If the answer is either Sharon Graham or Simon Dubbins for General Secretary, it’s a poor question. There is no real choice. Neither candidate seems to offer the vision for the future of the union I’d like to see. There is no open democratic left in Unite that organises across all the issues facing members (though I’d encourage members of Unite to sign up for the Unite Grassroots Climate caucus here. ) Unlike the last few elections in the union there is no rank and file candidate offering a different path to two long standing bureaucrats.
So was it a Freudian slip that I nearly threw my uncompleted ballot paper away in the recycling and had to sort through a pile of rubbish to recover it? I still think on balance I will vote for Simon Dubbins in this contest but I completely understand why many comrades are spoiling their ballot papers.
What I find more difficult to understand is why some activists I respect are calling for a critical vote for the incumbent Sharon Graham. Rs21 for example spend probably more of their article criticising Graham than saying very much about Dubbins at all. But like much of the left (SWP, Socialist Party at least) they make a point which I don’t think they substantiate of calling for a critical vote for Graham.
This is the core of their argument in part of the introduction to the piece:
While Dubbins talks left on Palestine and climate, his support for the Labour Party makes these positions almost meaningless. With majority support on Unite’s Executive Council, Graham now has no excuse for failing to deliver. Our priority must be to exploit the industrial space her approach opens up, while ensuring that union policy on Palestine and climate is upheld, irrespective of her position.
So what is ‘the industrial space’ that Graham’s approach supposedly opens up? The authors quote Unite’s own statistics about the number of strikes the union has engaged in under Graham’s leadership and the amount of money won in improved pay. It would be not only churlish but inappropriate to dismiss the victories that have been won for members in a difficult political and economic climate. But look at the statistics more closely. 1,801 disputes involving 280,000 members means an average of 155.5 workers in each of these – pretty small fry given the depth of the cost of living crisis.
Rs21 does make a partially accurate critique of the most significant dispute under Graham’s leadership – the Birmingham bin strike. They say:
The sustained support for the Birmingham bin workers has been crucial and much appreciated. Still, there has been no clear plan to win, for example, through a sustained effort to spread action to other parts of Birmingham City Council or the refuse departments of neighbouring councils. It is frustrating that union communications always centre Graham herself rather than the efforts of workers themselves. When activists are trying to convince workers that the union is a tool for their own collective organisation, rather than merely being a third-party service provider they buy a service from,
Their complaint about taking agency away from workers in dispute is absolutely pertinent but completely inadequate. It is not enough to say there was no clear plan to win – there was a total failure to bring out other unite members working for Birmingham or other local councils or to work with other council unions who could have been won to seeing that an attack on the conditions of refuse workers was not some isolated policy from the Labour council – with the explicit support of the Starmer government but the harbinger of things to come. The work of Strike Map, the mass pickets, the outreach to the agency workers brought in as scabs all very useful but not a substitute for spreading the strike.
And where was Graham herself or even the calls from the union urging members to support the mass pickets – I don’t think in such a make or break situation the unspoken threat of sequestration is a sufficient enough excuse for abstention in this crucial situation. And if what I hear is true, that Unite officers met with Reform candidates in the city prior to the local elections that’s even less excusable. It’s one thing to deal with the far right if they become the employer – having campaigned as hard as humanly possible to prevent this – but this gives the disastrous impression of not really seeing a major difference …
Graham has been and continues to be disastrous on political issues. For revolutionary socialists politics is not defined by what is debated or decided in Westminster (or the Dail, Stormont, Holyrood or the Senedd – all chambers where Unite has members).
On Palestine Rs21 quotes a number of her crimes – to which I would add the failure of her office to send out a single mailing urging members or branches to turn up on any pro-Palestine event including those many, many miles from arms factories. There is also her refusal to ask to speak – or send a substitute – on the platform of demonstrations against the genocide which for hundreds of thousands of people – including potential trade unionists – define the politics of their generation.
