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IN THE OBSERVER on Michael Savage reported on
Sun 27 Jun 2021
The only woman running to be the next leader of the powerful Unite union has revealed that she received “disgraceful” online abuse for refusing to stand aside for two more prominent male rivals.
Sharon Graham, who has attracted an unexpected level of grassroots support, said she experienced a “rough ride” after refusing to end her campaign. She said troll accounts had mocked up pictures of her as Margaret Thatcher, and she had warned her family that she might lose her job because of the row.
Graham has been criticised for refusing to engage in talks to agree on a single leftwing unity candidate to replace Len McCluskey, a key supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership. Howard Beckett, a vehement critic of Keir Starmer, has pulled out to support the frontrunner, Steve Turner. The left is determined to defeat Gerard Coyne, seen as more supportive of Starmer. Graham, however, remains in the race.
“Being a woman in the trade union movement, and obviously a woman who has gone up against some of the most hostile of employers, I’m really used to being in difficult situations – so it takes a lot to rock me,” she said. “But I can understand why people don’t run against the establishment. We’re not in a playground picking football teams. This is the leader of one of the most significant unions in Britain and Ireland.
“I was never going to be involved in doing deals. This is the problem we have in the movement. There’s a moment in time, right now, where the union needs to be doing what I’m suggesting – it needs to go back to the workplace. And I believe that the membership wants this choice.”
Graham, who received a surprising 349 nominations from some of the union’s most powerful branches, said that none of her supporters had asked her to pull out. She said troll accounts had been sending her abuse, including disparaging mocked-up pictures, after her refusal to stand down. “I thought it was disgraceful,” she said. “If you’re a woman in a leadership role, it’s all the usual sexist stuff that you hear. It will never deter me. Maybe they’re a bit worried I might win.”
Graham said that the union movement had reached a “crisis point” and a non-established figure was needed to return Unite to its main cause of representing workers and end “an obsession” with the Labour party.
“I absolutely feel that we are at a crisis point in the trade union movement,” she said. “I don’t think I’m over-egging that. The union movement is on life support. For way too long, and it has happened over years and years, we have moved away from our core business. We have got to get back to the workplace. It is absolutely critical that we get back to doing what is on the trade union tin. If we cannot do that, then I think the union movement will be irreparable in years to come.”
She added: “I don’t have any regional secretary backing me. That’s the machine,” she said. “Every person supporting me has gone against their region. They’re doing it against the regime. We’re in this to really make change.”
Unite remains Labour’s biggest donor. Graham said that there would be no “blank cheques” for Labour under her leadership, but that the party would have “no problem with me” if it pursued policies that improved the condition of workers.
“This obsession at the moment with the Labour party, almost like we’re a branch of it, has made us weaker, unfortunately. Yes, politics matters. But the Labour party has effectively almost become the centre of discussions, when in fact jobs, pay and conditions should be the centre.”
She said women had been “let down” by unions, who had failed to adapt to the new industries in which women are over-represented. “This is not pin money that women are turning out for,” she said. “They’re often doing more than one job. Without a shadow of a doubt, in the post-Covid world, they will essentially lose their jobs more [without union help]. I genuinely feel that we have let women down.”
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IN THIS weekend's editorial in the Financial Times the editor writes:
'An old rule of politics is that British governments tend to lose midterm by-elections. That makes the resounding defeat of Labour in the centre-left stronghold of Hartlepool by the Conservative party in power for 11 years all the more extraordidary... Extrapolating too much from a town that is the 10th most economically deprived and one of the most pro-Brexit in England is unwise. Yet coupled with the early signs that Labour lost ground to the Tories in council votes too, Thursday's elections in England have provided a boost to the government - and left the oppostion searching questions.'
One thing that is odd in this context is that while in the North Boris Johnson is so popular in places like Hartlepool in the North East and yet he is almost persona non-grata north of the border in Scotland. I know an anarcho-syndicalist retired miner from the North East who voted Tory at the last General Election because of his support for Brexit. Yet in Scotland there are reports that some Tories voted tactically for Labour to try to keep the SNP out.
The 'i' newspaper had an article by its political editor, Nigel Morris, titled 'Labour in turmoil: "shattering" results plunge party into crisis' arguing 'The poor showing reopened wounds within Labour ranks as the party as the left blamed Sir Keir's lack of policy direction for its slump in support, while leadership loyalists said the party was still suffering an overhang from Jeremy Corbyn's time in charge.'
