Britain is facing the largest series of rail strikes the country has seen for 30 years, with around 40,000 members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) walking out for three days in a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
Staff employed by Network Rail and 13 train operators downed tools on Tuesday to demand improved terms, leaving usually-bustling stations across the UK deserted as commuters packed the roads to get to work by car and bus while others returned to home working as they had in the pandemic.
Talks resume on Wednesday but further industrial action is planned for Thursday and Saturday in the event that no agreement can be found, threatening to bring chaos to a wide range of events, from Glastonbury Festival to the by-elections at Tiverton & Honiton and Wakefield, the England vs New Zealand test match in Leeds, Armed Forces Day celebrations and gigs by the Rolling Stones and Elton John.
The man at the centre of the dispute is RMT general-secretary Mick Lynch, who has called the strikes a “mess created by [transport secretary] Grant Shapps and government policy” and insisted his members had no alternative as they pursue a seven per cent pay rise in line with the escalating cost of living.
“Railway workers have been treated appallingly and despite our best efforts in negotiations, the rail industry, with the support of the government, has failed to take their concerns seriously,” he has said.
“We have a cost of living crisis, and it is unacceptable for railway workers to either lose their jobs or face another year of a pay freeze when inflation is at 11.1 per cent and rising. Our union will now embark on a sustained campaign of industrial action which will shut down the railway system.”
To promote and explain his cause, the veteran trade unionist has carried out a media blitz in recent days, during which he has served up a well-deserved roasting to some of Britain’s most prominent news anchors and politicians.
Speaking to Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Mr Lynch was asked whether the strikes amounted to “class war” and he answered, very reasonably: “There’s a class aspect to everything in the economy.
“There are lower paid people and there are wealthy people in this society and what’s wrong in this society is that there is an imbalance between the people that do the work to keep this country going, who create the wealth of our civilisation and don’t get a fair share of that wealth because…
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