Eddie Dempsey has already proven his mettle at the RMT

Outgoing RMT general secretary, Mick Lynch, reinvigorated the trade union movement and gave marginalised citizens hope for a fairer society. Mick is a hard act to follow, but his successor Eddie Dempsey has already proven his mettle during the disputes – not just for his members, but for all other workers too.

Mick Lynch passes the baton to Eddie Dempsey: from one champion of progressive change to another

Eddie Dempsey, like Mick Lynch, eloquently presents his case without hyperbole and champions progressive change for working-class people. History has already proven that they are both on the right side of it, especially in their fight to oppose driver-only trains and the closure of the ticket offices.

Both men have accumulated a treasure chest of memorable moments in time. They debunked the neoliberal ideology that insidiously pervades our society. Eddie dismissed the excuse of a wage price spiral as a three-card trick to stop workers asking for a pay rise and designed to keep them skint.

One of the most inspiring speeches Eddie delivered was in Glasgow, where he opined:

they say the market must rule but the market can’t run society. It can’t feed the children and cannot keep our old people warm. We can do that and that is what they are frightened of. My trade union has got a motto – unity is strength.

There is a plethora of Eddie’s erudite quotes; it’s hard to choose the top three but each and every one is always evidence-based and backed up by his diligent research – certainly no spreading of fake news or disinformation from this union man. Other classics which will go down in history amongst us who greatly admire him:

There has been a transfer of wealth from working class people to people at the top. And that can’t carry on; that has got to change because the people at the top of the economy – they’re having a disco and everyone else is being told they’ve got to carry the can and tighten their belts.

Really this is about who owns what. Are we going to have a country run for corporations with some people in it or are we going to have a country run for the people in it with some corporations?

I think a lot of the politicians are aligned with the big corporations and they should be made to wear their sponsors on their suits and dresses.

Eddie Dempsey has the press and billionaires running scared already

I have been fortunate to meet Eddie Dempsey and Mick Lynch a few times now at rallies and recently had a chat with Eddie at a Strengthening the Employment Rights Bill rally. It is unequivocal that Eddie will continue Mick’s work with aplomb, and then some – he has, after all, got right on his side and the billionaire press is running scared.

Eddie was quick to help and provide practical advice and empathy to every person at the rally, especially a group of domestic workers whose working conditions are beyond lamentable. At one point, a delegate raised concerns about a work place issue, and immediately, he was able to offer sound advice.

Eddie, like Mick, has an abundance of emotional intelligence, integrity, and empathy – attributes that simply cannot be taught – it’s in their DNA. Both men are always meticulous in their preparedness and are fully versed in the history of how workers’ struggles won our rights – rights that those who oppose unions take for granted today, such as holiday and sick pay.

Their demands? Pretty elementary – a fairer society for all. No fellow citizen should ever have to choose between heating and eating while billionaires do all they can to avoid paying taxes by becoming non-domiciles and hiring expensive lawyers to find tax loopholes. As Bernie Sanders said when he turned up to support the RMT during the strikes:

We fight for government of the people, by the people, for the people- not government of, by and for the billionaires.

Another world is possible for all key workers on the frontline

While on the subject of billionaires – the High Pay Centre continues to produce some eye watering facts:

If you had earned £1,000 a day since Jesus died and kept it under the mattress, you still wouldn’t have accumulated £1bn.

And:

FTSE 100 bosses make more money in less than three days than the average worker does in a year.

The pandemic proved to us who the key workers are and the immense value they contribute to our society – not that it should have taken a pandemic to remind us –and it certainly wasn’t the FTSE 100 bosses who devour money from the top. It was the wealth creators who were on the frontline risking their lives to keep us safe, fed, and watered. Key workers are still paid a paltry salary with precarious employment and Eddie, is on a mission to address this in his own inimitable way.

Thatcher was wrong with her iniquitous TINA neoliberal doctrine – there is an alternative and another world is possible. One of the first steps is to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a metric – as Robert Kennedy said:

it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Even the economist, Simon Kuznets, who pioneered the modern concept of GDP, disowned it as a metric.

Following in the footsteps of union giants

Union funding is the cleanest money in the UK – Eddie Dempsey and the union movement must now unite and continue to do all they can to enhance workers’ rights and pay. The ‘service-model approach’ should be put to rest and other unions must be bold and unapologetic like the RMT. Unions must continue to spread the message to all via feet on the ground outreach – especially to our young workers – that it is imperative to join a workplace union and to consider following in the footsteps of giants – become a union rep.

The poet Keats wrote, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” – Eddie and readers of the Canary know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a fairer society is possible and this, is indeed, a beautiful thing.

Featured image via the Canary