RMT Tube Strikes – Act of Defiance

The British media, led by the Russian oligarch owned London Evening Standard, describes in rabid terms, how the RMT industrial campaign to halt the closures of the Underground ticket offices is a disgrace to the city of London. The paper could not be more wrong. On the contrary, the RMT action is a creditable act of defiance against not just another TFL act of public service vandalism, but an act of defiance against so much of what is being done to modern London; zero hour contracts, poverty wages, unaffordable rents, and a chronic and ever worsening housing crisis. What the RMT action stoically demonstrates, is that despite every viscous cut to public services and benefits that working class Londoners are being forced to endure, we are not yet all cowered and beaten.

So rather than lambast the RMT and its members, London’s only capital wide newspaper should be championing their cause, because not only are they seeking to resist yet another dehumanising cut, but that they are showing the whole city, nay, the whole country, that the city is not yet on its knees and in thrall to oligarchs, sheiks and assorted money laundering gangsters.

A compromise on this issue is easily imagined but compromise is not on Boris Johnson’s Tory mind. No, he has another agenda altogether, and that is to break the RMT and thus enhance his own Tory leadership credentials. Imagining himself as the next Margaret Thatcher taking on and crushing the might of the evil union barons, Johnson is in no mood for compromise. So the RMT, finding themselves unexpectedly without their charismatic and battle hardened leader, have little choice other than to withdraw their labour in pursuit, not of personal gain, but of the preservation of a much needed public facility the humble ticket office operative. Anyone who has been a befuddled tourist in foreign climes would know immediately how useful a manned ticket office can be, and how absolutely infuriating an unmanned ticket office is. You can’t ask questions to a ticket machine!

Are the RMT tactics the best available? Well that is another question. They might like to consider the militant actions of the Melbourne tram drivers a few decades back who, rather than pull strikes that served partly to alienate the general public as well as hurt their own members financially, they would go to work but refuse to collect fares. A double whammy. The action could go on indefinitely and the public stayed very much on side. The RMT might like to consider similar such guerrilla actions. Certainly every 21st century industrial action should have a public relations component. Get the public on side and the winning line suddenly looks a lot closer.

Are the RMT being somewhat Luddite in their refusal to accept unmanned ticket offices? I think not. We have already witnessed the loss of bus conductors and driverless trains are already here. Even driverless buses are on the horizon. Closing the ticket offices is just the next step in making London’s transport system totally automated. That will no doubt make the system cheaper to run but will it be a better, more humane system? We are not yet robo-sapiens and until that bleak day arrives, a city is best served by having a well- trained, well-motivated team of transport workers who can deal with the millions of every day queries plus to be on hand to deal with the inevitable array of security and safety issues. A city ought to be more than just a collection of high rise finance towers, gated estates, unlived in riverside apartments, and with the ubiquitous corporate coffee shop chains dotted in between. The RMT’s action, whether they know it or not, is really a statement about the future of all cities; a soulless city run by automatons, or a city run by people for people. If it costs a few quid more, so be it.

Finally, to the poor inconvenienced workers and tourists. Take a bus, take a bike or take a walk. That way you actually get to see a slice of the city that you definitely won’t see from the subterranean tunnels of London’s tube system. Turn every inconvenience into an opportunity and while busing, cycling or walking, take time to reflect on the type of global city you actually won’t to live in. You may just find yourself in support of the RMT and recycling your Evening Standard straight into the nearest bin.

And if the Evening Standard is so worried about the loss of revenue to the City of London and the West End, they might like to start a campaign against corporate tax avoidance and City of London money laundering. They could start with the Lebedev family and investigate how it so suddenly accumulated all its family wealth? Remember, Behind ever great fortune is a great crime!

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