Silence won’t save us

Leslie Cunningham lays out some of the shortcomings and tensions beneath the militant surface of Sharon Graham’s leadership of Unite, and argues for a renewed rank and file militancy.

Around December last year, the Labour Party Women’s Conference announced it would be excluding trans women from participating in the main conference. Its given reason was that this was the least intrusive way of observing the Supreme Court’s ruling on gender. In response, UNISON, ASLEF, USDAW, the Musicians Union, and UNITE announced they would be boycotting the Conference. 

In contrast to the other unions, there has been no public statement regarding this from the Unite leadership, nor have Unite members been informed. It could be argued that this is to avoid the union being threatened with legal action. Despite being equipped against competent lawyers and no lack of funds, recent rulings against other large trade unions have made clear relying on such resources is not a sure bet. But this does not explain why the members have not been informed at all.

There seems to be a tendency developing for the Unite leadership to remain silent on any issue which might embarrass the Labour government, or antagonise members of the union who might not support Unite’s resolutions passed at various conferences on opposing transphobia, solidarity with migrants, and Palestine.

Back in 2024, when I was still a member of the Unite Scotland LGBT+ Committee, I was sent an email about a Unite online event celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility 48 hours before it was due to take place. I informed my husband, the Equalities Rep for his Unite branch, and he passed on the information to his Branch Secretary and others. He had previously received no notification that it was taking place. The event had a very small number of participants, and might well have been marking Transgender Day of Invisibility, as far as the wider membership was concerned.

More recently, I heard through the grapevine (at an rs21 Unite Fraction meeting) that a Unite Scotland event on getting the union to enact existing policy on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in support of Palestine was going to take place. On Monday of this week, an email regarding this was sent to my husband (now Vice Chair of his branch) at 9.30 am. The deadline to apply to participate was noon of the same day. When he told me about it, I contacted the Unite worker who had sent out the email, and got a response minutes before the deadline.

I must emphasise that I am not blaming the Unite worker in any way: I suspect that they received the information minutes before they sent it out. I do, however, wonder why the Unite Scotland Political Officer responsible for publicising the event acted in such a way that the vast majority of members will have been left unaware that it is happening, and if they do find out, will have missed the deadline.

Regarding attacks on immigration and refugees by the far right: I hope that I am wrong, but to the best of my knowledge the Unite leadership has not recently issued any statements in solidarity with this oppressed minority (which, like Trans people, consists of less than 1% of the British population). It is extremely cynical of me, but I cannot help wondering if our union’s publicity machine is more concerned about potentially antagonising members who support Reform and the like, than failing to support members who are facing rising levels of racist abuse on a daily basis.

Climate disaster is another area on which Sharon Graham, in particular, has a somewhat limited viewpoint. “We must protect members’ jobs” is the rallying cry, and this has also been the excuse for criticising protests at arms factories involved in producing weapons used by Israel. To their credit, Unite members in at least one of these factories have been considerably more active than the leadership in organising against complicity in genocide.

Sharon Graham has recently been re-elected as Unite’s General Secretary. I voted for her on the basis that she was the least objectionable candidate, but her claim that she is “not political”, and wishes to focus on reviving democratic organising structures within Unite, now sounds even hollower than it did five years ago. 

Unite has the communication tools that it needs to keep all its members informed. Perhaps the fact that I received a new membership card over two months after the membership expiry date on my previous card says it all: I go on paying my subs, but what do I get in return? Silence on important issues affecting Unite members and the wider working class, both in Britain and internationally, IS political. Silence will not save us: what may however, is real rank and file organising, and putting pressure on our elected leadership and paid officials to do what they should be doing.