Eddie Dempsey perfectly sums up why we need democratic public ownership

Dempsey called rail privatisation 'a racket that would make the mafia blush'

Eddie Dempsey speaking at a TUC Congress fringe meeting

RMT assistant general secretary Eddie Dempsey has got a reputation for pithy explanations of how class is central to British politics. Now he’s shown he can clearly and effectively articulate the common sense arguments for public ownership too.

Speaking at a fringe at this year’s TUC Congress, Dempsey argued that public ownership is crucial to both tackling the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis. He told the meeting, “We can either have an energy system that is planned and designed to protect our planet and deliver the energy resources that are needed to run our country, or we can have an investment opportunity for some of the most rapacious multinational corporations that exist on our planet.

“We can either have a transport system that’s democratically run and owned in the interests of the people in this country – integrated, green and cheap, or we can an investment opportunity for some of these multinational corporations that continue to plunder our public services, impoverish workers and decimate the ecology of our planet. But we can’t have both.”

Later in the meeting, he described the current privatisation of the railway as “a racket that would make the mafia blush”. He said of the current government and its rail policy, “They’re prepared to ringfence and protect at all costs the gross profits that are being stripped out of our industry by multinational corporations and sent far away to tax havens, where that money never has any bearing on the social needs of the people in this country. That is protected at all costs. It is a shake down. It is a racket that would the mafia blush. And our government right now are complicit in that, and it’s absolutely corrupt.”

The TUC Congress is taking place in Brighton from 18-20 October. Dempsey made these remarks at a fringe organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change and the Greener Jobs Alliance.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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