Mick Hall with a an obituary on the late trade union leader, Bob Crowe. It initially featured in Organized Rage on 11 March 2014.The death of Bob Crowe is not only a personally tragedy to his family and friends but a major setback for the Labour movement. It was not for nothing Bob was hated by the ruling classes and especially the neo liberal elite. For he epitomised all they hate and fear, a class conscious worker who had enough confidence to understand there is a better way.
As a trade union militant he was at the top of of the tree. He understood perfectly there is a time to negotiate and a time to shake the tree. The trick he perfected was when shaking it you do not have to bring it crashing to the ground, unsettling its roots is often enough. Time and again he won wages and working conditions for his members which were denied other workers due to their union leaders timidity.
He also understood working class people will never achieve the true benefits of their labour without a socialist political party which fights for their best interests in the same tenacious way the Tories represent the ruling classes. He believed the LP was long past its sell by date, and having been filleted by the Blairites of its socialist roots and democratic structures it was beyond repair. For the trade unions to continue to finance the LP was having the opposite of what is intended.
A new party of the working class was needed and as an interim measure he helped found the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition which is standing candidates in this May's local elections. The one thing Bob wasn't was a hypocrite; he was not prepared to call for a vote for the LP when he felt it worked against the working classes best interest. Once bitten twice shy, and after the criminal endeavours of Tony Blair's administration, which had the parliamentary majority to make the UK a more fair and equitable nation yet stuck rigidly to a Thatcherite line as far as the law and trade unions were concerned.
Bob Crowe was a working class hero to his core, in his political beliefs, his culture and his lifestyle. You could not get a cigarette paper between the man and his class. When he stood alongside RMT members on a picket line he fitted in like a leather glove. Clothes were important to Bob, but one of the suited clones he was not. He understood there is nothing more revealing than a trade unionist who becomes a full time official and then differentiates from those he represents by the manner of his bourgeois dress. (Jack Dromey springs to mind)
Channel 4 journalist Paul Mason tweeted a memory about Bob that sums him up well:
on night he was elected leader of RMT (2002) he refused to come on Newsnight, or even to phone, as was down the pub with RMT members.
Bob Crowe unlike far to many trade union bureaucrats during the Blair years knew where his loyalties lay. It was one of the reasons why the mainstream media hated him living in the same housing association home he had lived in all his married life. It was why they mocked him for being a Millwall supporter, and castigated him for taking a family holiday in Brazil.
If he had accepted the hospitality of a Russian oligarch like George Osborne and Peter Mandelson presumably that would have been fine.
There is a great video clip of Bob telling Boris Johnson he can stick his proposed cuts to the London Underground's booking offices up his arse, and within a week they were off the table.
In Boris Johnson's class prejudiced mind, the leader of the RMT was a working class thug, whom he would soon 'bring to heal.' To Bob, Johnson was an upper middle class Tory toff with a slippery tongue who lacked common decency, having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and who was engaged in a vicious class war in the hope of turning the clock back to the 19th Century.
The differences between the two men were unbridgeable, one of them had real substance, the other a man of straw with friends in high places who believes lies and deceit are the way to get on in life.
Rest in peace Comrade
Mick,
ReplyDelete'Bob Crowe was a working class hero to his core, in his political beliefs, his culture and his lifestyle.You could not get a cigarette paper between the man and his class.'
I wonder to what extent that is true given his salary was £145,000?
Tony Benn Dies
ReplyDeleteVery very good. I was a hero of mine, I know that. Robert what has his salary got to do with his principles, culture and lifestyle and for the record, £145,000 was the total figure after the union paid his membership, his salary was around £89k.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you want him to do, give it away? Would you. He was brilliant in his position, simply brilliant. I think you are listening to much to the numerous right wing media outlets, son.
Tony Benn another hero passed away, been a bad week for the left.very bad.
James,
ReplyDelete'I was a hero of mine,'
A very unfortunate freudian slip James where one has decided to approach the matter in an antagonistic fashion.
'What would you want him to do, give it away? Would you. He was brilliant in his position, simply brilliant. I think you are listening to much to the numerous right wing media outlets, son.'
His salary was a matter of public record as was his claim to being a 'Communist Socialist'. If you are blind to the incompatibility of the two I am not. It is not something I arrived at through media outlet. The misalignment between the principle claimed and that practiced hardly needs drawn to the eye by the Daily Mail.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteI see where you are coming from with the antagonistic approach. Mr self appointed grammar police. lol
Maybe, I overstepped the mark and called you son, as a figure of speech. I should have been more sensitive to the securities and insecurities that others have on cyberspace.
Now, that firmly placed to one side you have intrigued me into seeking your 'interpretation' of the following part of the sentence.
" his claim to being a 'Communist Socialist". If you are blind to the incompatibility of the two I am not.
OK.
How another man can question another own personal claim on his own political conventions in this case as Bob Crowe being a "Communist- Socialist" interests me greatly.
May, I ask for your interpretation please? In this case, I just may be blind as you indicate to the incompatibility of the two, in which case, please inform.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteAnd for the record, "I was a hero of mine".
LOL.
I saw Bob Crow speak many times, particularly when the Iraq War was starting up. He was real deal regardless of his salary. A very articulate person indeed, and knew his brief better than those opposing him. I never heard him speak on economics, he just cared about his workers, so he didn't jar like some others can.
ReplyDeleteJames,
ReplyDelete"And for the record, "I was a hero of mine".
They say never meet your heroes, they'll only disappoint!
'How another man can question another own personal claim on his own political conventions in this case as Bob Crowe being a "Communist- Socialist" interests me greatly.'
If we were dealing with privately held opinion that would not be readily questionable. However where one self identifies, as in this instance with a political philosophy, and that conviction is publically professed it presents itself as a pretty straight forward process of comparing the profession with what is practised.
We have touched on Bob Crowe's salary but let's drill down a little further. How much of that salary was derived from 'capital' gains realised from the RMT's investments in the London Stock Exchange?