On climate, in the context that the lack of a maximum temperature at work and the growth of water guzzling data centres undermining members jobs and conditions, Graham’s disastrous approach is spelt out in this press release issued by the union in April 2025:
“The government’s position on oil and gas is putting jobs and national security at risk. Blocking oil and gas production in the North Sea, especially now is simply an act of monumental political self-harm. Domestic gas from Jackdaw and oil from Rosebank are essential for jobs and for energy security”.
It is true that more recent statements move from merely arguing against no new extraction of fossil fuels to “no ban without a plan.”
Here Rs21 are correct to argue that we need a worker-led just transition as an alternative to Graham’s empty rhetoric but one key way of moving in that direction is for the union to devote resources to developing precisely the sort of plan that could deliver this. It’s ironical – although as I will argue later not out of character – that Graham seems to think such plans are the job of politicians not workers themselves. The conference being held in November in Manchester to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Lucas plan is a key opportunity not only to explore the lessons of the past but to urgently debate the best ways to develop worker-led plans in the context of the environmental emergency threatening us all. It is to be hoped that the struggles of the GKN workers in Italy will be a key part of those discussions.
Another key area that needs examining in this contest is the relationship between trade unions and Labour. Rs21 again: While Dubbins talks left on Palestine and climate, his support for the Labour Party makes these positions almost meaningless. Later they say
“Dubbins is a member of the Labour Party. His manifesto focuses on holding Labour to account, demanding investment and rebuilding public services rather than advocating a political break from the party. This creates a contradiction between his internationalist rhetoric and his continued support for a party complicit in the genocide in Gaza”.
I want to disentangle this.
Of course the complicity of Labour in the genocide in Palestine deserves total condemnation. For thousands upon thousands this has been the key reason for breaking with Labour. But Labour has been a pro-imperialist party since its foundation and its murderous legacy on Palestine goes back before the creation of the Israeli state. And at the same time there are many who remain within Labour. MPs, councilors, trade union delegates, ordinary members, fighting to change that legacy and at the same time doing everything they can to organize solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The reasons they do that are myriad and this piece doesn’t have scope to explore all of them in detail. Two – perhaps different sides of the same coin – deserve mentioning.
On the one hand the trade unions, especially the affiliated unions, have both a structural and a political input into the decision making process of Labour which they don’t currently have into any other political party. It’s true that Polanski has spoken about his long term ambition to see trade unions affiliating to the Green Party but despite raising this almost 11 months ago we are a long way from this, Nor is the balance sheet of trade unions who disaffiliated from Labour very positive, The FBU did this in 2004 primarily over the strike breaking actions and rhetoric of the Blair government but reaffilated in 2015 to support Corbyn’s leadership of the party, While the political context was clearly different, there was little to show for the eleven years of going it alone.
Fair enough it is very unlikely there will ever be another Corbyn-like figure as Labour leader, but on the other hand the alternatives are not attractive either. Your Party is almost certainly dead, if not at least in terminal decline. The Greens, even for many of their own members, have not yet passed the test on Palestine, and as explained above while it makes sense to explore the possibilities of affiliation that’s likely to be a long and winding road.
It also seems rather misplaced to criticize Dubbins for using his manifesto to attempt to hold Labour to account by demanding public services are rebuilt. In this Dubbins is not significantly different from leaders of unaffiliated trade unions such as the NEU’s Daniel Kebede rightly calling on Andy Burnham to end unfunded pay awards, as well as to make the investment that is needed to make SEND reforms a success. And look at what has been reported of Sharon Graham’s own speech to the Tolpuddle martyrs festival the week of Burnham’s coronation, its not substantively different from Dubbin’s approach.
And I don’t think it helps the fight against climate change or the struggle for Palestinian freedom to dismiss them as therefore useless. If the leadership of one of the biggest trade unions in Britain was to back those organising against expanding the extraction of deadly fossil fuels and/or the export of arms produced in Britain to the Israeli state used in the genocide that would give a huge boost to those struggle. I’m not saying that I trust Simon Dubbins to deliver on these things should he win – but for sure I think the political context would be much more favourable.
That’s why In the end, after a fair bit of deliberation, I’m off to post my ballot paper having voted for Dubbins
Terry Conway should have stuck to her first reaction and thrown the ballot paper away: neither Dubbins nor Graham are rank-and-file candidates. Neither of them have pledged to take a worker’s wage if elected/re-elected.
