The sudden and totally unexpected death of a major and highly controversial figure is always a shock and a moment for reflection on the impact of their passing.
There is of course the very human reaction of sympathy and sadness for the human loss, but in politics there is a lingering calculation going on — what does the death mean for the rest of us.
From grudging respect for his skills in negotiating exceptional terms for LU staff, to a curiosity as to what the transport network would be like if it wasn’t operationally wrapped up in so much suffocating red tape.
I never met the man, but I listened to him at length on several occasions, and frankly was surprised that such a person would lead a union. He obviously had intelligence and drive and ambitions — but I was always struck by a surprising lack of ability to articulate that.
Where a diplomat would ease their perspective into a debate, he steamrollered over everyone. Probably just as effective in the short term, but he didn’t win many friends outside the union with his public pronouncements.
That lack of public support could well have backfired in the long term with increasing support for a clamp down on unions driven largely by the larger than life, in so many ways, of the gargantuan union boss looming over London’s commuters.
People seemed to be getting tired of the old ways — and unions that are stuck in ways of working that the average person simply cannot understand. I used to get copies of some of the RMT newsletters, and they really are relics of a long lost era.
But, we cannot lay the cause at Bob Crow, he was simply the figurehead. Those RMT leaflets were written by local activists, who were as delighted in deeply arcane red tape and bureaucracy as the train geeks are in collecting train timetables.
Those activists drove the union agenda, and give us the RMT that we have today.
Reading some of those newsletters, I often wondered how much of the rules and regulations that were negotiated were genuinely needed to protect the workers from an aggressive management, and how much was more political — entrenching the RMT into the system and making it ever harder to change anything without involving layers upon layers of meetings and debates.
It’s an odd world, but one that Bob Crow understood intimately, as do the other members of the senior management.
The media, and the public might not see Bob Crow on their screens any more, but behind him stood a collection of other RMT management who were just as determined, and on the rare occasions they were in front of the camera, also far better at presenting an argument for public consumption.
The RMT has lost a figurehead, and in a way, so has London, for there were few people so intimately associated with London than Bob Crow.
But we shouldn’t start thinking that maybe a blockage has been removed, as behind Bob Crow stood the entire apparatus of the trade union, and when they elect a new leader, expect someone on the TV screens and radio to be far better at presenting their reasons for the latest strike, and negotiating better conditions for their membership.
But they will probably never be as recognisable as Bob Crow.
