Bob Crow strikes back

"Always get the dangerous ones?" smirks the TUC media officer at the entrance to the Brighton Centre, home to this year's trade-union jamboree. I'm here to get personal with Bob Crow: union leader, former card-carrying Communist, Millwall FC supporter, industrial relations dinosaur, baseball-capped militant and the so-called "wrecker" who proudly displays a bust of Lenin in his office.

Last week Crow confirmed his notorious reputation when 2,300 maintenance workers from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) walked out in a dispute over job and pensions guarantees. Nine of the London Underground's 12 lines were forced to close. The capital was brought to a halt. The Evening Standard printed a photograph of Crow underneath the headline: The Most Hated Man in London.

Yet, to his sympathisers, together with the many thousands of delegates in Brighton this week, he's simply a hard-working union man of the old school who stands firm for the rights of his members.

When I find Crow, he is sitting outside the conference halls on the beach, sunning himself in grey suit and blue tie. He's grumbling about having to wear the suit, but does so "out of respect to the members I'm representing", and nursing what seems to be a fairly acute hangover, the result of last night's union delegation dinner, which, by happy coincidence, coincided with his partner's birthday.

He seems a far cry from the belligerent, finger-stabbing firebrand who will take to the rostrum later in the day. And while he's not exactly Cuddly Bob, it's clear he is capable of charm. Did any Londoners dare to have a pop at him last week? "One woman came over to me and said, 'Can you give more notice in the future, Bob, because I've got blisters on my feet.' So I offered to massage them for her."

Crow snorts at the idea that he's a hard man. "Look at this!" he says, pulling from the pocket of his suit a cutting from Rail magazine with a headline that reads "Bellicose Bob". You're never bellicose, then, Bob? "No! I just see things that are wrong in society. People in unions put up opposition, but they should also be giving people hope. Giving inspiration. I've got convictions. I've got a simple philosophy on life. I say what I think and people either agree with me or they don't."

Wherever you stand, Crow is certainly a union man through and through. The only job he'd leave the RMT secretary general's role for is the manager's post at Millwall. Indeed, his support of a club notorious for its violent fans and their chant "everybody hates us and we don't care" is used as a kind of journalistic shorthand to suggest that the RMT leader is something of a yob.

It doesn't help that a shaven head and bulky frame make him look like a prop forward. In fact, he plays at the back in the RMT's five-a-side team every Wednesday and goes to the gym six times a week. Does Milwall deserve its bad reputation? Crow shakes his head. "Some of their fans have got that reputation. But then they've got other fans. Max Bygraves. Des O'Connor. It's a fun-loving club. I don't care what people say. I see families and kids down there, I don't see aggravation."

What about the rumour he's got a bust of Lenin on his office shelf at RMT HQ in Euston? "Yeah, I had a bust of Lenin and a bust of Marx, but Marx got nicked. Someone said, I should call the police but I pointed out they'd be looking for a Marxist burglar, which would be very hard to find."

Crow even has a dog named after a Communist icon. "His name's Castro. He's a Staffordshire bull terrier, a brindle. I bought him on 1 May. They've got a bad name, I know, but he's soft as anything. He wouldn't fight, if somebody broke in he'd lick them to death."

There have been several well-publicised punch-ups between RMT members at various social events. But he won't accept my suggestion that his union is a macho organisation. "There have been a couple of disciplinary issues that we've been dealing with. But I don't accept violence at all. I believe in peaceful persuasion. I don't believe that you're going to win somebody over by going round and thumping them. My view is to love them to death."

Just like your dog?

"Yeah," agrees Crow. "Love them over."

****

Born in Shadwell, east London, on 13 June 1961, there had been unionism Crow's family for generations. "My dad was a docker and his father was a casual docker and a stonemason in Tower Hamlets. I think that helps. When we used to come home at 6 o'clock at night, the news was always on and the old man had an opinion about everything. So we just naturally thought everyone was in a trade union. All the big industries were unionised. All my mates' dads' families were in trade unions. It was just a fact of life. Now, it must be very difficult for people – youngsters know nothing about trade unions. There's a gap."

When Crow was four, the family moved out to Essex and he went to Kingswood secondary modern school in Hainault: "The same school as Jimmy Greaves." He played football in the street. In the summer, he played cricket. In 1977, at the age of 16, he got a job on the Underground, fixing rails and cutting down trees on the track.

At 19 an incident with his ganger – the boss of his section – drove him to seek out the union. "It was a stupid issue really, now I think about it. In the gang, everyone had different duties that changed. One week you'd have to make tea. Other people had to write letters. It was my turn to do something – I can't remember what it was – and I had a row with my ganger."

As punishment, Crow was sent on an errand to Rickmansworth, an hour's journey by train. "To me, that was the other side of the world. I thought, 'I'm not having that. I'm being victimised.' So I went down the branch meeting of the union. It was a Friday night. All my mates were out drinking and I was in a pokey hall in Holborn with all these old fogeys. This bloke asked me if I wanted to get involved, and I said, 'If you change the branch meetings from a Friday night then I'll get involved. Cause all my mates are going to be out clubbing and meeting women while I'm stuck in here.'"

