In a week where a bitter rail dispute, the worst in 40 years, escalated further, Sir Peter Hendy, arguably the most powerful person on the railways, could be forgiven for wanting to keep a low profile among the travelling public at London’s Euston station.
But he breezes up the escalator with his name badge pinned on his chest and quips: “I knew you’d be in a pub. Typical journalists.”
It is a classic one-liner from a man who has a reputation for straight-speaking. Asked in 2006 whether his job as head of Transport for London (TfL) entitled him to £2m Belgravia house like his predecessor, he responded: “I’m going to get it tattooed on my forehead: ‘I do not get a house’. I don’t need a house. I’ve already got one.”
Dressed in an unusual combination of a white T-shirt and suit jacket, Hendy, 69, explains that a neck injury prevents him from wearing a shirt collar. “I’m getting older, it’s just one of those things you have to live with,” he says.
There are few people that have been more influential in shaping Britain’s public transport system over the last two decades. Hendy, who started his career driving a Routemaster, the bus he would later re-introduce to London’s roads as commissioner in 2012, is chairman of Network Rail, the owner of Britain’s stations, tracks and other rail infrastructure and one of the biggest public sector organisation outside of the NHS.
He also chairs the Olympic London Legacy Development Corporation and is a trustee of the Science and London Transport museums.
And if that isn’t enough, Hendy has been and remains a trusted adviser to Boris Johnson, with whom he has worked for more than a decade and a half. First as TfL commissioner during Johnson’s time as London mayor and then on a more ad hoc basis since.
As we board the train to Birmingham – Hendy was travelling to the opening of the Commonwealth Games – conversation quickly turns to the topic that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, an increasingly bitter row with the rail unions.
The RMT strikes have been particularly potent because Network Rail’s signallers have walked out. Running a railway with no ticket collectors or guards is one thing. Running one with no signallers could be catastrophic.
Hendy is raging at the RMT’s intransigence. A week ago, the union rejected an 8pc pay rise over the next two years, alongside the promise of no compulsory redundancies. Other perks were thrown in the mix too – 75pc off rail travel for family members as well as bonuses worth hundreds of pounds for every worker.
“We think we’ve made a pretty reasonable offer in the circumstances in which we’re in,” he says. “We’ve made a number of offers, but they haven’t taken any of them to our staff and their members and I think that that’s unforgivable, because they’re not being given the opportunity to express the view on what was on the table last Friday.”
The offer, according to RMT general secretary Mick Lynch, amounts to a real-terms pay cut.
Though his critics will highlight that as a public sector organisation, Network Rail’s offer is far better than that offered to doctors or nurses. Yes, Hendy concedes, rail workers have endured a pay freeze for one or two years. But not one was placed on furlough. This means not one took a 20pc pay cut during the pandemic.
Splits in the union movement are emerging, however. On Thursday, The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, which has around 2,000 Network Rail members, put the very same pay deal to the vote – only for the TSSA to backtrack on the decision within 24 hours. “Our offer, which is skewed towards the low-paid, is pretty good actually. And I think that it’s so poor that they haven’t put it to its membership,” Hendy says.
The RMT’s out of hand rejection has stiffened the resolve on both sides. Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, and Conservative leadership favourite Liz Truss have pledged to get tough on “militant” trade unions and “finish the job of Margaret Thatcher” with new laws to undermine union power.
As far as Hendy’s concerned, there is little point in making a better offer – even if that were possible.
“What you conclude from that is, actually, they want to have a go at the Government. So in those circumstances, you ask yourself: why would we go any further? Because if they’re not going to put that offer to the membership, what offer are they going to put?”
**‘Reconciliation is round the corner’**
But Hendy is confident that soon or later a reconciliation will occur. “A 100-year view of history shows that however bad the dispute is, people go back to work. The deal is: we pay people to come to work, and they need the money,” he says.
His biggest gripe, if he were a member of the RMT, is: “Why am I not allowed to express my views?”
“Even in my industrial experience, this is quite unusual for a trade union to be given a pretty sophisticated offer [and not put it to the vote].”
The inner workings of the RMT have left Hendy and Andrew Haines, Network Rail’s chief executive, scratching their heads. “Twice,” Hendy says, “the union side has left our offices with us having a pretty firm belief that they’ll go back and consider what we say.
