At the AGM, Peter Snape MP, from the RMT parliamentary group, tried to defend the privatisation of the tube. His hollow excuses only served to further antagonise the delegates. With continuing problems over finding private finance - no one wants to take the risk with deep tube lines, and Railtrack is openly considering withdrawing from the talks on the subsurface lines (District, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Circle and East London), the government is now faced with a united front of all three rail unions opposing the privatisation plan.
ASLEF has now switched its policy to opposition, and the three unions have linked up in a joint campaign, launched by a 300strong joint public meeting.
Whilst the union leadershps want to restrict the campaign to safe lobbying of MPs, their unity has helped revitalise the campaign of street leafletting and public meetings. Activists initially targetted the selection process for Labour candidates for the Greater London Assembly. All the hustings were leafletted and all candidates have been asked where they stand on the government's proposal.
Taking matters a step further, the RMT LUL Regional Council has now made a call for independent candidates who endorse union policy to be suppo. =d. Whilst ASLEF and TSSA have not been won to a campaign of strike action, the joint campaign at least marks a step forward from the previous position where the RMT was the only union opposing the government - and made it easier to argue for support among tube workers.
In the spring the initiative was lost when the RMT strikes were called off.
Whilst there were undoubtedly real problems of morale, the RMT leadership decided to retreat rather than confront those problems.
Despite all the hurdles the government faces it remains clear that they will not back down faced solely with a campaign of lobbying. The task of LUL activists and their supporters is to use the new united campaign to overcome the problems of morale and to force the RMT (and ASLEF) leadership to put industrial action back on the agenda.
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