The Labour Party last 'Super Thursday' seemed to lack a serious strategy depending on sneers about sleeze and the claims about a 'chumochracy'; this led John McDonnell to write a post-election column in the 'i' entitled 'No wonder we lost: there was a vacuum instead of a vision'.
The FT editorial I referred to earlier suggests:
'Confounding Labour's urgings that it is time for a change after a decade of Toryism, many voters perceive this as a new government. Johnson has not just disassociated himself from the Cameron and May admisitrations but the Thatcherite past ....[and] has shifted Tory politics away from its former devotion to the free market.'
The conclusion is that there has been demographic shifts in politics and not just in England, Scotland, and elsewhere in the UK. Currently the expections of the centre-left in Germany now depend on the Greens more than the Social Democrats. Some like Boris Johnson are managing to combine right-wing popularism with the offer of more public spending. In this way the Johnson government appears to offer a breach with the past. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out in the long term.
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THERE’s an understatement!
Last Thursday was not a good day for Labour. I’ve heard three explanations so far; Mandleson ‘It was a hangover of Jeremy Corbyn’, Starmer ‘We lost the trust of working people’, my wife ‘Labour should have focussed on Tory stinginess towards the NHS workers’.
I have a different view. My guess is that what scuppered Labour under Starmer is what scuppered Labour under Corbyn. It’s called Brexit. The people who wanted it in 2019 still want it in 2021. They associate the Tories with Brexit, Labour with being at best lukewarm about it and at worst against it. Whether its downside will have become apparent by 2024 or 2029 is unknown. Perhaps the older Brexiteers will have fallen off their perch or the young ones begun to wonder what all the fuss was about. For the moment Labour is stuck with Starmer and we are all stuck with Boris.
So what can be salvaged. Starmer is probably feeling safe for the moment because the rest of the front bench is so unprepossessing. It’s just possible that Starmer will come to realise that eventually he has to reconnect with those supporters who gave the Labour party a distinct ‘buzz’ under Corbyn and are now leaving or just drifting away from it, though I doubt it. Many of these will be the people who went out ‘on the knocker’ at election time to drum up support from Labour. They won’t be doing that in 2024.
And what about chancer in chief Boris? As we are stuck with the Tories for at least three more years what can we make of this? Curiously enough the results may have an upside. Remember all those particularly nasty sounding Tories who had such a lot to say during the Brexit debate? Remember how Boris had to find a new Chancellor who was more amenable to spending money to fund furlough during the pandemic? Waiting in the wings are a lot of ‘small state’, low public spending zealots. For the moment at least they are unlikely to be able to eject Boris.
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General Secretary of Unite the Union Len McCluskey, has said he hopes Sir Keir Starmer “learns the correct lessons” from Labour’s defeat in the Hartlepool by-election.
“He was elected a year ago on a radical programme, some said a Corbyn-esque programme; he said he wanted to make the moral case for socialism; he wanted a united party - unfortunately he’s failed in all of those areas.
"Hartlepool is the manifestation of it - people don’t know what his vision is. People don’t know what Labour stand for anymore.”
Speaking on Political Thinking on BBC Radio Four, Mr McCluskey told Nick Robinson he no longer spoke to the Labour leader.
“Unfortunately when either side actually don’t deliver the deal and say there wasn’t a deal, trust breaks down, and that’s what happened with me and Keir.
But he added: “Obviously if he rang me I would speak to him. I don’t want to be nasty to anybody."
"But the truth of the matter at the moment is unless he presses that reset button, unless he goes back to making the moral case for socialism, unless he starts talking about the radical alternative for ordinary working people then I’m afraid we’ll find ourselves in this continuous downward decline.”
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BY now most of you will know: Donald Trump has been defeated in the 2020 election. For a lot of the people celebrating in front of the White House, in Philadelphia and around the country, it's a sweet moment of relief after a lengthy and stressful wait.
For those of us working at The Real News Network, it's a reminder that standing up to a neoliberal Biden administration poses a challenge in some ways more complicated than standing up to Trump. But we're here for it, advancing a critical understanding of politics and the world. If you're out there celebrating, enjoy it. When you're done, recommit to standing up to unjust power, no matter who is wielding it.
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