Mick Lynch Tells Jacobin: The Working Class Is Back
Leader of Britain’s RMT railworkers’ union Mick Lynch has become the most prominent face of the fight against the ruling Tories. He talked to Jacobin about his socialism and republicanism and how class politics can build a broad front against all inequalities.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), attends a demonstration against the Conservative Party’s annual autumn conference in Birmingham, UK, on October 2, 2022. (Hollie Adams / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In late August, Bernie Sanders traveled to London. But he didn’t come to fraternize with bigwigs from Britain’s Labour Party or to do the media merry-go-round with its biggest broadcasters. He came to attend a trade union rally.
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) was leading the biggest national strike on Britain’s railways since 1989, and Sanders’s appearance at the “Save London Transport” event came at the back end of a summer of industrial action across Britain that has seen shipyard workers, postal workers, teachers, and even barristers on strike.
The wave of mobilization comes in response to a convergence of crises. According to the House of Commons Library, household energy bills in Britain increased by 54 percent in April and will rise again by 80 percent in October. Inflation has reached a forty-year high, and the soaring Consumer Price Index is predicted by Citibank to reach 18.6 percent. Food bank use has increased by 81 percent in five years.
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