‘No hard feelings’: the people’s view of the rail strikes

 

‘No hard feelings’: the people’s view of the rail strikes

 

Most of our interviewees said they anticipated being adversely affected by the disruption, but their sympathies were broadly with the transport workers

 

Clea Skopeliti and Jedidajah Otte

Mon 20 Jun 2022 18.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/20/no-hard-feelings-peoples-view-rail-strikes

 

Commuters and travellers from across the country are bracing for three days of rail strikes this week, as more than 40,000 workers gear up for the largest stoppage on the rail network in more than 30 years.

 

Four people tell how they will be affected by the disruption, and share their views on the looming strike action.

 

‘Strikes are a last resort’

Nick Georgiou

Nick Georgiou says the disruption is a ‘necessary evil’.

Nick Georgiou, 63, will cycle the 13 miles from Oldham to the library in Manchester where he works part-time. It will not be the first time he has made the journey on his electric bike, because of disruption on the rail service on the Greenfield to Manchester Piccadilly route.

 

“More often than not, I get the train. But the strike’s been predated really by lots of cancellations – I’ve had to cycle before because I’ve not been too confident that there’ll be a train to catch.”

 

He says the strike will affect some colleagues’ ability to commute, but the disruption caused by industrial action is “a necessary evil”.

 

Georgiou backs the strikes “wholeheartedly”. “There needs to be a reckoning,” he says. “Strikes are last resort. Nobody wants to deny themselves a livelihood, [but] the only thing workers have to withdraw is their labour.”

 

‘If the journey takes me two hours, maybe I should walk’

Anne*, a 53-year-old manager of an NHS mental health team living in south London, is anticipating her whole team being affected by the Transport for London strike on Tuesday and national rail action this week. “Everyone in my team lives in outer zones because we can’t afford to live close to our office in central London. I’m really worried about staff getting to work. During the last strike, we had a doctor who was trying to get in for three or four hours,” she says. “We’re having to think about skeleton coverage.”

 

Anne says she will try to get the bus at 7am on Tuesday in order to get to work by 9am. “Then I’m thinking, if it takes me two hours, maybe I should walk,” she says. Anne explains that she feels conflicted between backing the industrial action and the need to support her team and patients and “run a safe service”.

 

Nevertheless, she lays the blame for the disruption with the government. “I wish the government would meaningfully and consistently fund public infrastructure and the key workers who keep our city and society running. I’m tired of services being cut to the bone, everything being done on the cheap and workers being told to simply work harder to fill the gaps.”

 

‘The strikes are likely to severely disrupt my life’

Giles Barrett

London business owner Giles Barrett, 38, empathises with the striking rail workers despite fearing the action will hit ticket sales for his upcoming concert. Photograph: Giles Barrett/Guardian Community

Giles Barrett, 38, from London, runs his own recording studio and accepts that he will be affected by the strikes, but will not let that get in the way of his support for striking rail staff.

 

“The strikes are likely to severely disrupt my life. I’m playing a gig on the 25th [June] and a lot of my band’s fans would normally travel by train. The venue has a capacity of 250 and we were expecting to sell out. We have currently sold out about halfway, so I think we are going to have lower ticket sales than anticipated,” he said.

 

“Nevertheless, I completely support the strike. Collective action is the reason we have a weekend, among many other hard-won rights, and we must never stop fighting for them – capital certainly won’t. We have decided to offer free tickets to any striking workers.”

 

While others who empathise with strike action in principle bemoan the particular timing of the walkouts, Barrett disagrees.

 

“Strikes have to be at a time when people want to travel to be effective. I’m not in a union myself as I’m a business owner, but I’m impressed by the RMT and wish there were more unions with the power to organise in this way.”

 

‘Something’s got to give – you can’t carry on cutting back’

David Ling

 

The strikes mean David Ling, a 69-year-old pensioner, will have to book a night in a hotel in Edinburgh in order to catch his flight to Sweden on Wednesday. Ling will be returning home after visiting his sister in Inverness, and would otherwise have taken the train to Edinburgh on the day of the flight. The coaches available on Wednesday arrive too late to be an option. “It’s no great hardship really – just the extra cost of a hotel night,” he says, explaining that a stay in a “cheap one-star hotel” will set him back £85 to £90.

 

Ling says he would have preferred to have taken the train as he recently had a blood clot and wants to be able to walk around. “Sitting on the coach is not good for my legs,” he says. “I’m not unduly worried about it, I’m still on blood thinners, but it’s in the back of my mind.”

 

The 69-year-old says he has “no hard feelings at all” towards the striking rail workers and supports the strike. “There’s so many problems in this country that are caused by austerity, privatisation and cutbacks that in the end it’s gonna be a reaction. It’s not just the railway workers – it’s teachers and nurses and everything. In the end, something’s got to give. You can’t carry on cutting back and people scrimping and saving. It doesn’t work.”