The secret of Mick Lynch’s success

There are plenty of losers from this week’s railway strikes, not least the legions of commuters who found themselves stuck. But one clear winner is emerging: RMT boss Mick Lynch.

Lynch has been feted for his straight-talking media appearances and composure under fire. He’s clever, witty and funny. It also helps that he has made fools out of some of those media darlings some British viewers love to hate. It’s surely only a matter of time before he pops up on Have I Got News For You.

But perhaps his greatest asset isn’t what he offers but who he isn’t. What sets him apart is how different he is from Bob Crow, the firebrand former general secretary of the RMT.

Crow was, famously, the combative last but one leader of the RMT. To his colleagues and friends, he was a warm and funny person, but that is not what the public saw. By and large they saw a snarling, belligerent bulldog of a union leader, a self-confessed socialist who refused to give up living in his council house because ‘I was born in one and I'll die in one.’

I could understand where Crow, who died of a heart attack in 2014, was coming from. He was born in Epping (my parents lived there) and grew up in Hainault, Essex, a working-class London overspill near where I grew up. My wife briefly knew his daughter through work.

Like Lynch, he was bald, stocky and Cockney. A fighter who has risen through the ranks. But where Crow alienated many, Lynch has won over a fair few who would not necessarily be the kind to support left-wing union leaders.

Born within six months of each other, they followed similar paths to the leadership of their union having put in the long hours and hard graft 'on the tools' before moving into full-time union jobs.

Bob Crow was 40 when he succeeded Jimmy Knapp as general secretary on Valentine's Day in 2002 where he remained until his untimely death at the age of 52.

He was succeeded by Mick Cash, another Essex boy who retired in 2021 to be replaced by Mick Lynch. Those railway workers seem to love leaders with single syllable names.

By now Lynch was 59 and, perhaps, more experienced and cannier than his predecessors when it came to handling the media and a public who still considered public sector strikes to be an anachronism, a remnant from the 'bad old days'.

Crow had enjoyed playing up to a hard man image with his support of Millwall, owning a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. He once revealed that he was beaten unconscious with an iron bar by two men in his home on New Year's Day 2002, claiming 'hired muscle’ was responsible.

It helped cement an almost gangster-like image that was more like On The Waterfront than outside Hainault tube station.

But if Crow was Tony Soprano, then Lynch is Harold Shand, the Bob Hoskins character from The Long Good Friday. He is a slightly smaller, even cuddlier version with a sharp sense of humour, but nonetheless ruthless in his pursuit of getting what he wants.

Where Crow was defensive, Lynch is deflective. Where Crow openly admitted to growing up reading the Morning Star and was a former member of the Communist party, Lynch laughed and said 'I'm not a Marxist' when asked by Richard Madeley in an interview this week.

After praising him in these pages recently, I was reminded that amidst what seems like universal acclaim, there are still many who do not like Mick Lynch or what he stands for or what he is doing.

A female friend said he, like Crow, exemplified a type of masculinity that has dogged the public face of many unions over the years. Another accused me of being a Marxist simply because I appreciated his handling of awkward but often daft questioning on TV.

But while Lynch won’t win over everyone, the point still stands: the Tories are struggling to dish the dirt on a trade union leader who is more persuasive and savvier than Bob Crow ever was.