Hard-Left London Underground Union Connected to Ukrainian Russian Separatists: Claim

A notice advises commuters that there are no Transport for London (TfL) London Underground
Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images
Nathaniel Charles

A senior member of the presently on-strike RMT rail union has links to extremist pro-Putin paramilitary separatists, a British newspaper claims.

The assistant general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers’ (RMT), Eddie Dempsey, is said to have visited Alexander Mozgovoy, a controversial pro-Russian Ukrainian paramilitary leader in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2015. This visit took place the year after Russia annexed the Crimea, the Telegraph reports.

Mozgovoy – the head of the pro-Russian “Ghost Brigade” – has been accused of passing out death sentences via a “people’s court” where individuals were given the death penalty via a show of hands, and was assassinated two weeks after Dempsey’s visit in 2015.

After Mozgovoy’s death Demsey wrote a glowing obituary about the alleged war criminal, published in socialist newspaper the Morning Star, where he described him as a “charismatic, anti-fascist militia leader”, despite Mozgovey at one point ordering his men to arrest any woman they found in a pub or cafe – who he branded as “prostitutes” – as he believed they should “stay at home and do embroidery”.

Demsey was also one of the more senior signatories on the Stop The War Coalition’s controversial letter last week, that accused the UK of “aggressive posturing” and “sabre-rattling” towards Russia, as well as criticising Britain’s decision to supply Ukraine with weapons.

11 Labour MPs who signed the letter were forced to U-turn and withdraw their signatures after being threatened with having their whip withdrawn — which essentially entails expulsion from the Parliamentary Labour Party — but Dempsey did not withdraw his signature, despite facing a call on Tuesday from Labour’s MP Chris Bryant to apologise.

“Sometimes people who no doubt think they have the best intentions and the warmest hearts can be the most dangerous people in the room. Naivety is one thing, but reckless naivety is another”, Bryant said.

“The writing has been on the wall in relation to Putin and his territorial ambitions for more than a decade now, and anybody who has not been able to see that should step aside from the political arena. He should apologise — and be ashamed of himself”, Bryant continued.

An official RMT Union spokesperson attempted to distance the union from accusations of having pro-Russian sentiments by saying: “the union does not support either Vladamir Putin or his actions in Ukraine, and we are backing global union pressure for a peaceful resolution to the conflict”. RMT did not, however, distance itself from Dempsey.

Dempsey has said that he “fully” agrees with the union’s position, but has not offered an apology, nor withdrawn his support from the letter and declined a request from The Telegraph to express remorse about meeting with Mozgovoy.

The RMT has had a history of support for pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels with Mick Cash, a former general secretary of the union, writing to all RMT branch secretaries in 2015 and encouraging them to affiliate with the ‘Solidarity with the Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine’ campaign (SARU), which opposed the newly democratically elected pro-sovereignty Ukrainian government and accused them of being “far-right”.

The letter detailing this call for support has since been deleted but survives in archive form.

RMT’s Assistant General Secretary Steve Hedley has also previously generated headlines for bizarrely fetishising the Soviet Union.

The RMT have opted to proceed with a London Underground tube driver strike and have paralysed London this week.

The strike is now on its second day and has was called by RMT in response to Transport For London commissioning an independent review into their current pension scheme which they pay £360 million into each year.

The UK’s culture secretary Oliver Dowden has lambasted Labour’s socialist mayor of London Sadiq Khan over the strikes, saying that “when Sadiq Khan first ran for Mayor of London he promised ‘zero days of strikes’ on the tube. Now we are entering yet another period of damaging strikes that threaten to bring London to a standstill”.

“When you struggle to get to work today, remember: this is Sadiq Khan’s London”, Dowden continued.

The base salary for tube drivers is currently over £55,000 a year, and the three top RMT officials including Dempsey reportedly rake in a combined £327,427 in salary and benefits a year.

 

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