RMT AGM debates policy

Daniel Randall is a Tube worker and an RMT rep and branch official. He was delegate to the union's 2025 AGM. This report is written in a personal capacity.

The annual general meeting of the RMT union, which took place in Glasgow from 22-26 June, passed policy committing the union to a bold, proactive fight for a transformation of the rail industry. Noting that Labour's Great British Railways plan doesn't go nearly far enough, a resolution adopted by the conference will see the union fight for a range of policies, including the full renationalisation of freight and rolling stock production, the reopening of closed lines, improvements to accessibility, and the insourcing of all outsourced work.

The AGM also reaffirmed RMT policy on the abolition of anti-strike laws, and committed the union to campaigning against disability benefit cuts, for a mass programme of council house building, and for improved menopause and breastfeeding policies in workplaces where the union organises.

On anti-union laws, general secretary Eddie Dempsey rightly pointed to the need for the trade union movement as a whole, including Labour-affiliated unions, to consistently pursue demands for reforms such as the repeal of the ban on solidarity strikes.

One of the most emotive debates at the conference was over increasing assaults against frontline transport workers. Many delegates shared experiences, both personal and of workers they represent, of facing assaults. Resolutions passed by the conference commit the union to considering industrial action to demand improved workplace safety.

I spoke in the debate to stress the importance of demands for increased staffing levels, rather than focusing solely on carceral solutions based on increasing police powers.

Another of the conference's most comprehensive discussions was over a resolution committing the union to producing "in-house" educational and campaigning resources for reps and activists to counter the rise of Reform. The debate showed a clear understanding of the virulently anti-worker and anti-union nature of Reform, and the danger of its politics, which blame immigrants for social problems and thereby pit workers against each other, for a union with many migrant worker members.

Some delegates spoke to express concern about the union taking such a hard line against a party now supported by many RMT members. Although I disagreed with their implied conclusions, those contributions were admirably honest, and will hopefully help guard against any potential complacency.

One delegate queried how the union could legitimately denounce the electoral allegiances of an increasing number of RMT members when we have no political alternative of our own to offer them. That contribution highlighted a genuine tension in RMT's political strategy; the union prides itself on not being affiliated to the Labour Party, and takes a pick-and-mix approach whereby we "support candidates who support us."

But given Britain's current electoral system, if Reform is to be kept out of government, it can only be by a transformed Labour Party. That makes the Labour Party itself, its policies and structures, a key terrain of struggle. As I write, Starmer is set to announce some form of climbdown over benefit cuts. Undoubtedly, it will not go far enough, but it shows Labour is susceptible to working-class social pressure in a more direct way than the Tories will ever be.

Debates over political representation continued at a fringe meeting organised by the Socialist Party, whose members put forward their policy for trade unions to disaffiliate from Labour and declare a "new workers' party". That approach, as well as abandoning a potential terrain of struggle to the Starmer leadership, misunderstands how Labour was founded.

The Labour Party was not formed simply by declaration, but represented the culmination of a long struggle to develop mechanisms for working-class political representation, starting with "Lib-Lab" candidacies like that of George Odger in 1870, that chafed at the limits of trade union support for the Liberals, moving through independent candidates sponsored by unions such as Keir Hardie in 1888, through to the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900, and finally the foundation of the Labour Party in 1906.

The path to any new vehicle for working-class political representation today lies not in hopes for such a vehicle to simply be declared, but via similar insurgencies which sharpen the tensions within, and eventually push beyond, the existing structures of labour movement representation in politics.

A new AGS

The conference saw the announcement of the election of the union's new Assistant General Secretary, filling the vacancy created by Dempsey's unopposed election to the role of General Secretary. The election was won by Daren Ireland, formerly a regional organiser in the North West.

The losing candidate was Primrose Jeanton, currently the NEC representative for the union's London & Anglia Region. Had Primrose won, she would have been the first woman, and the first black person, to hold a national officer position within the RMT. That the union's "top table" remains exclusively white and male is a serious issue.

Despite these concerns, many activists, including myself, backed Daren over Primrose because we felt his record showed him to be a more independent voice, less aligned with the current head office leadership, and therefore better able to help open space in the union for critical and dissenting voices, including those from underrepresented backgrounds. As with all elected officials, Daren must now be judged on his record.

Several delegates rightly commented on the fact that the AGM itself was overwhelmingly white and male. My own regional delegation was exclusively white and exclusively male, something which all of us acknowledged was a serious failing, that meant our delegation was not representative of the diversity of our membership. RMT needs serious reflection on how to improve diversity and equality within the union.

