...as Ministers brand his holidaying RMT comrades ‘bullies at war with commuters’
MINISTERS last night stepped up the Government’s war of words with striking rail unions by accusing them of ‘bullying’ the travelling public.
Tory chairman Patrick McLoughlin said the militant RMT union held working people in ‘contempt’, while party grandee Lord Heseltine warned the Government could not allow the unions to ‘hold the country to ransom’ as they did in the 1970s and 1980s.
After weeks of disruption on commuter services run by Southern Railway, the RMT is now planning strikes on the East Coast Main Line run by Virgin Trains including over the Bank Holiday weekend.
And passengers face more misery on Tuesday when annual increases in ticket prices are announced.
Mr McLoughlin, a former Transport Secretary, said: ‘This wave of unnecessary disruption has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with union bosses trying to bully commuters. They have boasted that their strike action is a “war”, and they are waging it against the travelling public. The contempt these bosses have for working people, including their own members, can be seen in the inflation-busting pay increases they award themselves.’
RMT general secretary Mick Cash was paid £96,766 last year, accounts show, and assistant general secretary Steve Hedley got £55,000. In total the RMT spent £4.7million on officials’ salaries in 2015, up from £4.5million in 2014. While commuters suffered, Mr Hedley found time to back North Sea strikers last Monday and posed with RMT president Sean Hoyle during a holiday in Didim, Turkey.
Lord Heseltine, a Cabinet Minister when Margaret Thatcher took on the unions in the 1980s, said Ministers should face down the union threat.
‘The lessons from history are that the law must be obeyed, and that the Government must make clear that the country will not be held to ransom,’ he said.