“And each time within half an hour, the mood has substantially changed.”
It calls into question the somewhat opaque hierarchy within the RMT, where a little-known national executive of 15 people would seem to be in charge – and some make for interesting personalities.
One example is Jared Wood, representative for London, who was caught lying during a BBC London phone-in in 2015. Wood claimed to be called “Joe”, an everyday strike supporter, before he was unmasked by London Underground managing director Nick Brown, who recognised his voice.
Brown told presenter Vanessa Feltz live on air: “Vanessa, that’s Jared, he works for the RMT, he’s been in over 100-odd meetings with my colleagues down the months as we try to arrange all the things going ahead.
“He is remarkably well-informed because he has been leading the charge on behalf of the RMT.”
Hendy is at a loss as to who is really in charge – the RMT’s national executive or Lynch, the union’s general secretary who has gained cult-like status since the strikes began in June.
“He’s [Lynch] got a job to do. And actually I think he is quite good at it,” Hendy says. “He’s plausible, [but] I don’t think he tells the exact truth – and that’s polite.
“But I’m not sure that he is the final arbiter about how the union behaves, because it’s run by the executive committee.”
**Other side of the tracks**
One person that Hendy is much more sure about is his older brother, John, Lord Hendy, no less – who sits firmly on the other side of the tracks.
One of the leading experts in UK labour law, Lord Hendy, 74, came to prominence in the mid-1980s representing the National Union of Mineworkers in a civil claim relating to the miners’ strike. He went on to represent mining unions at the start of the following decade in a High Court bid to prevent 31 collieries being closed.
To this day, the Labour peer is a vocal proponent of the hard-left, showing support for the rail worker strike action, Jeremy Corbyn and advocating for the nationalisation of industry.
Hendy says of his only sibling: “The biggest difference [between him and I] is that I might have some political views, but by and large, I keep them to myself. Because I am employed in the public sector by different political parties. I do vote. But that’s a secret ballot and I am entitled to keep that to myself.
“I’m sure he doesn’t share all my views. But I don’t share his. It’s alright,” Hendy says, in a strong London accent. “We’ve been around for a long time.”
What is less well-known is that it is Hendy, rather than his elder brother, that is the odd one out when it comes to politics – and this despite a noble heritage.
Mary, the brothers’ mother, was well-known as a London socialite and daughter of the the sixth Baron Wynford. Their father Jack was an electrician and active in the trade union movement. Both parents were members of the Communist Party.
Hendy is more guarded on whether there have been family arguments aplenty over the years. When pressed he relents and provides one example of a disagreement.
“He stood once alongside [former RMT head] Bob [Crow] in a political party to oppose Britain’s membership of the European Union. At the time, I didn’t agree with him. But it hasn’t stopped his career has it? He’s in the House of Lords.”
Crow was extremely close to his brother. The union chief’s untimely death in 2014 at the age of just 52 shocked politicians and officials, no matter of their political persuasion. “All of us in the transport industry were devastated when Bob Crow died,” Hendy says.
Lord Hendy has repeatedly tweeted support for saving train station ticket offices, urging his followers to sign a petition to ensure they are not cut.
The RMT, alongside splinter group The Association of British Commuters, claims the Government is planning to cut every ticket office in the country. Government sources do not deny that some ticket offices are for the chop, but dispute the narrative that they will all be shut overnight. This is not part of Hendy’s purview. Ticket offices are the train operators’ problem.
But he makes little secret of the fact that they need to go. As Transport for London commissioner, Hendy oversaw the closure of swathes of London Underground ticket offices as the Oyster Card-associated machines made them effectively redundant.
“TfL [Transport for London] has demonstrated that actually, you can run a very large mass transit system with people in the modern world who are very comfortable either just going out with a phone or a credit card,” he says. “If the behaviour of your customers changes, then you have to reflect it.”
Bollocks.
If the Japanese train companies can charge £1.23 for a local ticket and run the trains more reliably, but still make billions a year in profit, there’s no way in hell that rail as a concept is unprofitable.
It can be run at a profit. Just not by the fuckers in charge of them now.
It and anyone working in it will be utterly fist fucked by the conservatives? That’s what he means right?