National strategies?

Discussion of national industrial dispute strategies in Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies (TOCs), two major areas in which RMT organises, was strangely absent from the conference. The AGM took place shortly after the narrow acceptance of a below-inflation pay settlement on Network Rail, and with TOCs at a variety of different stages in a patchwork of company-by-company negotiations.

The missed opportunity in Network Rail, where the union NEC narrowly voted against recommending rejection of the offer, and the urgent need for a unified national strategy across the TOCs, was discussed at a fringe meeting held by the newly-formed RMT Rank & File network.

Activists from the network working for TOCs will be pushing for coordination of industrial action ballots.

Fare-free travel?

A motion from my branch, proposing that the union engage with campaigns calling for fare-free public transport, was overwhelmingly defeated. Arguments focused on the assertion that removing fares would threaten jobs, but free-transport campaigners, including Fare Free London, make clear that any transition to a fare-free model would require an alternative funding framework, and job guarantees for workers currently employed in revenue protection.

Many of the arguments paralleled those often encountered across the labour movement, that unions cannot demand an end to fossil fuel extraction because it would threaten the jobs of workers in oil and gas. In fact, RMT's own offshore oil workers branch supports a worker-led transition into renewables. But the idea of a worker-led transition from transport as a paid-for commodity into a service provided free at the point of use was a step too far for this year's AGM.

The decision puts RMT's policy at odds with the approach of some of our closest international counterparts. In his address to the conference, John Samuelson, president of the Transport Workers Union, which organises bus and subway workers in New York, emphasised his union's support for fare-free travel, one of the key policy issues behind TWU's endorsement of victorious Democratic mayoral primary candidate Zohran Mamdani. Samuelson explained that fare-free travel will lead to a reduction in assaults against staff — and, because it requires sustainable government subsidy to ensure operation, makes jobs more secure, not less.

Trans rights

The conference also discussed the union's policy on trans rights. Two resolutions from the union's LGBT+ conference were passed, one opposing the BTP's policy for male officers to strip search trans women, and one focusing on Scottish government policy and demanding stronger reform to enact a legal right to gender self-identification and recognition.

One resolution passed unanimously, the other with only two abstentions. These overwhelming votes are positive developments in a union where our former president is a Communist Party of Britain leader opposed to trans identity and equality, and our current general secretary has previously promoted "gender-critical" positions.

The conference also passed an NEC report responding to the Supreme Court ruling and subsequent EHRC interim guidance. That report incorporated an emergency motion denouncing that guidance as discriminatory, and included as an appendix a policy passed by the union’s LGBT+ conference restating a firm commitment to trans rights. The report also included circumspect legal advice urging the union to “proceed with caution” in terms of how we respond to an evolving legal situation, but senior assistant general secretary John Leach clarified, in response to questions in debate, that the union was committed to defending trans members, including against potential rollbacks of their legal rights. The former chair of the union's women's committee also spoke in the debate to affirm the committee's position that trans women are women.

War, solidarity, and the politics of the union

A motion from my branch proposing the union support the binational (Palestinian-Jewish) left-wing social movement Standing Together was lost, with 17 votes for, 34 votes against, and 14 abstentions. Opponents of the resolution cited the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and BDS movement's opposition to Standing Together, but gave little evidence for why delegates should oppose them beyond repeating claims that Standing Together "normalises" and "whitewashes" Israel's actions.

The facts of what Standing Together does on the ground, including civil disobedience at the Gaza border, defending aid trucks from settler attack, and mobilising anti-racist community defence against settler mobs in occupied East Jerusalem, were not sufficient to sway the vote.

Nevertheless, the substantial minority voting for the motion shows a number of delegates rejected the mischaracterisations of Standing Together's perspectives. RMT statements on Israel-Palestine since 7 October 2023 have reaffirmed the union's commitment to peace, a two-state settlement, and support for "voices on both sides who have shown tremendous courage in promoting peace and dialogue and a just settlement and a democratic solution." It is now highly unclear what that means in practise, and exactly which "voices on both sides" the union actually intends to support.

A further intense debate took place over a motion which called, in the context of a general opposition to militarism and war, for the union to campaign for "the withdrawal of military and financial support" for Ukraine. Many delegates, including myself, argued that the effect of such a withdrawal would not be peace, but the prosecution of war with renewed vigour by Russia. I conveyed statements from railway worker trade unionists in Ukraine, opposing the neoliberal policies of the Zelenskyy government, but affirming the desperate need for aid.

