Hatred Of Boris ...Is This What It's All About?

After bringing Britain to a standstill, union boss couldn’t resist class war rant

- Robert Kellaway and Macer Hall

THE ‘class war’ revenge at the heart of the rail strikes was laid bare yesterday when union boss Mick Lynch unleashed a tirade of abuse at Boris Johnson.

The RMT leader responsible for bringing Britain to a standstill astonishingly blamed “Old Etonians speaking Latin and Greek” with “barely a paid hour of employment between them” for the hugely damaging dispute.

The £124,000-a-year union chief failed to hide his contempt for the Prime Minister and his Cabinet when he said: “The problem is we have a government of billionaires trying to tell ordinary men and women in this country how to run their lives.”

But Mr Johnson urged Britons to “stay the course” yesterday in the face of what he called the “unnecessary aggravation.”

Mr Lynch, who said his workers were demanding a minimum seven per cent wage increase for staff, responded with fury to the idea that his train drivers, who earn an average of £59,000 a year, could be replaced by driverless trains.

And in a throwback to the Union leaders of the 1960s and 70s, he said: “It’s all right for these politicians who’ve never done a hand’s turn to say, ‘Oh it’s easy, let’s just get rid of drivers’.

“But ask any of them how they go about the logistics and the engineering challenge of that. They haven’t got a clue.

“So we’ve got Old Etonians who speak Latin and Greek telling us about civil engineering projects. What’s the point, why do you take their word for it and not the word of leading civil engineers?”