Crow joined the branch committee and was sent to a union education centre in Kent to learn about the movement. "I just fell in love with it," he says, a little misty-eyed, "And I've loved it ever since. Some people say we do long hours – but it's actually my hobby as well. It's like being a professional footballer."

In 1983 he became local representative of the National Union of Railwaymen, and continued to work underground with his gang; labour he describes as "Fantastic. Yeah, I mean, it's hard, heavy work, but we were all young lads. I've still got the same friends that I had then. Built up great camaraderie."

Crow counts among his heroes union stalwarts such as Jack Jones, Ron Todd, Frank Cousins, Rodney Bickerstaffe and Mick McGahey, reserving special praise for Arthur Scargill: "The best trade union leader we've ever seen."

In 1985 Crow became national officer for track workers, and he joined the executive of the RMT as assistant secretary general in 1995. Following the death of Jimmy Knapp in 2002, he was elected to the top job, a position to which he was re-elected earlier this year. So popular is Crow among the union members that no candidate stood against him. The union claims to be the UK's fastest growing, and has seen its membership grow from 57,000 to 76,000 in the five years since Crow took over.

****

On the rostrum, Crow is fiery – one of the few orators at the TUC who can be relied upon to pull a crowd. He jabs his finger at the ceiling as he demands re-nationalisation and the repeal of Thatcher's anti-trade union legislation. He punches the air as he walks back to his seat to the sound of enthusiastic applause from a full auditorium. Did he have any training?

"No, I did it myself. I never have notes. And everything I say, is what I say. No-one else writes it." Humour, he adds, is essential. "They're sitting there all day, bored to tears. That's what they're looking for, a bit of humour. If you can get a bit of humour, you can win them over."

At a fringe meeting that debates the Prime Minister's address to the TUC earlier in the day, Crow barely needs a microphone to make his points heard right at the back of the room (kicking off with, "Well. What a boring, uninspiring speech!").

Crow gave his first address in 1998 at an RMT meeting. "I was absolutely shaking," he recalls, "Anyone who says they're not nervous where they're speaking hasn't got any passion."

His eloquence makes the rank-and-file members fairly glow with pride. "He's absolutely hilarious," says Greg Hewitt, a level-crossing inspector and chairman of the Brighton and Hove branch of the RMT. "But he gets the point across succinctly and in a language that we all understand. No highfalutin words. But it's his passion for the working people that carries him through."

How far idealistic union leaders abide by their principles in their own lives is often the source of speculation. Last week, Crow says he found he was being tailed by two Times journalists who reported that he travelled on the Tube with his Oyster Card during the strike. "How else am I supposed to get around?" asks Crow, who doesn't possess a driving licence. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-car. But I can get around London and Britain using the trains."

And for trips to the supermarket? "The missus. She does it. She's got a car. I give her the money, she spends it."

Crow is reported to earn £63,000. He lives with his "missus" (they're not married) Nicola Hoarau in Woodford, Essex. When Hoarau, a tanned, blonde, thirtysomething, was appointed to by the RMT to run its credit union, there were accusations of cronyism, although Crow said at the time she was the only applicant.

He first saw her in the street in Woodford 15 years ago. "I got her number and phoned her up and she said, 'I don't know who this is.' So I said, 'I know, but I tell you what, I know where you live. I'm not a stalker. I know there's a lamppost outside your house. I'm going to stand underneath it, and if you don't like what you see, then don't come down and I'll understand."

Hoarau says the headlines that single out her husband for personal attack "aren't very nice – who'd want that said about their partner", but at the TUC she seems very much the supportive union wife. From a previous marriage, Crow has one son who now works on the railway, while she has two daughters, in publishing and a beautician, from a past relationship. Together they have a 14-year-old daughter. Does Crow want his own children to be involved in unionism? "I don't push them to be involved, but they do all belong to a union. I tell them they've got to be. The youngest one, who's still at school – if any of them gets involved it'll be her in my opinion. She knows how to answer back."

Crow doesn't see frequent holidays abroad as inconsistent with his Communist ideals, either, although he says he prefers Scotland. Eight years ago he enjoyed a trip to Cuba too, he tells me, particularly since he was bundled into a car at Havana airport and driven to meet Raul Castro [Fidel's younger brother]. "They put me in a car and I was rather frightened. I didn't cotton on. They knew I was coming. I was told: 'Someone wants to see you.' And it was Raul, who apologised his brother couldn't be there. He knew all about the political scene in Britain, he knew the trade union scene. They thanked us for all the help we've given them – we do a big garden party for Cuba every year."

Such tales of workers of the world uniting haven't made Crow any friends in either New Labour or in the right-wing press. He has enemies elsewhere, too. On New Year's Eve 2001 he was attacked in his own home. At 4am there was a knock at his door. Crow was struck across the face with an iron bar – he shows me a long pale scar on his tanned cheek that required nine stitches – and left unconscious in a pool of blood. "I remember him hitting me. I turned to go back in the house and I noticed what I thought was water pouring on the floor. I thought the pipes had burst. But it was blood. After that, I felt dizzy and don't remember anything else.

"When I woke up on the floor, the door was still wide open and I suddenly remembered my wife was in bed. I thought they'd come back and killed her. Now I'm going to have to explain how my wife's in bed, dead, and I'm the only person in the house with blood on the floor. I ran up the stairs. But she'd slept through everything."

The culprits were never found. While Crow half-heartedly admits it may have been a fudged burglary, he personally believes an embittered railway contractor had sent hired muscle "to do me in – they want these big contractors on the railway but there are hundreds of these smaller contractors. Who detest unions. That's what I reckon."

The incident has added to the Bob Crow myth, perpetuated (he claims) by a right-wing media who are out to get him. "I couldn't give a monkeys about them," he says flatly. "They support big business. But the reality is that my membership are quite clearly behind what we do. It's rabid stuff, that vilification, but it goes with the job. If you ruffle people – that's what they're going to give you back."

At the TUC, his supporters beam when they talk about the Bob Crow phenomenon. "They did the same to Scargill and Livingstone," says Carolyn Jones, director of the Institute of Employment Rights. "If you stand up and say something and look as though you're winning support for it, they'll portray you as having two heads and eating babies."

As we walk back to the Brighton Centre, a crowd of two dozen RMT members, supporters and Metronet staff are waving their red-and-green union flags in the sunshine. Crow stops to exchange comradely handshakes with the rank and file who have turned out with whistles and banners, their lobbying timed to coincide with the transport motion being debated inside the main auditorium. If there were such a thing as a Communist celebrity, it would be Bob Crow. And that's perhaps the only hitch in his thoroughly principled world.

One of the flag-wavers, a retired lecturer called Jan Pollock, hints at the paradox. "He's been painted as a dinosaur but he's supporting his members. Then again, I don't think Bob Crow should be singled out as a hero, really, because all the RMT members are heroes. They all vote for action, collectively."

A life on the lines

1961: Bob Crow is born on 13 June in Shadwell,

east London to George Crow, a docker

1977: Leaves Hainault High School and joins London Underground at 16, where at first he makes tea, then does a stint as a lumberjack, followed by heavy-track repairs

1980: Crow's first strike – a national day of action, called by the TUC. He is also involved in stoppages in 1982 and in a series of strikes in 1989

1983: Elected as a local union rep, joins the Communist Party

1984: Demonstrates at a miners' strike in Doncaster, as part of the Miners' Support Group.

1985: Appointed national officer for track workers

1991: Appointed LU's rep on the union's national executive

1994: Appointed assistant general-secretary

1997: Leaves the Communist Party, joins Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party

2001: Crow is attacked in his own home by two men with an iron bar; he blames the attack on "hired employer muscle".

2002: Appointed general secretary of the RMT. Crow currently lives in Woodford, Essex with his partner of 14 years, Nicola, and their teenage daughter. Nicola has a son and a daughter from a previous relationship. Bob has a daughter, also from a previous relationship.

Those strikes in full

30 June 2004

How long: 24 hours

Why? Tube drivers walk out over pay and conditions. The RMT rejects a package worth about 6.75 per cent over two years because "unacceptable strings" have been attached to the introduction of a 35-hour, four-day week; it also claims that 800 jobs will be lost over two years. Only 30 per cent of trains are running, costing the economy around £100m.

Did it work? Although the union agrees to the management's conditions, the proposed displacement of 800 staff over two years leads to further strike action.

Bob said: "We need someone with the authority... to hammer out a deal. Instead, we continue to bang our heads against a brick wall with a management that [Ken] Livingstone once dismissed as dullards and knuckleheads."

31 December 2005

How long: 24 hours

Why? Station staff who are RMT union members walked out over the introduction of new rotas, which they claim will mean job losses and a compromise in safety. 37 stations are closed.

Did it work? No. Hardly anyone notices that there is a strike, and so staff walked out again a few days later.

Bob said: "We've had to try and put maximum pressure on London Underground... And if New Year's Eve won't concentrate their minds we [will] have to look in the new year to stepping up the action."

9 January 2006

How long: 24 hours

Why? Same as last time – this strike is a continuation of the row over new rotas proposed for station staff. Half of the 108 stations in central London are closed.

Did it work? Talks collapse after the union and management accuse each other of lying about the cause of the dispute.

Bob said: "It is bitterly disappointing that an agreement has fallen foul of an internal row."

3 September 2007

How long: Planned to be 72 hours, but in the end lasts just over 24 hours.

Why? The RMT decides to strike after the collapse of the Tube firm Metronet leads to worries over job security and pensions. All services on the Underground are suspended, except those on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, which are run by Tube Lines, not Metronet.

Did it work? After nine hours of talks, job and pension issues are "clarified" and a further 72-hour stoppage pencilled in for the following week [this week] is called off.

Bob said: "Our representatives are happy that they have a full pension scheme rescue in place and that the issue over job losses has been averted."