With Londoners struggling without the Tube we were wondering if Bob Crow was not perhaps the most unpopular union leader ever.

You can have your say below, but first, the candidates:

Jack Dash
The original trades union bogeyman, Dash was involved in every London dockstrike from 1945 to 1969. After his retirement, rather more endearingly, he became a London tour guide.

Derek Robinson
Remember him? Robinson was a convener at British Leyland’s Longbridge plant in the 1970s, but wielded influence across the old “British car industry”. He was responsible for no fewer than 523 walkouts at the company before he was finally sacked in November 1979. Fleet Street called him “Red Robbo”, which he saw as a badge of honour.

Jack Jones
A Liverpool docker who became a full-time union leader after fighting in the Spanish civil war, Jones spent ten years at the head of the all-powerful Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU).

Jones was a regular at No 10 during the days of beer and sandwiches, although according to a 1977 poll 54 per cent of people considered him more powerful than the Prime Minister. Jones, who died in April, retired from the TGWU in 1978, but many still consider him to have borne some responsibility for the ensuring labour disputes which became known as “the winter of discontent”.

Bob Crow
General-Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, Crow is a founder member of the “awkward squad” of union leaders alongside such names as Mark Serwotka and Jeremy Dear. Not popular with England football fans.

Arthur Scargill
Instrumental in the miners’s strike which helped bring down Edward Heath in 1974, Scargill took over as president of National Union of Mineworkers in 1981, leading it through the miners’ strike of 1984-85. His uncompromising hard-left stance saw him vilified in the right-wing press although the antagonism was always mutual.

Fred Kite
All right Jack, this one’s not real: Fred Kite was the Communist shop steward which provided Peter Sellers with his break-out role in 1959 (watch the clip above). Many people, including more than a few union leaders, took Kite as the role