Sharon Graham and Unite – many questions need answering
JVL Introduction
Since her election to succeed Len McCluskey as leader of Unite, Sharon Graham has come in for a barrage of criticism.
It is partly to do with the Unite regime where there are a series of unanswered allegations about the internal machinations of the union machine.
But it is also to do with a lack of clarity about the union’s relationship to the Labour Party.
Elected on a platform that declared her priority to be the Union and jobs, pay and conditions rather than “the Westminster machine”, she has given her support to Starmer despite a recent series of candidates supported by Unite and other unions being banned from long lists of parliamentary candidates.
At the recent Unite conference she successfully opposed an attempt to disaffiliate the union from the Labour Party, but it is by no means clear what, if anything, Unite will get in return. There are no signs that Starmer will make it any easier for unions to organise and fight once Labour is in government.
RK
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Sat 15 Jul 2023. Read the original here.
As Graham gets cosier with Starmer, Labour is busy blocking Unite-backed candidates
Unite general secretary ‘sees off’ member attempt to disaffiliate and signals way open for more funding, Labour right is still rigging Unite candidates out of parliamentary selections
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I agree with the tenor of this article. Sharon Graham’s emphasis on supporting strikes and industrial action was welcome but her non-political approach was not.
Strikes take place in the context of a vicious legal regime that makes it virtually impossible to call a strike, yet Starmer has not given a pledge to repeal even the latest Tory legislation.
They also take place in the context of a racist neo-liberal government whose priority is to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich – hence the proposal floated today of abolishing Inheritance Taxc.
For a union leader to ignore the political is to go into battle with one arm tied behind one’s back. It demonstrates the uselessness of militancy by itself. Trade unionism has to be political.
Coupled with the ban in t he Southern Region of showing Corbyn – The Big Lie which my Unite branch has taken up. We have even been informed by the Regional Secretary Sarah Carpenter that we cannot donate, as our branch had agreed, £250 to Platform Films as this is ‘political’.
This is crazy. Platform films has been making films for the labour movement for years, including the history of the T&GWU where Unite came from. Sharon Graham needs to come clean and say whether or not she agrees with right-wing unelected officials behaving much like Labour Party officials
Extremely disappointing – Unite Community member.
Can’t be bothered with this factioneering crap any more.
These are the people who, in earlier incarnations, stabbed the miners — yes, my family — in the back in 1926 and in the Great Strike of1984/85.
They are not worthy of the support of anyone except the capitalist class to whom they crawl on hands and knees.
The Labour Party is not dead but is not worth keeping alive. To stay in it now is to be tainted by it. Surely the time is more ripe than ever for a new, mass, socialist movement.
Problem with using Skwawkbox pieces is that as well perfectly good parts, you repeat what are often dubious comments. For instance, the invitation to Starmer to speak at Unite conference will have been made by the Executive, not just Sharon Graham. Further Skwawkbox writes “the union management fought off an attempt by members to disaffiliate from the party”. Interpretation – a large majority of delegates – elected by the members – voted to support the executive’s (“union management!) proposal to remain affiliated. It should also be noted that Graham and her supporters do not have a majority on the Unite executive. Better to produce your own criticism of Graham and Unite than rely on Skwawkbox’s sillinesses.
Graham must resign…..Her support for the liar, fraud, deceiver and zionist bribed Starmer and his fake Labour, tory party shows that she has no concern for Unite members. Also Unite must stop funding the labour party until Starmer and his nest of traitorous snakes have been removed from the labour party.
I think Skwawkbox raises some important points but they have not liked Sharon Graham; I certainly had and have my own criticisms BUT she has done many things that are good. I am not sure that she had much choice about having SKS speaking but she did issue a warning shot and she has drastically reduced the funding to the Party – https://www.facebook.com/UniteSharonGraham/videos/2501831779965948/?extid=WA-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&mibextid=2Rb1fB I write as a Unite member.
Supporters of the old regime in Unite have been conducting a smear campaign against Sharon Graham for some time.
Unable to undermine her on the industrial front, her support for Unite members on strike, (and there have been over 100,000 last year), has been first class, they manufacture spurious allegations against her on the political front.
Not to invite the leader of the Labour Party, at a time like this, with the political situation as it is, would have been idiotic.
Those spinning this to imply she is cosying up to Starmer are being duplicitous and are clearly pursuing a vested self interest
I also advise caution on uncritically reposting SBox articles given that I understand delegates voted overwhelmingly to keep the Labour affiliation. There appear to be many Unite members who are urging a rethink on the issue, including myself, but the SBox article misleads and I agree with others that there appears to be a witch hunt in progress against Graham with SBox one of the main proponents. Haven’t we had enough of smears and factionalism in the Labour party? I certainly don’t want to see it in my union.
Pete Firmin and Leah Levane raise important criticisms of Skwawkbox’s journalism which, while generally reasonably accurate in a literal sense, often veers into partisan factionalism in its misleading suppression of inconvenient facts which don’t fit its own particular factional line. To be fair to Skwawkbox however, this is a problem which afflicts virtually the entire independent left media to varying degrees.
The problem is a structural one, arising from the fact that more often than not, left alternative media sites are closely associated with political factions which pursue a detailed particular agenda in competition – both politically and economically – with other sites belonging to other political factions with which objectively they often have much politically in common. Unfortunately this economic model, an amalgamation of journalism with factional party interest is a barrier to cooperation, leading to increased political division and rivalry or hostility instead of productive reasoned debate. For example very few such sites provide direct links to the sources which they are criticising or allow a right of reply by those criticised, and most of them eschew any discussion of topics which are politically awkward for the ‘party line’.
JVL’s website is something of an outlier. Richard Kuper must be warmly congratulated on his policy of openness to reasoned debate on the pages of this website, which has gained it wide respect across the left and ironically is one of the reasons why the corporate media and apartheid trolls never dare provide a link to a JVL page when broadcasting their scurrilous accusations. However JVL has not been immune to the contradictory structural pressures suppressing debate on awkward subjects which I refer to above; this was particularly evident in the period of Corbyn’s leadership, when JVL as a political organisation provided much needed political support to an embattled Corbyn leadership. There were at that time a whole range of important but difficult topics which the Labour left as a whole did not want to discuss openly because of a fear that the emergence of a principled position on any of them, or even mere informed discussion, might prove electorally divisive. Such topics included the rightwing coup called Brexit, the plight of European immigrants in the UK, the Assad regime in Syria etc. Ultimately trying to ignore important aspects of the real world is always counterproductive.
The belated but welcome divorce of JVL from the terminally diseased Labour Party provides an opportunity for JVL – and in particular for its website – to free itself from the constraints of factional party politics, and to do what it has always done best: to act as a catalytic progressive forum and informational hub for the left as a whole, helping to facilitate the creation a modern collaborative labour movement supported by new devolved but integrated online media structures – a fifth estate to challenge the corrupt corporate fourth estate, which would functionally replace the educational role played a century ago by now atrophied trade union structures.
Both the technology and the embryonic sites for the creation of such a democratic fifth estate aleady exist and are just waiting to be employed. It doesn’t require large capital – just a vision and the will to implement certain elementary collaborative principles by an initial nucleus of sites.