Bob Crow was a working-class hero. That's something to be, as another such hero, John Lennon, put it. Everything about the RMT leader shouted: "I'm a union man!" He didn't keep whippets, but he certainly followed Millwall FC whose slogan might have been his at times of trouble: "We are Millwall, no one likes us, we don't care."

In truth most people liked Crow because they knew he was authentic, in the age of the blow-dried speak-your-weight machine, and that he faithfully served the interest of those who elected him. He had no other master than them; and as the British ruling class used to say, he was the type of man with whom one could go shooting tigers.

The huge gap that his passing has left speaks volumes about the shrunken nature of labour. Crow and the workers he represents were, like me, expelled from New Labour, and for similar reasons. It was Labour's loss because it symbolised the contempt for solidarity and traditional working-class communities that has made it a husk of the party it once was.

Crow was a virtually daily reminder in the media that the working class is not dead; that all around us are things made by workers, and services provided by them. And that those workers don't have to settle for zero-hours servitude. That they can organise, strengthen themselves, stand up to exploitative employers. That community is not a vanished phenomenon to be glimpsed behind a glass case in a museum of working-class life, but can come alive again and be made real.

He proved that workers can win if they are organised, determined and well led. That without workers, society cannot operate, and that a train driver can keep his job, be safe in the workplace and take home wages once only earned by people with white collars. For anyone serious about beating insecurity, inequality and the race to the bottom, those are lessons that need to be learned across the workforce.

Crow proved that workers in militant unions don't have to be sectional and that they must know that the world is international and interdependent. He supported the nurses, followed events in Latin America closely and maintained a political fund freed from official Labour party constraints which could be used creatively in the wider interests of his membership. Given recent New Labour-style rule changes, he may well have been ahead of his time.

His demonisation by the media was most striking because it didn't work. If he had woken up this morning it would be have been to another Daily Mail attack, this time about his salary. But if ever a man earned every penny of his salary it was Crow.

When it was not his wages it was his holidays, or what he wore, or what he ate and drank – pina coladas on a cruise being obviously too good for the workers. But Crow believed that nothing was too good for the workers – or their leaders so long as the members approved. And approve of Bob RMT members surely did – with good reason. Many London Underground drivers now earn more than £50,000 a year, and why not? In the battle between Bob and Boris the public would have backed Bob if Boris hadn't backed down.

He was also a man, and if they cut him he surely bled. Who knows the wear and tear of media attrition on his health? But he never let the hyenas feast upon him, he kept on moving, fighting, right to the end. His last media appearance demonstrated his audacity, and his creative and counterintuitive line of thinking.

At a time when public opprobrium towards MPs is apparently bottomless, he argued for a pay rise for them – but only if they stopped "scratching around", filling their pockets with dubious expenses, renting themselves out as lobbyists and spinning around the revolving doors between public service and private enterprise.

Few MPs could dream of the public profile, record of achievement, affection and respect enjoyed by Crow. The media said he was the last of the Mohicans. But the Mohicans are coming back. In leaders such as Len McCluskey working people have others on whom they can depend. But in Crow we have lost one of a kind: a mighty oak has fallen.