Arthur Scargill

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Say what you like about Barmy Arthur Scargill, but I don't recall him meeting a pro-Putin warlord or posing in a fur hat with an assault ...

Say what you like about Barmy Arthur. He may have taken Moscow Gold during the miners’ strike and hosted Russian delegates at TUC conferences, but I don’t remember him flying to Ukraine or posing in a fur hat with an assault rifle, like some of Lynch’s lieutenants. The railways, too, have had billions thrown at them by a government in full drunken sailor mode. The same should apply to the rail unions, who are cynically staggering their strikes to cause maximum disruption. Neither does Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, either, judging by the fact that a couple of dozen Labour MPs joined Scargill on the rail workers’ picket lines this week. If it takes six months to train a new workforce, or import one, it will be a price worth paying. The rail unions may think they are invincible. These were arcane working practices which dated back to Caxton, and gave the print unions a stranglehold on newspaper production. Ostensibly, the dispute was in protest at plans to close a few loss-making coal mines. Any attempt by management to actually make them do the job they were paid for was greeted by an immediate strike. To be honest, I’d never heard of Mick Lynch until recently. I’m reminded of Kinnock lamenting that in Liverpool, under Degsy Hatton’s Militant Tendency, a Lay-ber council was sending out redundancy notices via a local cab firm. Overmanning is so rife that it takes as many as nine people to change a light socket.