Union boss Eddie Dempsey is not unusual. Politically, his visit with pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine is part of an ignominious tradition

Eddie Dempsey with the pro-Russian separatist warlord Alexander Mozgovoy

Stephen Pollard

16 January 2026

There is, understandably, much attention focused on the strand of Right-wing opinion which sees Vladimir Putin as some sort of bulwark against the decay of the West. It’s right that those on the Right who push Russian talking points – such as the perverse idea that the invasion of Ukraine was some sort of reaction to Nato territorial ambition – are called out and pilloried for it.

But when it comes to full-throated Putinophilia, you really can’t beat the hard-Left. Just as the “tankies” supported the Soviet Union as the supposed champion of anti-imperialism, despite it being, in Ronald Reagan’s clear-eyed phrase, an actual evil empire, so the passing of the USSR has done little to dampen its enthusiasm for modern-day Russian imperialism.

Whether it’s on the basis of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” – and for these people the real enemy is the West in which they live – or something even more malign, hard-Left rhetoric is suffused with Russian propaganda.

Which brings us to Eddie Dempsey, general-secretary of the RMT, the biggest railway union. The Telegraph revealed today that on a visit to the Donbas in Ukraine in 2015, which had been invaded by Putin the previous year, Dempsey joined pro-Russian chanters and had his picture taken with a Communist Party flag. He was there on what he now calls, in a phrase that would be amusing were it not so revolting, a “humanitarian convoy”.

Videos and photos show Dempsey wearing a T-shirt with the coat of arms of Novorossiya, the 19th century southern and eastern Ukraine Russian province, whose name was adopted by pro-Putinites seeking to resurrect Novorossiyaas part of a modern Russian empire. The full sickening details of his trip are laid out in the news report.

Not that anyone should be surprised. Dempsey is, in many ways, the perfect leader for his union, which at its annual conference last year voted to demand that the Government cut off financial support to Ukraine.

As the motion put it: “Britain continues to play a belligerent role in international relations by supplying British-made weapons, military support, credit and billions of pounds in public funding in trying and failing to achieve a military defeat for Russia in Ukraine.”

In the eyes of the hard-Left, of course, defeat for Russia would indeed be a bad thing. Mr Dempsey, you will not be surprised to learn, is a supporter of the Stop the War (STW) coalition, which brings together the various People’s Front of Judea and Judean People’s Front-type organisations to protest against the West.

As STW’s long-standing deputy chairman, Chris Nineham, has put it: “Everyone who has got a sense of duty for the peace of the planet needs to mobilise everything they can against that and that means opposing the West.”

It means joining metaphorical forces with anyone who opposes the West. STW’s former chair, Andrew Murray, has made clear that this doesn’t extend only to Putin; one of his predecessors, Joseph Stalin, should be venerated, too, and we should attack “hack propagandists [who] abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others”.

That’s why you’ll see figures such as Dempsey standing proudly in Donbas after its invasion by Putin, and why you won’t see him offering support to anyone who opposes regimes which themselves oppose the West. Perhaps I’ve missed it but I have been unable to find a single word of support for the Iranian protestors against their theocratic tyranny. But then that theocratic tyranny stands up to the evil West, so of course not.

According to the RMT: “Eddie Dempsey is a lifelong anti-fascist with an extensive track record of fighting racism in Britain and abroad….Mr Dempsey has at no time supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.” Make of that what you will.