The leader of Britain’s biggest railway trade union joined pro-Russian chants and posed with a Communist Party flag during a visit to occupied parts of Ukraine in 2015, according a report in The Telegraph.
Eddie Dempsey, General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), travelled to the Donbas region – which Russia had invaded and partially occupied the previous year – as part of what he has since described as a “humanitarian convoy”, the UK newspaper said yesterday.
Video footage and photographs obtained by The Telegraph show him holding a red flag bearing the words “Communist Party” in yellow lettering beneath the hammer and sickle symbol.
The union leader also participated in group chants in Russian, including slogans such as “United we are invincible” and “The Donbas, the tomb of fascism”.
The images and video place him among a group that included pro-Russian separatists and, in one instance, alongside Aleksey Mozgovoy, a figure described as a warlord who was later killed.
He can also be seen wearing a T-shirt with the coat of arms of Novorossiya, a Russian region that covered southern and eastern Ukraine in the 19th century. The coat of arms has a newfound popularity with militant nationalist Russians.
Banda Bassotti, a far-left ska-punk band from Rome, was leading the group of around 100 Communists with whom Dempsey was travelling.
Later, citing local anti-terrorism legislation, Ukrainian officials requested the extradition of the Italian, Spanish and Greek members of the band’s “humanitarian convoy”.
An RMT spokesperson insisted Dempsey “has at no time supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, apparently referring to the full-scale assault that began in 2022.
The union has not issued a detailed comment on the 2015 visit itself, although Dempsey has previously characterised such trips as solidarity efforts with workers in the region.
The video comes amid ongoing scrutiny of the RMT’s political positions.
The union’s annual conference in 2025 voted to call for the UK Government to cut financial and military support to Ukraine.
The story has drawn criticism from commentators who see it as part of a broader “pro-[Russian President Vladimir] Putin strand” on parts of the British Left, with The Telegraph running a companion opinion piece positioning the incident as emblematic of longstanding ideological alignments.
