The election campaign for the next Unite general secretary is in full swing between incumbent Sharon Graham who is seeking a second term and challenger Simon Dubbins, full time official head of the union’s international department.
Given Unite’s weight in the industrial working class, this is an important election for revolutionary socialists.
Militant Left activists are supporting the re-election of Sharon Graham to advance the union as a means of class struggle.
Sharon Grahams record
Her roots are as a full time official in the union’s organising department – traditionally the union’s more dynamic wing. In the last election her insurgent campaign demanding a turn to the workplace and shopfloor militancy won out against the continuation candidates of her predecessor Len McCluskey and his formidable base in the union structures.
Since her election, Sharon Graham and the team around her have driven change within Unite to be more of a militant union. They have reshaped the unions’ resources and structures around servicing its reps and winning disputes while ending wasteful and corrupt practices.
Most significantly workers know under her leadership they will get support from the union in a strike or dispute for as long as it takes.
Sharon Graham’s readiness to publicly lambast the British Labour party during the long, bitter and ongoing Birmingham bin strike is perhaps the strongest indication of how Unite has changed under her leadership.
Fresh layers of union activists
In the UK Sharon Graham’s first year in office coincided with a tidal wave of strike action as workers fought to defend their living conditions amidst a surging cost of living.
A new generation of worker reps are stepping forward – many blooded or inspired by that wave of action.
The results are visible in the success of the Unite Broad Left
Workers Unite /Back to the Workplace slate in the last union executive elections – through which four CWI members were elected – and in the preponderance of workplace and geographic branches which have nominated her candidacy this time around.It is clear that the overwhelming majority of militant trade unionists are supporting her campaign. By comparison the campaign of Simon Dubbins appears to rest on an older layer from the Len McCluskey era.
Workers’ politics
Our support for Sharon Graham is not uncritical. While she has distanced herself from the Starmer Labour party and has opened the door to a conference vote on disaffiliation – she continues to offer them critical support, including to incoming prime minister Andy Burnham. More importantly still she has not put forward proposals for a new working-class party with socialist policies.
But such criticisms would certainly need doubled with Simon Dubbins who while he kicks left on a variety of international issues he appears entirely content to remain within the Labour stable – and no real threat to the status quo.
Need to rise to challenges
Unite has a unique place in the economy. Virtually every large workplace has Unite members and it has particular weight in the arms, manufacturing, oil and gas, nuclear and other industrial sectors.
This means Unite is faced in concrete terms with the sharpest challenges around issues of social justice and the transition to a sustainable economy. It also means that Unite holds the necessary levers of power to make real change possible.
Within the confines of a capitalist economy, addressing these challenges can be posed as threats to workers’ livelihoods: working class people being asked to pay the price for a crisis they did not cause and they did not benefit from.
The union’s incoming leadership needs to find a pathway to engaging with workers in these sectors to chart the way forward to a Just Workers’ Transition. But that can only happen through advancing socialist economics where workers and not profit are protected.
The union is also faced with the thorny challenges posed by the rise of racism, the emergence of the far-right and new Nazi groups and the need for urgent international solidarity action. These issues cannot be sidelined or ignored. Given the huge social weight of Unite in society it can, with a fighting leadership, become a factor in developing a positive working class based struggle against the far-right racists and for true solidarity amongst workers in struggle across the globe.
Our support for Sharon Graham is part of our broader effort to transform Unite and other trade unions into effective striking forces for the working class and for socialism.
While industrial militancy without politics is inadequate, as James Connolly said “Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent”. We need to build both a militant industrial movement and a mass party of the working class to win a socialist future.