Skip to main content
Shapps lambasted following anti-union offensive
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps speaks to the media in central London, June 20, ahead of RMT train strikes.

GRANT SHAPPS has “lost the plot,” RMT’s Mick Lynch charged today after the Tory Transport Secretary launched another tirade against trade union rights.

Writing in the Daily Mail newspaper, the Welwyn Hatfield MP evoked Margaret Thatcher’s assault on working-class power in the 1980s and vowed to “take on Luddite” union leaders who are “victimising” the public.

His threat came as a national strike of RMT and TSSA members at Network Rail and several train operating companies crippled services across the country.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
UNION RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS: St Mungo's workers outside the homeless charity's head quarters in Tower Hill, London, as they start a month long strike over pay, May 2023
Workers' Rights / 21 March 2026
21 March 2026

The unions are unhappy with the Employment Rights Act 2025 and with good reason. KEITH EWING and Lord JOHN HENDY KC take a close look at why the Bill promised more than it delivered

Junior doctors on the picket line outside St Thomas' Hospital, London, during their continuing dispute over pay. Picture date: Thursday June 27, 2024
Workers' Rights / 18 July 2025
18 July 2025

It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR

Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan (left) and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer lay a wreath at the 7/7 Memorial, in Hyde Park, London, to mark the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in London on July 7th 2005 that killed 52 people, July 7, 2025
Terrorism / 7 July 2025
7 July 2025