Bernie Sanders addresses the meeting

US senator and former presidential challenger Bernie Sanders gave a rallying cry to striking workers at a packed “Save London’s Transport” public meeting.

The 80-year-old was the star guest at the RMT union rally in the TUC building, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, on Wednesday. It came on the day that postal workers formed picket lines outside depots across the country, the latest in a series of workers to take strike action over low pay.

Mr Sanders said: “The only way that justice ever comes about, the only way that working people ever make success, is when we stand up, we take them on, and we win.

“That’s what this struggle is about. Let us go toe-to-toe together, let us go forward together, keep our eyes on the prize, let’s take on corporate greed and transform the world’s economy.”

Mr Sanders received a standing ovation before he had uttered a word. He raised his hand to punctuate points and his arms opened wide in bemusement at the current economic and political situation.

Mr Sanders campaigned for the Democrat Party as an independent socialist but eventually lost the nomination to Joe Biden.

Mr Sanders embraces the RMT’s Mick Lynch

He said: “There is no moral justification for a small number of multi-billionaires to have more wealth than they will spend in 1,000 lifetimes, while people are going hungry or living out on the streets. In the UK and in the US we have got to get our priorities right, and that means creating an economy and a gov­ernment that works for all, not just a few.

“We are living in a time where we are seeing increased pain and suffering for working families, and certainly this inflation that you, and we, are going through is making a bad situation worse. Our job right now internationally is to stand together, our job right now is to bring people all over the world together to make it clear to the oligarchs that their day and their power is ending.”

Mr Sanders appeared alongside RMT leader Mick Lynch, who has been the face of industrial action in the UK this summer. The pair shared a brief embrace on stage.

The general secretary of train drivers union Aslef, Mick Whelan, also addressed the room, as did Unite bus organiser Onay Kaseb and disability campaigner Barbara Lisicki.

The rally came a day after the latest funding deal between Transport for London and the Dep­artment for Transport, that gave London’s transport authority cash until March 2024, but means that fares will have to go up.

Pension funds will also be cut and staff cuts could be needed. TfL has not yet confirmed whether planned bus cuts will go ahead.

Ms Lisicki said that proposed cuts to staffing on national railway networks and in London could lead to disabled passengers being stranded, due to a lack of assistance and staff to help put ramps on to trains.

In a night that saw union figure after union figure decry the government and private transport bodies for not paying fair wages or giving terms and conditions to workers that they wanted, Mr Lynch took to the stage joking that his speech had already been stolen.

If it had been stolen, his thunder remained intact.

“What we’ve got in front of us here is a defensive dispute we are running along with the other trade unions.

“That goes for the national railway and it goes for London transport. They have got their tanks on our lawn right now, and they’ve got their tanks on the lawn of the working class.

“We have to unite up all of our communities, the trade unions, they have got to be a physical presence in those communities, those communities that we have lost to our ideas over the last 20 to 30 years, the people who have given up on the labour movement, the people who haven’t got an idea of how to organise collectively.

“We have got to mentor them to get residents’ associations going, rent-payers’ associations going, young people’s organ­isations going, politically. Whatever it takes the unions have got to be there and we can’t leave it to the professional political class to get it done.

“It was our job back in the 1890s and it’s our job today.”