Revealed: Favourite to exchange Mick Lynch as head of the RMT is hard-left socialist who posed with pro-Putin separatists in Ukraine
A hard-left union boss who posed with pro-Putin separatists in Ukraine emerged last night as the favourite to become the new leader of the RMT.
Eddie Dempsey, a self-proclaimed ‘socialist’, is expected to run for leader of the militant rail union after current boss Mick Lynch announced his retirement yesterday.
Mr Dempsey is Mr Lynch’s deputy and played a central role in orchestrating one of the longest industrial disputes in modern rail history.
The pair poured misery on millions of commuters by ordering strikes for 18 months under the previous Tory government, earning Mr Lynch, 63, the nickname ‘Mick Grinch’ after targeting the Christmas holidays with walkouts.
Along with the Aslef train drivers’ union, the RMT was handed inflation-busting pay hikes with no strings attached by the new Labour government in a bid to ward off future walkouts. The deal struck this summer sparked accusations that Labour was caving into its union ‘paymasters’.
In a final parting shot at the Tories, Mr Lynch, leader of the union since 2021, said last night: ‘We can all be proud that our union stood up against the wholesale attacks on the rail industry by the previous Tory government and the union defeated them.
‘The RMT will always need a new generation of workers to take up the fight for its members and for a fairer society for all and I am immensely proud to have been part of that struggle.’
The Tories’ transport spokesman, Gareth Bacon, said: ‘His actions have caused misery for commuters up and down the country, and we know Labour will be sad to see him go.’
Eddie Dempsey visiting Alexander Mozgovoy, paramilitary leader in the pro-Russian militias during the war in eastern Ukraine
Mick Lynch, 63, earned the nickname ‘Mick Grinch’ after targeting the Christmas holidays with walkouts
An internal election will now take place and finish in May, when Mr Lynch will stand down.
No candidates have yet formally thrown their hat in the ring, but union insiders said Mr Dempsey will almost certainly run.
It makes him the favourite to succeed Mr Lynch as he has been his deputy since October 2021.
But shortly after his election, it emerged that in 2015, not long after Vladimir Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine, he visited the Donbas region.
Here, he posed for photographs with the pro-Putin warlord Aleksey Mozgovoy, a commander in the ‘Ghost Brigade’ of pro-Russian separatists branded a ‘terrorist organisation’ by Ukraine’s Supreme Court.
Despite this, Mr Dempsey has described Mozgovoy as a ‘charismatic anti-fascist’ and praised his group while calling the West’s efforts to broker peace in the region a ‘US-orchestrated coup’.
During one rant in 2014, he urged Hard-left activists to back the pro-Putin ‘anti-fascist resistance in Ukraine’ against ‘the Western governments’ backing for the Far-right regime in Kyiv’.
Eddie Dempsey joins the picket line outside Paddington Station, London during a strike by members of the RMT in August 2023
Eddie Dempsey speaking at a protest outside the Transport Department (DfT), London, in December 2022 calling on the Government to end the ‘scandal’ of poverty pay
Mick Lynch addresses demonstrators during a Right to Strike protest outside Downing Street on January 16, 2023 in London
Mr Dempsey also signed a letter from the notorious Stop the War coalition, which criticised Nato for showing ‘disdain for Russian concerns’ in Ukraine at the start of the war.
He has said that he wants to ‘implement in this country policies which are socialist’ and in 2022 defended continuing to live in a council flat despite being on a six-figure pay package.
