In defence of the Tube strike

Cycling 13 miles from north-west London to Dulwich, south of the river, is not my idea of fun. Especially when the roads are clogged with more cars than usual and the besuited managerial classes taking their first-ever jaunt on a Lime bike in a desperate bid to get to work on time. That was my day yesterday, courtesy of the Tube strike that has shut down virtually the entire Underground network that keeps London moving. But you know what? Even after my third ‘Fuck you’ at a motorist who cut in front of me on my sweaty hike south, I was still thinking: ‘Up the strikers!’

The Tube strike is an extraordinary reminder of the power of working people. In an era in which the lame left considers it a win if one of the ungrateful brats of the Harry Potter franchise says ‘Transwomen are women’, and when a ‘show of strength’ means gathering a few score retired vicars in Parliament Square to wang on about Israel’s ‘genocide’, how remarkable to see an entire city, one of the world’s busiest, brought to a standstill by everyday men and women. The strike isn’t exactly popular, I know: my WhatsApp groups are aflame with complaints. But let me gently posit that the inconvenience we’re experiencing is a small price to pay for the exercise of that fundamental right to withdraw one’s labour in protest.

The strike is over pay and conditions. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union wants a pay rise for Tube workers. We’re not ‘after a king’s ransom’, says general secretary Eddie Dempsey, just enough to ensure members’ wages still count for something in an era of inflation. Transport for London has offered a 3.4 per cent rise. The larger sticking point, though, is over the RMT’s request for a reduction in working hours. It wants Tube staff to do a 32-hour week, rather than a 35-hour week, to help ease the ‘fatigue’ that can come with ‘extreme shift rotations’ – super-early starts one week, night shifts the next. On this, TfL said a firm No. So the talks stalled, and now so has London.

The RMT’s demands seem reasonable to me. Shift work is hard: it should be well remunerated and, where possible, spaced out. Some are saying Tube workers have some front striking for more pay and fewer hours at a time when other workers, especially in the private sector, are struggling to make their pay packets stretch as prices rise. But surely the solution there is that others show some ‘front’ too, and put pressure on their employers to compensate them fairly and treat them decently? The tendency of the boss class to take the piss is not the fault of Tube workers!

Leaving aside the specifics of the strike, there’s something about the size and scale of the thing that feels stirring. There’s no need to let nostalgia get the better of us. It’s not the Battle of Orgreave. And it’s highly unlikely that it heralds a barnstorming return of working people to the heart of political life. Despite an upward blip in strike activity over the past couple of years, as health workers and other professionals have surprisingly downed tools, the trend is still towards fewer working days being lost to strikes. Much was made of the 2.4million days lost to strikes in 2022, yet even that was a shadow of the 4.1million lost in 1989 at the tailend of Thatcherism.

What’s more, the Tube strike has been justified a little too much in the language of pity rather than solidarity for my liking. Even Mr Dempsey, Brexit bruiser, bête noire of both wet liberals and woke twats, has emphasised the ‘health and wellbeing’ of his workers and the problem of ‘stress’. Is therapyspeak simply unstoppable now? And yet for all that, there’s something admirably old-fashioned about the strike. People standing up for their own material interests against the cult of less and a preening mayor (Sadiq Khan) who last year bumped up his own wage by four grand, taking him to a whopping £165,001? Yes please.

The strike implicitly grates against the virtue hoarding that passes for left-wing activism these days. Where the graduate left has been entirely consumed by the politics of saviourism – Save Gaza, Save Migrants – here come workers standing up for themselves. It’s a collective cry of working-class self-interest, which is refreshing as hell at a time when so much leftism is a priestly performance of one’s own depthless reserves of care for ‘the marginalised’ – like the huge fella in a dress who was told to get out of the women’s bathroom. The strike is an expression of human subjectivity at a time when far too much ‘progressive’ activism is a paternalist search for a pitiable object – the Palestinian, the boat person, the cross-dresser – through which the activist might make a spectacle of his own ethical rectitude.

The strike is a flash of strength when it tends to be fragility that is cherished and sacralised. Indeed, today The Times reports that the number of sick days taken by British workers is at its highest level in 15 years. More sick days than ever are being taken for ‘mental health’ reasons. I find this cult of skiving fascinating. It seems to me that in a post-class society, one of the few ways workers can assert themselves against the boss class is by playing hooky – a tiny revolt in the absence of older networks of solidarity that allowed for clearer, firmer demands for an easing of working conditions. The cost of these one-man walkouts is high, though – you must genuflect to the self-annulling cult of fragility just to get a goddamn day off work.

What’s better: work days lost to imaginary illness or work days lost to strikes? Encouraging workers to conceive of themselves as vulnerable or encouraging them to stand up for themselves against all-comers? It’s the latter, isn’t it? Something to think about as you squeeze on to a crowded bus today and curse Eddie Dempsey under your breath.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy