Furious businesses blast rail strike boss Mick Lynch for ruining Christmas

The first day of Mick Lynch’s wave of crippling Christmas rail strikes today sent Britain back to the darkest days of the coronavirus lockdown, with usually packed city centres deserted, pubs, bars and restaurants dealt another sledgehammer in lost earnings, and millions of people forced to WFH.

Around half of the UK’s rail lines were closed all day today, with trains in other areas only running between 7.30am and 6.30pm and many places, including much of Scotland and Wales, effectively cut off as 40,000 RMT workers put down tools and went on picket lines.

Today’s strike – the first of a string of walkouts over the Christmas period, including this week and Christmas Eve, one of the busiest travel days in the calendar – cleared busy high streets of shoppers and workers in cities including London, Manchester and Leeds, while hospitality chiefs warned that the industry expects to lose £1.5billion in sales as festive parties are cancelled.

HAS YOUR BUSINESS LOST CHRISTMAS BOOKINGS BECAUSE OF THE STRIKES? Email jack.wright@mailonline.co.uk 

The scenes are reminiscent of the worst days of pandemic-era shutdowns which crippled the economy and forced millions of families up and down the country to cancel their Christmas plans.

Sammie Ellard-King, marketing director at Amazing Grace, a live music bar and restaurant in London Bridge, said they had lost two bookings this week due to the rail strikes, amounting to £50,000. 

He said: ‘We’ve had to shut the site down as we now don’t have enough reservations for the amount of staff that was set to be needed. As a result, 12 staff have lost valuable income so close to Christmas, as each one has lost nearly 20 hours of paid work which is really upsetting to us as a business.’

Britons had to sacrifice seeing loved ones over the holiday period in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic – but now face having to do the same due to rail disruption.

Mr Ellard-King continued: ‘Whilst we respect the RMT staff striking, the timing of it after last year’s Omicron wave couldn’t have been worse. It’s had maximum impact on both business and staff in what is usually our busiest week’.

UKHospitality boss Kate Nicholls said the latest series of strikes in the run up to Christmas ‘will no doubt be the toughest yet’.

‘Businesses, workers and our customers will feel the brunt of it, with lost business, disrupted travel and plans being cancelled,’ she added.

It came as the head of Network Rail today claimed Mick Lynch was lashing out because he was worried about eroding support for his Christmas rail walkouts after a series of fiery media appearances by the RMT boss this morning. 

Millions of workers are now opting to work from home until the New Year after Network Rail warned there will be significantly reduced services until January 8. 

The next four weeks resembles an advent calendar of industrial action, with workers across many other industries including nurses, Border Force staff and postal workers set to down their tools this week.

The union chief clashed with Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley before another tense exchange with the BBC‘s Mishal Husain, who he accused of ‘parroting’ right-wing ‘propaganda’.

Network Rail CEO Andrew Haines said Mr Lynch was ‘worried that strikes won’t hold for 10 days’ and ‘knows he’s got to find a way to do a deal’. He told the Telegraph the ‘heightened level of aggression’ from him was due to a vote which exposed eroding support for the strikes. 

Some 36.4 per cent of RMT members at Network Rail who voted did not follow the union leadership’s advice to reject a 9 per cent pay deal. A total of 63 per cent of voting members backed the walkouts – which entered their first day today – compared to 91 per cent before. 

Meanwhile, Simon Jupp, Tory MP for East Devon, tweeted: ‘Mick Lynch is rattled. He’s lost the argument and continues to lose the little support he had for strike action over Christmas.’ 

The latest YouGov poll, released on November 29, found 47 of Britons opposed the RMT’s strike action, while 41 per cent supported it.    

This morning, Mr Madeley put it to Mr Lynch that the rail strikes were targeting people at Christmas and could put hoteliers, restauranteur and retailers out of business during a normally busy time of year.

The union boss, speaking from a picket line in London, replied: ‘We’re not targeting Christmas, it isn’t Christmas yet, Richard, I don’t know when your Christmas starts but mine starts on Christmas Eve.’

Mr Madeley branded that statement as ‘disingenuous’, adding: ‘Commercial Christmas starts in December, you know that.’

As the pair spoke over each other, Mr Lynch said: ‘Richard, why don’t you just interview yourself?’

He later added: ‘I have no intention of spoiling people’s Christmas. 

‘The Government is contributing to that spoiling of the people’s Christmas because they’ve brought these strikes on by stopping the companies from making suitable proposals.

‘That’s the position that we’re in and we’ll have to keep this dispute going until we get a reasonable settlement and a reasonable set of proposals that our members want to accept.’

At one point during the exchange, Mr Madeley told Mr Lynch to ‘jog on’.  

The RMT general secretary had another fiery exchange on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, where he accused presenter Mishal Husain of repeating Government ‘propaganda’ after objecting to her line of questioning. 

Ms Husain pointed to figures showing that 63 per cent of RMT members who voted chose to reject a pay offer yesterday compared to 91 per cent at an earlier ballot in November. 

‘It seems that backing for strikes among the membership is falling – do you accept that?’ the presenter said. 

Mr Lynch replied: ‘Well that’s what the government and Network Rail are telling you and you’re prepared to push that line because they’re telling you too.  

‘You’re just parroting the most right-wing stuff that you can get hold of on behalf of the establishment.’ 

The RMT boss also took exception to Ms Husain asking him the average amount of pay lost by RMT members through the strike period. 

He said: ‘What I do find annoying, Mishal, is that you take these lines that are taken from the propaganda of the other side…

‘You never seem to take an impartial view on the way this society is balanced at the moment and the complete lack of distribution of wealth in this society, you just seem to punt out what you get from the employers and the government.’

Mr Lynch also claimed the presenter was ‘parroting the right-wing press’. 

Ms Husain, who remained calm throughout the exchange, said at the end of the interview: ‘They’re called questions.’ 

It comes as pub bosses hit out at the rail strikes which are taking place in the height of the festive period.

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association said: ‘This week is usually the busiest of the year for our industry.

‘But instead of being able to trade normally for the first time in three years, pubs in towns and cities across the UK are now seeing swathes of people rearranging Christmas parties and cancelling bookings.

‘These were bookings our pubs desperately need, Covid was unbelievably tough but what we’re facing now with spiralling costs and people watching more and more what they’re spending is hitting businesses even harder.

‘Pubs really needed this Christmas trade get them through the quieter months that follow, even more so after two years of restrictions, but now it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how many will make it until spring because their December trade is being decimated.’ 

Meanwhile, Lily Shippen, who runs a recruitment agency, said her team had no choice but to work from home this week due to rail strikes, which meant the £7,000-a-month office had sat empty.

The central London-based managing director said: ‘We’ve had to tell our team to work from home for the week.

‘We pay nearly £7,000 a month for our office, and it’s sat empty this week.

‘With a lot of staff off for Christmas from next week, and more train strikes scheduled for the first week back in January, it means we probably won’t all be together as a team again until mid-January, which will cost us money.’

Tory MPs are calling for laws against strikes, including closing the overtime loophole. Chris Loder, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said last week that striking and then working overtime at a higher rate was ‘milking the system’.

Some rail workers will have lost more than £4,000 if December and January strike dates called by the RMT go ahead. But many are thought to have clawed back hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds by clocking on for overtime shifts.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing growing pressure from his own MPs to crack down on union barons by bringing in tougher anti-strike laws as industrial action spreads to multiple sectors and threatens to drag on for months.

Other business owners today said the strikes could not have come at a worse time, after the cost-of-living crisis and soaring energy bills had started to take its toll.

A clothes shop owner said that she was ‘already feeling the pinch’ from customers cutting back due to record inflation, and so the rail strikes could ‘are the last thing’ small businesses need.

Shirley Leader, who owns woman’s clothing boutique Velvet & Rose in Petersfield, Hampshire, said: ‘Something needs to be done about the rail strikes.

‘Now is peak trading time for our boutique and customers not being able to travel to us will greatly impact our sales. We need a good start to next year.

‘We are already feeling the pinch from energy costs, postal strikes and people reining in their spending due to the cost of living crisis and these rail strikes are the last thing we need.’

Aussie tourists Alan and Janelle Hale were at Richmond station earlier today when they realised no trains were running to central London, after a signal failure put the District line out of action.

The couple said their sightseeing day had been ruined by rail strikes and it had put them off coming to the UK again.

Mr Hale, 54, said: ‘What has happened to his country. It is just disgusting. How can you have no trains running.

‘I was here seven years ago and everything worked. Now, it is just awful.’

The couple, from Grafton, New South Wales, continued:  ‘I went to ask someone when we could expect a train and they just shrugged their shoulders.

‘This is the last time bother to come over to this country. I can’t tell you how disappointed we are.’

Michelle Ovens, founder of Small Business Britain, said: ‘Small businesses are being hit hard by strikes, making it difficult to do business and particularly cutting foot fall at a critical time for retail and hospitality.

‘Businesses make their margin at this time of year and this on top of postal strikes, inflation, energy costs and more is making it almost impossible to make ends meet.’

HAS YOUR BUSINESS LOST CHRISTMAS BOOKINGS BECAUSE OF THE STRIKES? Email jack.wright@mailonline.co.uk