RMT AGM is, in many ways, admirably democratic and open. But a quirk of its proceedings is a protocol whereby someone from the top table, usually the general secretary, replies at unlimited length to every item on the agenda. The nominal purpose of such contributions is to advise delegates on any existing union policies relevant to the item under debate, and provide background detail. But such contributions are often also used for lengthy speeches giving the general secretary's personal view. The effect is to give the top table disproportionate weight in debates by giving them unrestricted speaking time.

In his reply to the debate on Ukraine, Eddie Dempsey reflected on his own record on the issue. Whilst he acknowledged that he "had [his] photo taken with some people [he] maybe shouldn't have", and denounced Russia's invasion as illegal, he also denounced Ukraine's resistance to that invasion as both futile and a catspaw for American imperialism. He implied Ukrainians are essentially fighting against their will, and would have preferred to make a peace-for-territory deal at an earlier stage, but had been bullied into continuing a proxy war on behalf of the US and Britain.

In the debate on Standing Together, Dempsey said the union should “avoid getting into the weeds” of “ideological debates” about territorial settlements, two states vs. one state, etc. But in the Ukraine debate, the AGM was treated to an exposition of the general secretary’s detailed views on why Ukraine should agree to autonomy for majority-ethnic-Russian areas.

The vote was the closest of the entire conference, tied at 27-27 with 10 abstentions. The motion passed only because of the chair's casting vote.

There is a strong Communist Party tradition within the RMT, which has substantially shaped historic union policies on issues such as Ukraine and Brexit/the EU in particular. But AGM votes including this one, and the 2021 votes for a resolution supporting the Uyghur people against China, and against a CPB-inspired motion promoting the tacitly pro-China "No Cold War" campaign, show that these politics are by no means entirely dominant or uncontested.

An emergency motion on the Israel-Iran war was debated on the final day of conference. It rightly denounced Israeli and US bombing, but said nothing about the nature of the Iranian regime and contained neither any condemnation of its attacks on civilians nor any statement of solidarity with Iranian workers’ struggles against it. The motion passed overwhelmingly, with two dissenting votes and one abstention, following a speech by the general secretary which implied that anyone critiquing the Iranian regime must support US-Israeli regime change efforts.

The general secretary also used one of his contributions to effectively denounce my membership of Workers' Liberty, arguing the motion proposing engagement with fare-free transport campaigns was a Trotskyist transitional demand I was attempting to smuggle past the AGM. I have no issue with open criticism, but object to a political culture where political narratives derived from a Stalinist tradition are presented merely as "traditional labour movement values", whereas critiques or opposing perspectives are denounced as somehow alien.

In fact, Trotskyism, Stalinism, social democracy, and other left currents including various forms of syndicalism, have organic traditions within the RMT. Better that policies and approaches inspired by these traditions are debated openly than a culture of demagogic, selective critique of left groups.

I also spoke to oppose an increase in union officers’ pay. The general secretary’s response on this was less hostile, saying he respected the “workers’ representatives on a workers’ wage” position and noting that he had supported the proposal by his predecessor, Mick Lynch, to cut national officers’ pay by 10% in 2021. Since that step by Lynch, there has been more openness to discussion around this issue in the union than previously.

The fights ahead

Clashes at the AGM between perspectives inspired by opposing left traditions matter; they will determine how the union intervenes on key international questions, and on some domestic issues too. But the primary and fundamental role of a trade union is to organise its members to fight their employers. Debate between differing approaches to immediate questions of union organisation, strategy, and action were less intense at this year's AGM. All union leaders, including Eddie Dempsey, should be judged first and foremost by the role they play in immediate class battles.

Pay and conditions disputes in the TOCs and on London Underground; fights over outsourcing across the rail sector; battles over what the renationalisation process under Great British Railways will look like; the fight for a worker-led transition into renewables for the union’s offshore oil worker members; fights over pay, conditions, and regulation in the bus sector; and resistance to low pay and hyper-exploitation in the maritime sector are just some of the struggles faced by RMT members in the immediate term.

It is up to rank-and-file reps in all these sectors to develop strategies for action that can win, and hold our NEC to account to ensure these strategies are adopted and carried out by our elected officials.

Whilst idealisation of the RMT is often overblown, something which genuinely distinguishes us from many other unions is a constitutional emphasis on lay leadership and democracy. Officer positions that in most unions would be unaccountable staff appointees are, in the RMT, all elected.

Rank-and-file members must activate those democratic structures to ensure they work for us.