Lewis Drummond Adams (born 16 August 1939) is a British former trade unionist. Adams was educated at Impington Village College near

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, then started his career with

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

at the age of 15,Union boss hops on board Virgin
''

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'' 19 October 1998 working his way up to become a steam locomotive driver. A local Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF)

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

representative, Adams was voted in as General Secretary in 1994. Towards the right of the trade union political spectrum, he vigorously opposed the Conservative governments'

privatisation of British Rail The privatisation of British Rail was the process by which ownership and operation of the Rail transport in Great Britain, railways of Great Britain passed from government control into private hands. Begun in 1994, the process was largely compl ...

via the Railways Act 1993, and was attacked and labelled by the

right wing Right-wing politics is the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position b ...

tabloids, most famously as "The Black Prince of Militancy" by the ''

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'' during the 1995 rail strike. However, in 2004 Adams declared: "I was vehement that we wanted to stay in the public sector, and of course there were all the usual concerns trade unionists have regarding privatisation, safety issues, job losses, protecting the conditions of service, and pensions. But accepting the will of Parliament, it was time to look at the arguments. So we said to management, ‘Well, if that’s what you want, this is what we want.’ Today I cannot argue against the private entrepreneur coming into the rail industry. We are running 1,700 more trains per day since it was privatised. The entrepreneurs built traffic to the extent that we are having to build more infrastructure. What is true is true: 4.2 billion pounds spent on new trains. We never saw that in all the years I’ve been in the rail industry. All the time it was in the public sector, all we got were cuts, cuts, cuts. And today there are more members in the trade union, more train drivers, and more trains running. The reality is that it worked, we’ve protected jobs, and we got more jobs. If a private company is making more money, I look at that from a union's point of view, ‘Well, that looks like a wage increase to me.’ And we can argue that. And the more secure they are and the more productive they are in delivering train services, well, that means more jobs. I was there when the public railways had some 600,000 people and it came down to 100,000 in the time I worked in the rail industry. Now we are expanding on jobs.". In 1998, Adams had a Class 87 locomotive named after him by

Virgin Rail Group Virgin Rail Group (WCT Group since 2021) is a British rail transport company that was formed by the Virgin Group to bid for rail franchises in the United Kingdom during the privatisation of British Rail in the late 1990s. United Kingdom ope ...

boss

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate who co-founded the Virgin Group in 1970, and controlled 5 companies remaining of once more than 400. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneu ...

using the same "Black Prince" name, the first union secretary to have such an honour since former ASLEF secretary William P. Allen, General Secretary until 1947. After being voted out of office in May 1998 to be replaced by left wing candidate Mick Rix, Adams joined Virgin Trains as a training manager. In 2003 Adams was campaign manager for right-wing candidate Shaun Brady's unexpectedly successful campaign to be elected ASLEF General Secretary, defeating the incumbent Rix. Brady was removed from office the following year after a bitter dispute with the union's Executive Committee. Adams was later appointed to the Strategic Rail Authority set up by the new Labour government and is a board member of the

British Transport Police British Transport Police (BTP; ) is a national special police force that polices the railway network of England, Wales and Scotland, which consists of over 10,000 miles of track and 3,000 stations and depots. BTP also polices the London Under ...

.Adams bio
British Transport Police

References

External links

at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Lew General secretaries of ASLEF Living people 1939 births