Sometimes you find out something which just leaves you reeling in shock. And so it was about ten minutes ago, when I learned that Bob Crow had died. He was only 52 years of age.
There’s no use pretending that Bob Crow and I agreed on anything. We didn’t. But he had my total respect. Over the last three years I suppose I have interviewed him a dozen times, and to say he was a worthy adversary would be a total understatement. I don’t mind admitting, he usually ran rings around me. A couple of months ago I remember doing an interview about the latest tube strike, and after it had finished wandering into the gallery and saying to my producer “Why is it that I can never do an good interview with that man?” I thought about it a lot, and decided that maybe I was trying to be just that little bit too clever and was trying to provoke a confrontation. So the last time I interviewed him I changed tack. I did a completely straight interview without any wish for fireworks, I just asked him questions to try to illicit some straight answers. And, incredibly, it worked.
There was no side to Bob Crow. What you saw was what you got. He was a lion, defending his members and I remember doing a phone-in asking the question: “Is Bob Crow the greatest living British trade unionist?” He fought tenaciously for his members but had a great love of the London Underground.
He struck up a great relationship with my colleague Julia Hartley-Brewer, who spent many happy an hour with him in the studio taking him to task for living in a council house and going on expensive holidays. But he took it in good part, and I think secretly rather enjoyed playing up to the stereotype the tabloid press had built up for him.
I think of Bob’s family this morning and how totally and utterly bereft they must feel. Many of us had our differences with Bob, but in many ways he was a very great man who has been taken from this earth at far too young an age.
