A real fight for safety

Well, far be it from us to disappoint the serried ranks of sell-outs who carry the new Labour banner, but such has never been the case.

What Mr Crow has been responsible for is representing his members efficiently and publicly and demonstrating a level of care for the safety of both his members and members of the public that the rail bosses would do well to emulate.

He has also been responsible for building a growing and active membership and developing the union at a rate of knots, as a result of the clarity of the union's position and the preparedness of its officers to wade in in defence of its members.

And its members have responded with a will, taking action when required to defend their and the public's safety against the depradations of an industy that has been torn apart and thrown like a pile of bones to the pack of privateering wolves lurking for any vestige of profit, whatever the cost to the staff or the public.

For privatised rail behaves in a way traditional to capitalism, albeit one that we hoped was dying out. The managers of the industry assume the right to fly in the face of accepted safety practise at any time that they so wish in the cause of getting their own way.

They treat their workers in a manner so high-handed and patronising that, at times, one looks around for a character in a frock coat and a stovepipe hat, so Victorian are managers' attitudes.

Take for example, Metronet, the company which failed so dismally that it lost its contract and is now in the hands of administrators.

Far from the administrators bringing with them a sense of a new broom, they appear to have happily shrugged on the frock, coat, donned the topper and adopted the attitudes of their failed predecessors.

Ludicrously, they won't even guarantee that RMT members will have their jobs transferred to new operator TfL, much less that Metronet staff not already in the TfL pension scheme will be allowed to join it, or that members will receive the same free-travel facilities already enjoyed by all other TfL staff.

And it's not just the administrators of Metronet.

Further north, RMT members at the York electrical control room have had to start a five-day strike over Network Rail's unsafe plans to slash the number of operators by a third.

The company replaced the striking workers with uncertified managers boasting as little as six days' training on a job that requires years of experience, forcing workers at Morpeth, Leeds, Doncaster and Hitchen depots to invoke safety procedures and seek alternative work to handling 25,000-volt power lines which, being managed by untrained staff, were presenting rail workers and passengers alike with an unacceptable risk of electrocution.

No, far from being a pack of undisciplined strike-prone anarchists, Mr Crow and his members appear to be about the only sane voices to be heard in the industry at the moment.

They deserve our support, both in their immediate struggles and their long-term aim of bringing about a nationally owned, safely operated and efficient national rail network, rather than the chaotic profit-driven hotch-potch that passes for a transport system at the moment.