Rail strike boss: There's no shame in drug-dealing or defrauding the dole trends now

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A union activist behind the rail strikes expected to cripple Britain at Christmas once defended drug-dealing, petty crime and dole- fiddling, declaring he and his friends weren’t ashamed of ‘trying to get enough money together to look after our families’.

Eddie Dempsey, the assistant general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), described his childhood on a council estate in South London, where he said the lack of ‘decent work’ meant ‘most of us’ turned to petty crime.

Mr Dempsey, 40, who has been accused of being an apologist for Vladimir Putin, told a meeting of Left-wing Brexiteers three years ago: ‘Most of us turned to selling drugs or whatever we could do, fiddling the dole, trying to get enough money together to look after our families. I ain’t ashamed of it.’

He added: ‘It’s something that a lot of us have had to do.’

The remarks emerged as families across Britain were braced for a week of strike hell – with rail workers continuing their walkouts as part of the worst industrial unrest for decades.