Convenor of union’s largest region and chair of largest service group also confirms support
Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has today issued a video backing the popular Paul Holmes as the next general secretary of giant union Unison – and has delivered a damning verdict on the union’s previous leadership.
McDonnell praised Holmes’s grassroots credentials and his democratic intent to return the union to its members – who, he said, have too often seen Unison’s leaders ignore or even work against their interest:
Holmes responded to McDonnell’s message of support by confirming his intentions to make the union accountable to its members again:
John McDonnell’s endorsement means a lot to me. He is one of the most respected and experienced fighters for workers in the UK. My campaign for General Secretary is based on two important principles: democracy and accountability to members. These principles will be vital to defending our members’ pay, terms and conditions and jobs. I am proud that John has given me his support.
Glen Williams is convenor of UNISON’s largest region, the North West, and chair of its Local Government service group – with almost 700,000 members also the union’s largest, with around half Unison’s total membership.
On a day in which Holmes also took further steps toward the nominations he needs to secure a place on the ballot, Williams added his considerable weight to the campaign:
I am 100 per cent behind Paul’s campaign. It is really great that John has given his support to Paul. John is right – this union needs to change and it needs to be accountable to its members. To have the support of such a long-serving UNISON member as John is a real honour for the campaign.
With plans to take a reduced salary and ensure that local union branches double their share of funding, Holmes threatens to be a game-changer and is building a campaign to do it.
The SKWAWKBOX is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
After McDonnell’s capitulation to the Israel Lobby I find it difficult to muster any interest in anything he says.
I attended a CLP meeting in my home city last December. McDonnell was their trying to promote and sell Liam Byrne ( remember him, he worked for the arch Blairite one of the planners of project). Byrne was trying to do 180% somersaults and sell the yarn he was a “ moderate) touting for our vote for West Midlands mayor. At the same meeting Mc Donnell suppressed any questions about the fabricated AS nonsensical shite against JC. When a member asked his opinions about the Labour Lords refusing to work under JCs leadership, his response was ( no he didn’t say we should support our overwhelming democratic elected leader unequivocally) but side stepped it by saying “ I would abolish the House of Lords”. I am afraid I have very little faith in McDonnell.
I am sure Paul Holmes is a lovely man with the heart in the right place but, what skills is he bringing to the job. So far nobody is talking in terms of his skills for the job but of him been working class and willing to do the job for £32K per year.
I am sorry John McDonnell but I prefer someone competent, and you wouldn’t know competent if it hits you in the face. We lost seats at the 2019 GE due to your lack of competence in managing the Party by trying to get on with everyone left and right and compromised by far too much.
Who is coordinating the left in GMB
Won’t be long before MSM start targeting Paul Holmes, fuelled by the incumbent leader of the opposition, as the changing of the guard would be a real and existential(sic) threat to the status quo .
Unison needs to go backs to its roots and the same could be said of the Labour Party.
And Unison
I’m delighted that John McDonnell supports Holmes so enthusiastically. Well done John. Good luck Paul Holmes.
Bottom-up politics needs people like Paul Holmes. Let’s have more.
Joe Biden; Kamal Harris; Keir Starmer; Angela Rayner……….everything so reactionary as the ‘Left’ just hope. Where is the opposition; where are the people of vision or is MSM control of the political agenda so complete?
I hadn’t really noticed the MSM cross the line between reporting the news and influencing it before M*rdoch’s infamous ‘turn the lights out’ headline.
It’s been drunk on power and cocaine ever since.
“Pride comes before a fall” though, as they say.
It’s overdue.
Steve Richards like you I left the Labour party last month because despite the fact that the membership are !mainly loyal and decent people,the Labour party have always been an arm of the establishment and always will be..Instead of being the voice of the working-class,we are the tame club to belong to and convince yourself that we can make a difference..I will not be funding anymore dreamers or parasites of the Broad Church dogma.and neither will many of my former comrades.Chris Williamson and his treatment by the leadership was the last straw for me.
Strange that the Broard Church maxim does not appear include the Jewish community, especially the Labour Party elite attitude to the JVL. Surely not double standards !!
If the treatment of Chris Williamson was the last straw for you, how come it took you a further seven/eight months before you actually left the LP. OR was it just you contriving another way to repeat the same old smear that you’ve repeated about fifty times or more since you first started posting on here just over a year ago! Yeah, it’s always good to get it in right at the end of yur post!! Standard fucking black propagadist tactic!!
Joseph/Steve
We thank you for your service and hope you enjoy your retirement
Doug. Thankyou.. And the best of luck with the parasites feeding off the
Working-class…!
Whether retired from or still within the Labour Party, there is more to unite us than divide us. Let’s remember that.
Joseph
You can knock us down with a shovel
But you will never keep us down
The Broad Church has fallen down,
It’s just a case of who owns the land on which it was built
And as far as I’m concerned it’s not those fuckers
Regards
“ Chris Williamson and his treatment by the leadership was the last straw for me.“ Can anyone disagree with you there Joseph? Not me. I’ve taken a long break of several months, from following events and contributing. Yet the grief and puzzlement remains re too many still feel nothing could have been done differently. Given another miraculous chance i bet the same appeasement galore & broad church tosh will be the only game in town. The Thatcherites within and without Labour have nothing to fear… and nothing good to offer. We have much to offer but fear too much, so stoop with much appeasement. We protest for peanuts the Thatcherites may throw. They do their banditry and rinse the public purse dry. £250 million to that chum £250 million to another. A billion here a billion there, not to save lives but to use Covid-19 as a cash cow!!!
