“Alarm bells should be ringing,” is the verdict of one rail industry insider. Mick Lynch, 63, the combative general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has announced he’s stepping down in May after four years as the scourge of successive Conservative transport secretaries – and millions of commuters.
But passengers about to breathe a sigh of relief at the departure of the man once labelled “a Grinch” by Rishi Sunak for leading rail strikes that ran over Christmas, might be jumping the gun.
For the frontrunner to succeed Lynch is Eddie Dempsey, a longstanding ideologue of the hard-Left who, critics fear, will push the agenda of the RMT into further strikes – and even into more broader anti-government action across the trade union movement.
According to one insider, Lynch was even considered the “gentle one” of a triumvirate made up of the RMT chief, Dempsey, his assistant general secretary, and Alex Gordon, the union’s former president and current executive committee member of the Communist Party of Britain.
Lynch’s time as the leader of the RMT coincided with a surge in rail strikes as the union rejected pay offers from train operators.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows that, since May 2021, the transport and communication sectors have lost the equivalent of 70,000 days a month to strikes, especially acute during 2022 and 2023. During the period of Lynch’s predecessor, Mick Cash, the figure was just 6,100 – according to data which also includes strikes by postal workers and delivery drivers, amongst others. The fear now is that a more radical leadership of the union could mean a return to strikes and further misery for travellers and commuters.
Starting in 2022, Lynch became the face of a series of rail strikes intended to secure better pay for train drivers. Told during an interview in 2022 that rail strikes in December that year would do “real damage” to people, Lynch said: “Yes, and that is unfortunate, but we have to respond to what the companies are doing and they are doing that very deliberately.”
But behind the scenes Lynch was more pragmatic than he may have appeared, says a former Department for Transport (DfT) figure who dealt with the RMT during the Conservatives’ time in office.
“In all the dealings we with had with Mick Lynch in government, behind closed doors he was very straightforward and focused, wanting to get a deal for his members even if that meant dealing with a government that he didn’t like.
“That made it easier to resolve strike action and reach agreements that worked for both the taxpayer and the members. He was an effective and reasonable negotiator, notwithstanding the stances he took in public and in the media.”
Even if Dempsey, who has yet to publicly confirm that he is running, is pipped to the post, “it’s likely that Mick will be replaced by someone more radical,” claims the former DfT advisor.
Along with the train drivers union Aslef, the RMT negotiated pay increases of 4.5 per cent with no strings attached (plus backdated pay) with the Labour government last year in an attempt to prevent further strikes. “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,” said Lynch.
Dempsey, meanwhile, who is affiliated to hard-Left groups such as the Stop The War Coalition, has been turning his fire on Labour. “I will not vote for Labour,” he said early last year. “No politician should get a vote from any trade unionist as long as they are refusing to support an immediate ceasefire and the establishment of a Palestinian state… Gaza is a trade union issue because we side with the oppressed.”
If Demspey, 43, from New Cross in south London, does make the move to the top job following an internal election, he will be following in a line of Left-wing firebrands that goes back from Lynch to Cash to Bob Crow, who was a member of what is now the Communist Party of Britain. The RMT leadership has been a crucible of the hard-Left, in particular home to a class war ideology adjacent to communism and distinct from the identity politics of many younger activists. They have also put themselves at odds with progressives as staunch advocates of Brexit.
“The membership base of the RMT is very wide and across all parties,” says the rail industry insider. “So why do hard-Left-wingers rise to the top of the RMT? It’s a rough, tough environment and the politics are intense, with a small group at the top that nurtures its successors in their own image.”
Perhaps most striking is Dempsey’s past association with pro-Russian forces in the Donbas region of Ukraine, with whom he was pictured in 2015. He posed with Aleksey Mozgovoy, a commander in the “Ghost Brigade” of pro-Russian separatists. When Mozgovoy was killed two weeks later he wrote a tribute praising him as a “charismatic, anti-fascist militia leader”.
In 2022, after being told by Chris Bryant, a Labour MP, that he should be “ashamed of himself” over his endorsement of Mozgovoy, the RMT said: “The union does not support either Vladimir Putin or his actions in Ukraine.” Dempsey added: “I fully agree with the union’s position.”
His hard-Left credentials have, however, hardly been undermined by gaining the endorsement this week of George Galloway, a fellow champion of the pro-Palestinian cause, who responded on X to the news of Lynch’s departure by stating: “Hope big Eddie Dempsey gets the gig.” In 2022, Galloway described Lynch as “the brightest young hope in the British labour movement”.
‘Dempsey will take us back to the 1970s’
At a time when the economy is struggling and the popularity of the Labour government is receding by the week, RMT members might take the view that Dempsey’s messaging on disenfranchised workers and the struggle for equality is a potentially potent one.
“Dempsey will take us back to the 1970s scenario when the government thinks caving in to the unions is the right thing to do,” claims the rail industry insider. “You’ll see more and more strikes and I think that is aligned to take Keir Starmer out. I think there’s a chance the RMT, the GMB and Unite unions will be looking at some kind of pincer movement involving Left-wing MPs to attack Starmer in the long term. I think Dempsey’s aspiration will be to one day run the TUC [Trades Union Congress] and move towards a general strike.”
The evidence certainly suggests that Dempsey’s ambitions for a workers’ revolt extend beyond the rail sector. At a rally following the breakdown of pay talks with the government in 2022, he said: “Good on the teachers, let’s get the posties on it, let’s get the health workers out and let’s get decent pay rise for people in this country”
Like Lynch, Dempsey is a robust and effective public speaker, and he shares his boss’s ability to cut through mealy mouthed or generic political speech. He has the luxury of being able to be unfiltered, which often puts union leaders at an advantage – they don’t have to pull punches the way politicians do and that resonates with sections of the public.
“The people at the top of the economy are having a disco and everyone else is being told they have to carry the can,” he said last year. At a rally outside Parliament he described MPs as “parasites”, adding: “The general public in this country know they are being mugged.”
The RMT says that its national executive committee has decided on a timetable for the election of a new general secretary that will see Lynch’s successor elected in May.
Labour ministers might be among those following the election with some trepidation. “If you think Mick Lynch is Left-wing you haven’t seen anything yet,” says the former DfT figure.
Additional reporting by Ben Butcher
