Bob Crow: Only the good die young

Olly New, a former RMT executive member and member of Left Unity in West London, pays tribute to Bob Crow

Bob’s dead.

I just can’t believe it.

It’s not just that he’s been a friend and comrade for 30 years, or that he was only 52, or even that he’s left such a huge hole to fill in RMT and working class politics. It’s just that he was always there, larger than life, leading from the front or supporting us.

He was always one of us and never considered himself anything else. He liked, supported, believed in and – whenever he could – empowered ordinary people. In his own mind he was a London Underground track worker doing a union job. Despite all the media poison, all their lies and attempts at character assassinations, most people were aware he didn’t have a flash lifestyle and his friends were other working people, not any sort of elite groups.

Because he was honest and true to himself and working people, the press always tried to suggest he was corrupt, or a bully, or out of touch. Apart from all the smears and venom, he had his life threatened many times. Once he was smashed on the head with an iron bar on his own doorstep. Another time reporters from the Scum newspaper blocked his way to work, stood on his feet and tried to provoke him, desperate to get an angry reaction they could misuse.

The press claimed he had a company car when he didn’t; they always, always lied about his wages. They followed him, they doorstepped him, they never admitted he was elected, or carried out instructions from the RMT, instead calling him a “union boss”. The truth is that strikes are discussed and called by the RMT’s elected executive (of which I was once a proud member) and Bob would not normally be involved or even present. But he fronted it up, that was the job. As far as Bob was concerned, all these lies and harassment were things he just had to put up with, it showed he (and the RMT) were doing things right.

Bob led from the front on politics. When the last Labour government started to carry on from where the Tories had left off, even privatising London Underground, RMT supported other socialist candidates and was expelled by Labour. RMT stopped sponsoring MPs like Prescott who were attacking our members, instead supporting only those MPs who agreed to back key union policies. Members understood this – after all, who wants to pay people to privatise you?

Bob got the RMT to support TUSC and No2EU. The EU has been and is directly organising privatisation of transport, restructuring of railways and reduction of safety standards along with enforcing contracting out and casualisation. So Bob’s view was to fight it.

For years Bob kept up a gruelling pace of visiting union meetings across Britain and around the world, while simultaneously staying on top of developments in the union organisation, dealing with internal and external conflicts and problems and loads of other stuff.

In the few hours since he died, hundreds of union members have been posting tributes and photos of Bob in their workplace or branch meeting. The same in the broader movement. Everyone has got a story to tell about our much loved and departed comrade.

With Labour adopting Tory policies and most union leaders being hesitant or hamstrung, Bob Crow was one of the few major figures to stand up for socialism. And now he’s left us a massive gap to fill. I have always been proud of RMT and we have some fantastic fighters and organisers, but I can’t see any one person filling that big gap. We will all have to try and do it together.

Olly New

Some Bobisms:
”Fear is contagious, but not as contagious as courage.”
“If you fight you may lose, if you don’t fight you will lose.”
“The only people who don’t make mistakes are people who don’t do anything.”