4 comments
In a week where a bitter rail dispute, the worst in 40 years, escalated further, Sir Peter Hendy, arguably the most powerful person on the railways, could be forgiven for wanting to keep a low profile among the travelling public at London’s Euston station.
But he breezes up the escalator with his name badge pinned on his chest and quips: “I knew you’d be in a pub. Typical journalists.”
It is a classic one-liner from a man who has a reputation for straight-speaking. Asked in 2006 whether his job as head of Transport for London (TfL) entitled him to £2m Belgravia house like his predecessor, he responded: “I’m going to get it tattooed on my forehead: ‘I do not get a house’. I don’t need a house. I’ve already got one.”
Dressed in an unusual combination of a white T-shirt and suit jacket, Hendy, 69, explains that a neck injury prevents him from wearing a shirt collar. “I’m getting older, it’s just one of those things you have to live with,” he says.
There are few people that have been more influential in shaping Britain’s public transport system over the last two decades. Hendy, who started his career driving a Routemaster, the bus he would later re-introduce to London’s roads as commissioner in 2012, is chairman of Network Rail, the owner of Britain’s stations, tracks and other rail infrastructure and one of the biggest public sector organisation outside of the NHS.
He also chairs the Olympic London Legacy Development Corporation and is a trustee of the Science and London Transport museums.
And if that isn’t enough, Hendy has been and remains a trusted adviser to Boris Johnson, with whom he has worked for more than a decade and a half. First as TfL commissioner during Johnson’s time as London mayor and then on a more ad hoc basis since.
As we board the train to Birmingham – Hendy was travelling to the opening of the Commonwealth Games – conversation quickly turns to the topic that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks, an increasingly bitter row with the rail unions.
The RMT strikes have been particularly potent because Network Rail’s signallers have walked out. Running a railway with no ticket collectors or guards is one thing. Running one with no signallers could be catastrophic.
Hendy is raging at the RMT’s intransigence. A week ago, the union rejected an 8pc pay rise over the next two years, alongside the promise of no compulsory redundancies. Other perks were thrown in the mix too – 75pc off rail travel for family members as well as bonuses worth hundreds of pounds for every worker.
“We think we’ve made a pretty reasonable offer in the circumstances in which we’re in,” he says. “We’ve made a number of offers, but they haven’t taken any of them to our staff and their members and I think that that’s unforgivable, because they’re not being given the opportunity to express the view on what was on the table last Friday.”
The offer, according to RMT general secretary Mick Lynch, amounts to a real-terms pay cut.
Though his critics will highlight that as a public sector organisation, Network Rail’s offer is far better than that offered to doctors or nurses. Yes, Hendy concedes, rail workers have endured a pay freeze for one or two years. But not one was placed on furlough. This means not one took a 20pc pay cut during the pandemic.
Splits in the union movement are emerging, however. On Thursday, The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, which has around 2,000 Network Rail members, put the very same pay deal to the vote – only for the TSSA to backtrack on the decision within 24 hours. “Our offer, which is skewed towards the low-paid, is pretty good actually. And I think that it’s so poor that they haven’t put it to its membership,” Hendy says.
The RMT’s out of hand rejection has stiffened the resolve on both sides. Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, and Conservative leadership favourite Liz Truss have pledged to get tough on “militant” trade unions and “finish the job of Margaret Thatcher” with new laws to undermine union power.
As far as Hendy’s concerned, there is little point in making a better offer – even if that were possible.
“What you conclude from that is, actually, they want to have a go at the Government. So in those circumstances, you ask yourself: why would we go any further? Because if they’re not going to put that offer to the membership, what offer are they going to put?”
**‘Reconciliation is round the corner’**
But Hendy is confident that soon or later a reconciliation will occur. “A 100-year view of history shows that however bad the dispute is, people go back to work. The deal is: we pay people to come to work, and they need the money,” he says.
His biggest gripe, if he were a member of the RMT, is: “Why am I not allowed to express my views?”
“Even in my industrial experience, this is quite unusual for a trade union to be given a pretty sophisticated offer [and not put it to the vote].”
The inner workings of the RMT have left Hendy and Andrew Haines, Network Rail’s chief executive, scratching their heads. “Twice,” Hendy says, “the union side has left our offices with us having a pretty firm belief that they’ll go back and consider what we say.
