FEW modern-day industrial disputes have turned as bitter as the ongoing Southern rail feud over extending driver-only trains throughout its network.

And no-one knows this more than Graham Morris, the district organiser at drivers’ union Aslef responsible for Southern.

Aslef secured a massive 87 per cent mandate for strike action. This week’s walk-outs kicked off with a total shutdown yesterday, and continue today and Friday.

But for Morris, who drove trains on the Southern network for a previous unpopular privateer, Connex, maintaining morale is a key part of the job.

“You’ve always got a few who start whingeing at the start of a dispute,” he tells the Star. “Normally just the threat of the strike we end up with a sensible resolution before we take action.

“But this is not a run-of-the-mill dispute, you’ve got politics involved, and the Department for Transport directing it.

“Some of the members expect that we’ll get a strong ballot result and the company will go belly up, but here that’s not the case.”

But Morris (pictured) says there is “mass support” among drivers for striking, and that the dispute is “holding up well.”

Unsurprisingly, Aslef — along with conductors’ union RMT — has faced a barrage of hostile press coverage in the past few months. Last week the London Evening Standard scrutinised Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan for travelling to Paddington station in the passenger seat of his wife’s car, and travelling to work on driver-only trains like the ones Southern is trying to operate.

Morris laughs. “One of our previous general secretaries, Ray Buckton had a chauffeur. I think it’s quite refreshing that Mick’s not getting in a taxi.”

He says the coverage has had little effect on members’ trust of the media — because they had little faith in many newspapers even before.

“Most people now are very sceptical of the mainstream media,” he says.

“If it’s in the Morning Star, I’ll think it’s gospel, and I’ll probably go with it in the Guardian and perhaps the Mirror. But not the nonsense in the Mail and the Express.”

Morris says he keeps off social media, where tempers have run high in relation to the Southern dispute. He has been alerted, however, to a number of instances of online trolling.

Aslef leader Mr Whelan has received death threats and says drivers have faced verbal abuse from irate passengers.

In spite of this hostility, Morris believes the “vast majority of the public” are still on side with the unions’ arguments about safety and the importance of a second member of on-train staff.

“On the picket at London Bridge last month, despite all the people we only had one negative comment.”