HOW common is it for prominent radio or TV personalities to distance themselves from the usual Establishment cant about strikes and suggest that strikers might have a case?

The fact that LBC talk show host James O’Brien has caused a stir over his comments on the united strike action by transport unions on the London Underground confirms the rarity of his stance.

Even when commentators restrain themselves from going the whole hog about “trade union militants holding the country to ransom,” they usually resort to one-sided references to the public facing “transport chaos” because of union walkouts without considering what caused the dispute.

O’Brien asks his listeners to examine for themselves the issue that closed down London’s Tube network yesterday.

He notes that Tube drivers have never previously struck him as dedicated to destroying London or as “putting their own egotistical interest before that of their passengers.”

London Mayor Boris Johnson meets finance industry representatives regularly and eschews contact with trade union leaders.

He milked the headlines by announcing that Tube services would be extended through the night from September 16, but he failed to take into account what London Underground staff felt about the matter and what issues were key for them.

London Underground managing director Michael Brown claims to have put forward a “remarkably fair” pay offer to the Tube workers, but he was told by Aslef lead negotiator Finn Brennan that money was never the main issue.

“Ensuring that change is negotiated rather than imposed and introduced in a fair way has,” he said.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash highlighted “fairness, safety, work-life balance and equality” as issues that management has failed to address.

Had London Underground workers not enjoyed full backing from all four of their unions, they might have found themselves in a similar position to so many other unorganised employees left with no alternative but to fall in line like “craven, forelock-tugging peasants,” to quote O’Brien.

In his view, “employers now have more control over our lives than at any time since the second world war.”

Neither workers nor their organisations have ever held the whip hand in Britain, but they did emerge from the war confident of their role in smashing fascism and determined that there would be no return to the days of being treated like the dirt on the ruling class’s boots.

Over the following years, working people standing together, negotiating for better conditions and striking when necessary, were able to win a larger proportion than ever before of the wealth that their labour power creates.

By the 1970s, over 90 per cent of the working population, whether union members are not, was covered by collective agreements on pay and conditions.

Employers and their political representatives have fought strenuously to reverse these postwar gains and have been successful, partly because, in O’Brien’s words, too many of us believe “that the people causing us problems live next door to us or below us on the food chain.”

Rail workers, like firefighters, teachers, civil servants, NHS workers, local authority staff and many others, reject that philosophy of despair and fight back whenever possible.

The name of the game is solidarity. It’s an approach that has validity across society.

When the major parliamentary parties unite in favour of public-sector pay freezes and ever-tighter benefit caps and say nothing capable of interpretation as “anti-business,” stronger and more combative trade unions are working people’s first line of defence.