A note on Bob

I’ve not been able to bring myself to properly read any of the stuff about Bob Crow in the press today. Not Decca Aitkenhead’s Guardian interview from February bumped to the homepage in the wake of the news, or Christian Wolmar’s no doubt very even-handed obit in the same paper, nor any of the other appraisals of this ‘controversial character’ elsewhere in the mainstream media (CERTAINLY not the one in the Evening bloody Standard, who I notice, from the quick cursory look I just took at their site, couldn’t resist printing the picture of him on his hols in Brazil).

The main reason I’ve not been able to face any of this is because, like loads of people, I am just gutted. I know why Bob Crow was a great union leader and a great political figure and I don’t particularly feel the need to be reminded of what we’ve just lost. But I was also put off by the idiotic language in the teasers for these pieces. Here’s one: “RMT trade union leader who, despite his apparent militancy always saw his first task as improving the lot of his members”. And here’s another one: “Bob Crow was the belligerent RMT leader whose tough tactics were loved by union members but hated by commuters.”

Both these quotes point to the ways that those in the media willfully misunderstand – and misrepresent – what it means to be a good trade union leader and what unions actually are. The first quote does it by putting Crow’s “apparent militancy” in opposition to his commitment to his members, when it would perhaps be truer to say that the two fed into each other. The second quote pulls that classic media trick of representing union members as some weird, otherly breed apart, nothing like ordinary folk. Here such folk are represented by “commuters”,though it is often “taxpayers” – and the truth is of course that there is often significant overlap between these categories.

Obviously one of the best things about Bob Crow was the way that he responded to this bullshit. He’d challenge it or ignore it as appropriate and never be defined by it. He would go about the business of getting better pay for his members or defending their jobs without trying to make any of this palatable to some projected middle England audience. He had a brilliantly clear understanding of what his role was, of struggle and of how capitalism worked, which meant he never wasted time worrying about popularity in irrelevant quarters. Want something? Then you need to force the bastards to give it to you. People don’t like it? Fuck ’em.

Of course, there are times when you need to win people over to your cause, to cajole, seduce, plead even. But more and more, in this absurd system that we’re living in, we need to fight, to say “I’m sorry, but no”. Bob Crow understood power and he knew all this, but he was only one man and others do know it too. The RMT members who voted for him knew it. Elsewhere, the Focus E15 Mothers know it. 3 Cosas know it. Occupy Sussex know it, as do many other brilliant militant political campaigns, inside unions and outside them. Change does not, generally, involve politely asking for it and waiting patiently for it to be granted. It involves struggle and not chasing after some abstract idea of “approval”.

RIP Bob – you are an inspiration to us all.