Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1995,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My castaway this week is a union leader. He was born into a poor Scottish family,

left school at 15 and joined the railways. He's been there ever since, starting out as a

signalman in the remote west of Scotland, and then in 1983, as the candidate from nowhere,

winning a landslide victory to become leader of the rail union. Most recently, of course,

he was in the public eye as the man who led a long and bitter series of one-day strikes against

rail track. Once accused of being a stooge of the communist left, he's risen to become the

popular leader of a combined transport union. He's the General Secretary of the Rail Maritime

and Transport Union, Jimmy Napp. There've always been contradictions surrounding your image, Jimmy.

You know, you're sometimes portrayed as being the crusty dinosaur, the traditional trade unionist,

Jurassic Jimmy, I've seen you call, and then the next minute you're this rather popular leader

who's dedicated to forming a voter-friendly Labour Party. Will the real Jimmy Napp stand up,

which one are you? Well, I think hopefully a person who has always tried to tell it as it is,

you know, to say to the public in the nation, well, this is the truth, this is the story.

And of course, there are those in the media, newspapers particularly, who will always try to

slap the dinosaur label on any trade union leader. But I think they've had some difficulty

with that in recent times because I think that a lot of our messages go through. But it becomes

quite personal, doesn't it? You're inevitably on the trade union leader and they always mention

two things about you. They mention your appearance and they mention your accent. I mean,

politically incorrect questions, there they are. Let me ask you, first of all, about the accent.

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