On paper, Dubbins’ election manifesto has much to commend it. He promises an effective industrial strategy, a coherent political strategy, a strategy to tackle the growth of the far right, initiatives to build more support for migrant workers, an end to corruption in Unite, and strengthening lay-member democracy.
His manifesto also pledges “an end to the toxic divisions which hold our union back … an end to the poisonous internal divisions which have been created.”
But the major force responsible for the “toxic divisions” and “poisonous internal divisions” in question are Dubbins’ own backers. He is the candidate of the United Left (UL), these days calling itself Members United.
Following Graham’s defeat of the UL candidate (Steve Turner) in the 2021 General Secretary election, UL members on Unite’s constitutional committees, above all at the level of the national Executive Council (EC), engaged in a factional form of trench warfare against Graham.
This reached a climax in March of last year, when the UL faction attempted to oust the EC chairperson. Having failed to achieve anywhere near the two-thirds majority needed to do so, it unsuccessfully applied for “injunctive relief” to the High Court – and then sent the bill for its legal costs to Unite.
Graham’s supporters have certainly contributed to the “toxic divisions” in Unite. But if Dubbins was serious about putting an end to the toxicity, he would denounce the actions of the UL rather than stand as their candidate.
The same applies to Dubbins’ promise to “end corruption” in Unite.
Allegations of corruption relate to the unexplained explosion in the costs charged to Unite for the Birmingham hotel and conference centre, and to the contracts issued by Unite for the provision of services for its members.
But, again, it has been the UL, Dubbins’ own backers, who have consistently blocked transparency and accountability about these matters. At the infamous Unite EC meeting of January 2021, UL members voted unanimously not to investigate these issues.
Dubbins promises accountability – but exempts his own backers from that demand. He promotes a narrative in which everything was fine until Graham’s election as General Secretary, and then the union collapsed into internal strife.
Dubbins claims that as Unite International Director he has “kept our union at the forefront of international solidarity work.”
But his “internationalism” is largely restricted to the core themes of Morning Star “internationalism”: Cuba, Venezuala, Colombia, and Israel-Palestine, with the occasional foray into Kurdistan and South Africa.
But Unite’s policy of support for Ukraine and Ukrainian trade unions has remained a dead letter for the union’s International Director. Perhaps even worse, Dubbins boasts of having “developed and led the ‘Brexit on our terms’ strategy” – as if there could ever have been a workers’ Brexit.
Dubbins highlights his “support for workers in Eastern Europe whose unions were being hijacked by the far right.” What this refers to is not explained.
Dubbins is the candidate backed by the Canary/Skawkbox website. He cannot be held responsible for that. But anyone backed by such a demented outfit really should ask themselves where they went wrong in life.
Neither candidate deserves the support of serious left wingers within Unite.
For so much of the revolutionary left, the only yardstick by which to judge this GS election seems to be the candidates perceived attitude to the Labour Party. There seems to be the naive belief that disaffiliating from the Labour Party would automatically mean a union being more radical. As well as lack of evidence for this in the real world, as Terry shows, it ignores the whole idea of the trade union bureaucracy being a conservative force, affiliated or not. Why should we assume that unions that are not – by and large – willing to challenge, in action as well as words, Labour policies, would suddenly be more likely to do so if they disaffiliated? And simply pushing disaffiliation without a concrete alternative, plays into the hands of those who have always said the unions should ‘stay out of politics’, reinforced by the many members now supporting Reform.
Who in the last election was the rank and file candidate?
Ian Allinson, sadly no longer a Unite member. Interestingly he is backing Sharon Graham in what, I agree, is a Hobson’s Choice. I share the concerns about who is backing Dubbins and whether he can address the toxicity. I think the response to the climate crisis , and in particular Sharon Graham’s disastrous response, creates an opportunity in Unite to build cross-sectoral rank and file organising, to challenge whichever bureaucrats control our union. I’m still undecided but veering towards abstention, or naybe not.