In 2010, he famously told The Guardian newspaper that he “couldn’t care less if we had no strikes in 10 years, or we had a million strikes. Our members vote in a secret ballot, and I respect their wishes.” The real question according to Crow is, “Why do people join a trade union? Why was it that in 1978 we had 12 and a half million union members in this country compared to now where we’ve got six and a half million? Why did people join in 78?” The answer he says is, “Cos the unions had teeth. People join a trade union because they are after job security. You join to get the best possible terms and conditions of employment. And if your terms and conditions are going to be attacked, if your job’s going to be attacked, then you’ve got two options really: sit back and let them just attack you, or stand up and fight. One thing’s for sure: if you sit back, they will carry on walking over you. But one thing’s for certain: that the only way that you can resist those attacks is by standing up and fighting. And that’s what a trade union’s about. What’s the point in being a trade union if you ain’t going to defend your members?”


The planned ‘super strikes’ on the 30th November have been billed the largest industrial action for a generation but their current impact upon the wider public is likely to be muted. By comparison, the London Underground strikes in June last year which are estimated to have cost the economy over £50m a day. As the strike action approaches,


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Crow has ramped up the rhetoric, “workers have only got any strength when they show solidarity. If there is a concerted effort by this government to attack workers in all different parts of society, then my belief is that if one group of workers are taking action on one day and another group of workers are taking action on another day, that we should coordinate that resistance to defend working men and working women.” Crow’s strong words are not simply directed at the government, public and business, he is equally damning in his criticism of his colleagues at the TUC, “I want to see the TUC in every single dispute we have. Not to sit and say the rights and wrongs of the agreements but to say to which ever Union is in struggle ‘how can we help you to defeat the bosses”


Whilst happy to share his thoughts on government policy, Bob Crow is seemingly impervious to discussion about the responsibility of trade unions to the wider economy. Their role he believes is simply to defend members’ terms and conditions. “If you sit down with the employer and the employer’s reasonable and say you know not enough money’s coming in, we need to produce more or produce less - whatever the circumstances may be - that’s fine. But when you arbitrarily turn around and say there’ll be no pay rise for two years for public sectors but the bankers still get their bonuses, your pensions are going to be under attack but they can still put


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