Let me start by partially quoting novelist Daphne du Maurier’s most famous line: last night I dreamt I went to the TV studio again. On the other side of the news desk was leader of the UK’s National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Mick Lynch. But rather than my challenging him with hard-hitting questions, it was he who was tearing me apart with succinct, withering one-liners.
His calmness contrasted sharply with the beads of sweat on my forehead. The worst part was that his charming authenticity won everyone over, including me.
“Mick Lynch is proving a pretty remarkable media performer – with an uncanny knack of flustering his questioners – others should study his techniques,” wrote former UK Conservative Party minister Rory Stewart. I strongly agree.
But first, a quick mood setter.
One thing I learnt this week was that the first known industrial action in history took place in ancient Egypt when workers at the royal necropolis at Deir Al-Medina in Upper Egypt organised an uprising in 1152 BCE over late wages.
Fast forward to the UK of today where what has been called the summer of discontent is coming to a close and building up to an autumn of anger. Rail workers, barristers, teachers, nurses, bin collectors and dock operators are all members of unions that have contemplated, threatened, or actually gone on strike.
One figure who’s come out of the quagmire shining like a superstar is the studio guest from my dream – the plain-speaking, soft-scoffing Lynch. He has been labelled a media sensation in the UK following a number of radio and TV appearances in which he tears into his interviewers and/or fellow panelists, inspiring actor Hugh Laurie to tweet that “I don‘t know enough about the rail dispute. I only observe that RMT’s Mick Lynch cleaned up every single media picador who tried their luck today.”
Here’s a quick roundup of Lynch’s most masterful media moments. Responding to a (frankly absurd) question from journalist Richard Madeley on the UK TV channel ITV, namely “are you or are you not a Marxist,” Lynch could not help chuckling at what he said was a “twaddle” of a question.
To a question from the UK channel Sky News’s Kay Burley who asked him “what does picketing involve,” Lynch simply stepped to the side so the camera could reveal the picket line behind him – four men with placards looking rather bored – and said “look. There it is!”
But the most ridiculous instance by, I think, a unanimous vote would be journalist Piers Morgan’s line of questions. Morgan chose to raise the very weighty matter of Lynch’s Facebook profile picture, that of a 1960s television series villain, and urgently demanded to know whether this was because Lynch was “a baddie” himself.
Faced with such questions, Lynch looked both amused and a little scornful. He answered Morgan with an incredulous “is that the level journalism is at these days?”
You may find it hard not to sympathise with his disbelief even when you’re in broadcast journalism yourself. My partiality towards my fellow journalists has no bearing on this matter.
Lynch’s issue with the UK media is bigger than the “dopey” questions put to him, as he described them in a recent interview. He believes the media is not showing the full picture of what is happening. And he is right. You’re guaranteed to be shown a sea of disgruntled stranded commuters in every news bulletin and on every paper’s front page in the UK at the moment, but you won’t necessarily find meaningful explainers as to why the workers are striking.
A 10 per cent inflation rate means that any salary raise below 10 per cent is in fact a pay cut. Nevertheless, governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey has advocated pay restraint. When this was put to Lynch, he dismissed it as a warning from a man who receives a handsome £600,000 a year, which is incidentally also the salary of the chief of the UK’s National Rail.
Maybe a sea of aggrieved individuals looks more appealing to media editors than boring graphics of numbers and bar charts. But the facts must be told, or we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.
You will find myriad news stories in the UK about how the rail strikes have disrupted people’s lives, caused them to miss their exams, or shorten their holidays. But you’d be hard pressed to come across a story about a rail worker who had still decided to strike despite the massive blow to his or her income as a result.
It’s important to examine how the media in the UK is handling the story because it’s not just a war between the trade unions and the government but a battle for public opinion too. And at this moment in time a quick browse through the opinion polls suggests that there is still everything to play for.
One poll, conducted by YouGov, suggests that 45 per cent of people in the UK oppose the rail strikes while 37 per cent support them. Another, by Savanta ComRes, shows that 58 per cent say the strikes are justified, with 34 per cent deeming them unjustified.
It’s a marathon rather than a sprint. And with the ubiquitous and combative Mick Lynch at the forefront of the unions’ PR campaign, they might just win.
At least that’s what my dream tells me.
* The writer is an Egyptian TV presenter based in London.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 1 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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