RMT boss wants to force Prescott out of his home
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Your support makes all the difference.The union leader Bob Crow is stopping John Prescott from buying a flat in which the Deputy Prime Minister has lived for 30 years, in an increasing bitter row which is causing alarm bells to ring throughout the Labour Party.
Mr Prescott – for years regarded as the unions' key ally in Tony Blair's Cabinet – was forced last week to resign from the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, to which he had belonged for nearly 50 years after refusing to sign an RMT loyalty pledge.
The RMT announced it was switching funding from Mr Prescott and 12 other Labour MPs to create a new RMT group of MPs at Westminster. The union cannot evict Mr Prescott from the flat, at the former National Union of Seamen headquarters in south London, because he is a protected tenant, but in the increasingly bitter atmosphere, he may have to leave.
Five other Labour MPs are believed to be planning to resign from the RMT, including Robin Cook, the Leader of the House of Commons, and Keith Hill, the deputy chief whip, in a Labour backlash against the union.
In a scathing attack on Mr Crow, in an exclusive interview in today's Independent on Sunday, Mr Prescott says he is the first leader of the union who is not a member of the Labour Party and he warns he could be trying to form a rival party within Labour's ranks.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the union had "changed fundamentally" since Mr Crow took control.
"This is the first time the union has a general secretary who is committed to disaffiliating from the Labour Party. He even talks of a new party, one made up of MPs who will do what he tells them. You can't have that. No other general secretary has said that, outside him and Scargill," he said.
Ministers are concerned at calls by the hard left for the creation of a union alliance against the Government on a range of issues including private finance for public services which could cause trouble for Mr Blair at the TUC conference in September.
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