.” Mr Lynch has bet people will always choose the train.
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