Mick Lynch is stuck in the past

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT, has never felt truly English. In conversation with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh festival, he reveals that his parents moved here from Ireland during the war and settled in the Ladbroke Grove area of London where they raised him and his four siblings.

His father was ‘an archetypal Paddy’ who visited the pub six times a week including Sunday afternoons after Mass. In 1971 he went on strike for nine weeks and the family were reduced to living off jam sandwiches. His parents always referred to ‘the English’ as if they were foreigners and Lynch has never held a British passport. He’s an Irish citizen.

He looks back on the 1970s as a golden age of prosperity and security: ‘Things were getting better for the working classes.’ His dad worked in factories and for the Royal Mail and his mother had a job at Marks and Spencer where the management was ‘benign’ towards the staff.