“And each time within half an hour, the mood has substantially changed.”
It calls into question the somewhat opaque hierarchy within the RMT, where a little-known national executive of 15 people would seem to be in charge – and some make for interesting personalities.
One example is Jared Wood, representative for London, who was caught lying during a BBC London phone-in in 2015. Wood claimed to be called “Joe”, an everyday strike supporter, before he was unmasked by London Underground managing director Nick Brown, who recognised his voice.
Brown told presenter Vanessa Feltz live on air: “Vanessa, that’s Jared, he works for the RMT, he’s been in over 100-odd meetings with my colleagues down the months as we try to arrange all the things going ahead.
“He is remarkably well-informed because he has been leading the charge on behalf of the RMT.”
Hendy is at a loss as to who is really in charge – the RMT’s national executive or Lynch, the union’s general secretary who has gained cult-like status since the strikes began in June.
“He’s [Lynch] got a job to do. And actually I think he is quite good at it,” Hendy says. “He’s plausible, [but] I don’t think he tells the exact truth – and that’s polite.
“But I’m not sure that he is the final arbiter about how the union behaves, because it’s run by the executive committee.”
**Other side of the tracks**
One person that Hendy is much more sure about is his older brother, John, Lord Hendy, no less – who sits firmly on the other side of the tracks.
One of the leading experts in UK labour law, Lord Hendy, 74, came to prominence in the mid-1980s representing the National Union of Mineworkers in a civil claim relating to the miners’ strike. He went on to represent mining unions at the start of the following decade in a High Court bid to prevent 31 collieries being closed.
To this day, the Labour peer is a vocal proponent of the hard-left, showing support for the rail worker strike action, Jeremy Corbyn and advocating for the nationalisation of industry.
Hendy says of his only sibling: “The biggest difference [between him and I] is that I might have some political views, but by and large, I keep them to myself. Because I am employed in the public sector by different political parties. I do vote. But that’s a secret ballot and I am entitled to keep that to myself.
“I’m sure he doesn’t share all my views. But I don’t share his. It’s alright,” Hendy says, in a strong London accent. “We’ve been around for a long time.”
What is less well-known is that it is Hendy, rather than his elder brother, that is the odd one out when it comes to politics – and this despite a noble heritage.
Mary, the brothers’ mother, was well-known as a London socialite and daughter of the the sixth Baron Wynford. Their father Jack was an electrician and active in the trade union movement. Both parents were members of the Communist Party.
Hendy is more guarded on whether there have been family arguments aplenty over the years. When pressed he relents and provides one example of a disagreement.
“He stood once alongside [former RMT head] Bob [Crow] in a political party to oppose Britain’s membership of the European Union. At the time, I didn’t agree with him. But it hasn’t stopped his career has it? He’s in the House of Lords.”
Crow was extremely close to his brother. The union chief’s untimely death in 2014 at the age of just 52 shocked politicians and officials, no matter of their political persuasion. “All of us in the transport industry were devastated when Bob Crow died,” Hendy says.
Lord Hendy has repeatedly tweeted support for saving train station ticket offices, urging his followers to sign a petition to ensure they are not cut.
The RMT, alongside splinter group The Association of British Commuters, claims the Government is planning to cut every ticket office in the country. Government sources do not deny that some ticket offices are for the chop, but dispute the narrative that they will all be shut overnight. This is not part of Hendy’s purview. Ticket offices are the train operators’ problem.
But he makes little secret of the fact that they need to go. As Transport for London commissioner, Hendy oversaw the closure of swathes of London Underground ticket offices as the Oyster Card-associated machines made them effectively redundant.
“TfL [Transport for London] has demonstrated that actually, you can run a very large mass transit system with people in the modern world who are very comfortable either just going out with a phone or a credit card,” he says. “If the behaviour of your customers changes, then you have to reflect it.”
Bollocks.
If the Japanese train companies can charge £1.23 for a local ticket and run the trains more reliably, but still make billions a year in profit, there’s no way in hell that rail as a concept is unprofitable.
It can be run at a profit. Just not by the fuckers in charge of them now.
It and anyone working in it will be utterly fist fucked by the conservatives? That’s what he means right?
Absolute nonsense.