YEARS AGO, when the right-wing ruled the
roost throughout the labour movement, complacency, opportunism and
class-collaboration were the order of the day. Faction leaders spent their time
advancing their own careers, and those of their followers, and did their best
to marginalise or isolate any move from the grass-roots that threatened to rock
the boat.
The days when it could be said that all
full-time officers are useless but some are more useless than others has now
long gone. This was largely due to the efforts of rank-and-file movements to
build militant unions with fighting leaders at the helm. Arthur Scargill was one of them. Bob Crow was
another.
Bob Crow, the
general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) was cut down
by a fatal heart attack on Tuesday. He was just 52. A few weeks ago he was on the picket lines defending
London Underground workers jobs in a two-day strike that shut down most of the
network and forced management back to the negotiating table. Now his members,
and millions more in the wider movement, are mourning the loss of an
outstanding trade union leader.
Bob Crow came
from the East End of London and left school at 16 to join the P-Way teams that
maintain and clear the tracks and cuttings on London Underground. He came from
a communist family and he followed their footsteps into the old Communist Party
and a life of militant work within the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), the
core of what has become the RMT. This was the path that led him to his historic
election to the fore of RMT in 2002.
The unions are
full of “former communists” who used the movement to help them climb up the
greasy pole and then dump it when it was no longer any further use to their
careers. Crow, on the other hand, left the Communist Party of Britain in 1995
to join Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party.
He later went
his own way to found the No2EU platform to stand in the European elections with
RMT support. But Crow never abandoned his core beliefs which he called
“communist-socialist” and this was evident in the causes he supported which
went far beyond the confines of the transport industry.
Bob Crow was, first
and foremost, a union leader who ably deployed his union’s industrial strength
in dealing with the railway companies and London Underground. The RMT defended
and improved the pay and conditions of its members across the board and
membership soared under his stewardship, making it one of Britain's fastest
growing trade unions.
Passengers on
London Underground also benefitted from the improvement of safety throughout
the system fought for and won by the RMT under his leadership.
But he will also
be remembered for his campaigning work in the broader movement in support of
Cuba, Venezuela and the Palestinian people. He was on the streets helping the
campaign to kick the fascist BNP out of Dagenham. He was a strident opponent of
the European Union and a constant thorn in the flesh of the Labour leaders whom
he derided for their constant sell-outs and betrayals.
Crow was frank,
honest and open to everyone he worked with. He believed in what he was doing
and he was afraid of nothing. He led by example and always worked for the unity
of the class in all the struggles against the ruling class that he despised.
Now the time has
come to take up the banner Bob Crow upheld throughout his life to advance the
working class, trade union rights and the struggle for socialism in Britain.
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