From
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...ights-bob-crow

RMT union’s new ‘moderate’ leader Mick Cash says ‘pick your fights’

With 80,000 members, the RMT is used to punching above its weight – but its
path since the death of Bob Crow is unclear

Gwyn Topham, transport correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 30 September 2014 19.03 BST

Mick Cash is tickled. A letter has arrived on the desk of the new general
secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union from Patrick
McLoughlin, the transport secretary, asking for a meeting at the earliest
opportunity.

Hours earlier, the same minister was on the Conservative party conference
stage denouncing Labour leader Ed Miliband for “obeying his paymasters� and
“letting the RMT call the shots� on the East Coast rail service.

The union, in fact long disaffiliated from Labour, is used to taking the
flak and punching above its weight. With 80,000 members, it is a fraction
of the size of some others, but its reputation is such that its previous
leader, the late Bob Crow, become the most recognised face of British trade
unionism.

At RMT HQ near Euston station in London, Crow’s presence looms large more
than six months since his sudden death at the age of 52: portraits and
memorabilia adorn the walls and a book of tributes and condolences remains
open in the reception.

But the boardroom underlines that the union’s history, in various guises,
long predates even its much-mourned leader. The great oval table, slightly
hewn down to fit, once sat National Union of Railwaymen leaders planning
the general strike of 1926. Shelves of leatherbound volumes hold detailed
ledgers and minutes of meetings going back a century: useful for Cash when
introducing himself to firms with whom the union is negotiating.

“I tell them we were here before them, and we’ll be here when they’re gone.
They don’t like that much.�

Cash, 54, served as a deputy to Crow (pictured below) for 12 years, and the
pair were said to be more similar in their outlook than early public
rhetoric appeared.

When Crow became general secretary in 2002, he was part of a rising tide of
hard-left leaders; the moderate Cash’s election a month later was reported
as a relief to the Labour government.

Cash now says: “Moderate is defined as a member of the Labour party? People
used to say I was a rightwinger. It’s easy to put tags on people. I still
have the same beliefs in getting things done and representing members.�

Cash, acting leader since March, was confirmed in charge with more than
half the votes in a field of five candidates last month. Cash then promised
“no deviation� from Crow’s strategy for a “fighting and militant union�.

But, he says: “I got taught early doors, pick your fights, and the thing
I’ve seen in the last 12 years is that’s what we do: we negotiate first, we
seek to get deals, but if we can’t we give our members the opportunity to
have their say.

“There is a danger people say we’ve got one trick in our box. But it wasn’t
like that under Bob and it certainly isn’t going to be under me.�

The prospect of further strikes in London over changes to the tube network
still looms, however. Cash will say only that strike action is “possible�;
but Transport for London (TfL) appears to have yielded little ground in
plans to make hundreds of staff redundant, and tensions appear to be
escalating.

“We’ve still got a situation where they plan to close every single ticket
office, which is mad – a really backward step and counterproductive.�

Despite TfL pledges, he says, there will be fewer staff on platforms and
5,000 workers displaced.

His members are looking to their own interests of course but, he says, they
genuinely don’t think the tube can run as well with cuts. “You either try
to stop what’s going on, or … If we don’t stand up for the tube network,
who is going to do it?�

London’s transport commissioner warned in a Guardian interview last week
that funding cuts risked social unrest in the capital. But, says Cash: “I
had to laugh when Peter Hendy talked about riots because people can’t get
access to jobs, and today they want to get rid of jobs employing Londoners,
and to cut the tube network.�

Cash says TfL will need to implement a further £4.5bn of coalition cuts and
says London mayor Boris Johnson is “an absolute disgrace�.

He says: “We should have a mayor in London who stands up for Londoners, not
just passing through austerity cuts – no matter which political party they
are coming from. There is an alternative.�

Cash is still in the Labour party, despite the union’s disaffiliation. He
has been a member since 1982, when the party backed the first strike he was
involved in. A photograph of a group of strikers from the time on the RMT
office walls features the young spiky-haired Cash, already a branch
secretary of the NUR, squinting into the sun.

But he describes Labour’s policy on rail as “very bizarre�, especially the
proposal to allow public sector companies to bid against private firms for
franchises. “It’s very timid and defies logic,� he says. “The travelling
public want the railways renationalised. Labour has a logic: they don’t
want to upset the business community.�

Cash joined British Rail in 1978, thinking he was going to be a porter, but
instead became a junior railwayman in the signal and telegraph department,
working on the track looking after signals on the southern end of the West
Coast line. “It was a closed shop. First thing that happened was that I had
to join the union and the pension fund: the two best decisions that were
ever made for me.�

He stayed at the Watford depot until joining the RMT full-time 24 years
later, and put down roots in the area.

He was born in a row of railway cottages in Basildon, Essex, the third
child of seven in a family of Irish Travellers from County Kildare.

His family background has had some colleagues speculating on the links with
American country legend Johnny Cash, who spent a year with another Cash
clan in neighbouring County Meath around the time of Cash’s birth, writing
his Irish anthem Forty Shades of Green. Cash – a Dire Straits fan – groans
and says: “You get some long lost Yank come over and write a song, and then
…�

He is also a football fan, if perhaps less fervent and more pragmatic than
the Millwall-loving Crow: first going to watch Watford FC with his future
wife in the late 1970s and later becoming a season ticket holder as a way
to spend time with his son.

How does he think he might cope with the kind of stick that his predecessor
attracted: followed on holiday, and subject to headlines describing him as
Britain’s most hated man.

“God only knows. I don’t know how Bob dealt with some of the stuff he dealt
with. Sometimes I’d see him after some of the things going on in the media
… bloody hell.� (Cash, incidentally, doesn’t live in a council house, a
fact about Crow that obsessed parts of the press.)

He says he learned a lot from Crow: “That door was always open. He had a
great way of communicating with people and getting them involved … very
pragmatic and very principled at the same time.�

But, he says: “Bob was unique. The way he presented himself and the RMT was
how he operated. I’ll have to find my way – and it won’t be just me. We’ve
got an army of full-time reps and officials out there. The reason we had
the profile was that we were out there fighting. That’s what we’ll continue
to do.