Irish Examiner view: Lynch is coming up trumps in a bitter rail dispute

Man leading the strikers has gained public sympathy, even with those whose lives he is impeding

The RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, on a picket line outside St Pancras station in London. Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA

In an attempt to summon the spirit of the late 70s and early 80s — era of the “winter of discontent” and “crisis, what crisis” — political commentators in Britain are making strenuous attempts to enlist the ghosts of the past.

The most popular TV programme at the moment is a thriller called Sherwood whose plotline is based in the community divisions between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Union of Democratic Mineworkers in the pit strike of 1984/85. Right on cue the newspapers have recalled the bogeyman of that long ago age.