Signpost windchimes….thanks for that ,keep well and healthy and it may get better after the public have been bled enough by the establishment and our leadership?
The Knight says “somthing has gone horribly wrong with the A level results” speaking to the independent…!He must have been looking in the mirror…!
Ha!!! Very good Joseph!!! At least we are unsurprised by Keith Starmer. And he is unsurprised by himself as he wastes excesses mirror time for his worn toilet brush hair look. Judge Keith Starmer by his record!!! An extreme abomination. just ask Assange, the Lawrence Family, victims of “joint enterprise” which never applies to Tory bandits eg Jimmy Saville… he could not abuse on his own. Or Rolfe Harris, Grenfel, Hillsborough, murder of Jean Charles DeMenez on Stockwell Tube supervised by Cressida Dick. Dick made a Dame by Theresa May for her expertise for that atrocity and allowing three terrorist attacks in as many months under her watch before elections… funny that…
Ps thanks Joseph. I think i am very safe and well. In a glorious paradise with lots friends and their three delightful children. We are all extremely grateful and glad to have escaped for a while, the plundered and ravaged England by Cummings & Johnson. England is laughing stock. People here think it is incompetence. I say no!!! It’s deliberate billions for the boys!!! Covid-19 is yet another of their cash cows like HS2 and selling off and outsourcing everything!!!
Change the record for FFS signpost!
Oh, and it’s SOooo nice to see Joseph and yourself all fwendly and cuddly, Joseph who played the infantile game re not telling me where he was a councillor, and THEN! Oh, it was OH SO very clever Joe, and yeah, just the sort of thing a mature adult would do. And then there’s you signpost who told a great big porky…..
No need to relate the rest of course, but I’ll keep reminding readers of SB what you did AND how despite THAT, Joe’s all buddy wuddy with you.
Oh, right, but then you are both fascist shill c scum!
u r sick a very very weird bat AH. Get psychiatric help while it’s still free on the NHS.
AH u are even more weird and sick than many thought before. What r u taking??? What r u doing??? Can’t be the sun as u were shill obsessed b4 we got some sun. Get help FFS AH!!! Psychiatrist treatmeant and therapies are still free on the NHS. Get them while they still are. Waiting list are long, so i’m the meantime, go take long walks in fresh air, draw, paint, listen to the birds, admire the trees and flowers. GET HELP !!!
AH ps it IS ALWAYS nice to see Joseph. R u jealous😂😂😂
It is deliberate. I expect nothing else. No, I anticipate that things will get ever more awful. I’m tired of looking for gold in the sieve.
“It is deliberate. I expect nothing else. No, I anticipate that things will get ever more awful.” You are spot on Wobblyjack. Keith Starmer & Co planned to be as awful as they are, ie repellant +++ so as to drive out true Labour from the NEC in particular and party in general. Thus keep full control as Tory B side.
Members’ dues are irrelevant. Many millions are available elsewhere. Furthermore, election victories here, the USA and elsewhere need neither large memberships nor social media dominance. NB Bernie TWICE in USA and Jeremy here.
Interestingly Bernie will this very evening be with Michelle Obama, as warm up acts for… Biden same old same old merchant. Once again Bernie declared defeat before completing the race. While here the attitude was: Appease OR be battered and scorned. Yet 6 months later the likes of the crazed shill hunter twat, the well initiated AH Allan Howard, STILL bleat that if we did not engage in the appeasement fest, we would have been … battered by the MSM. The ridiculous weird tosser seems yet to realise the appeasement galore still led to defeat and MSM & Keith Starmer & co abuse AND a Johnson Cummings scandal of a government!!!
The AH Howard is so crazed that he’s blind to the glaring fact that his argument makes zero sense. Maybe Jeremy was taking advice from him. Appease and hide from those attacking you lest … they attack you…. Oh, and for good measure, recommend Tom Watson for a peerage as your last act. When Hodge calls you an “F ing A*** S*****” respond “I’m sorry you feel that way”… lest she calls you “an F ing A*** S*****”. That’s the political strategy of the weirdo shill hunter extraordinaire Allan Howard which delivered Allan Howard’s aims – handing our victory to Johnson & Cummings. WELL DONE HOWARD. U tossing twat!!!
As if anyone on this planet who regarded Jeremy as being weak and cowardly, and as someone who had thrown the likes of Chris Williamson and Jackie Walker etc under the bus AND who appeases his enemies, could POSSIBLY be a supporter of such a person! You would of course detest him if you felt that way and have nothing but contempt for him. And needless to say, the fact that signpost says he IS a JC supporter, is just a Big Lie. The only objective ‘signpost’ has by posting on this Jeremy Corbyn-supporting blog is to demonise and smear Jeremy so as to turn readers of skwawkbox against Jeremy. And he’s been doing it since shortly after he started posting on skwawbox.
I will be calling you out and exposing you for the fascist shill you are signpost on a regular basis on here.
SNW – Dame Doreen Lawrence seems to be quite happy to work with Keir, this is what she said when Keir Starmer appointed her Labour’s new Race Relations Advisor.
“I am proud to take up this role at a critical moment for our country. The coronavirus pandemic has brought society together, but it has also exposed the gulf in living standards that still blights our communities.
“Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities have long been disadvantaged by the social and economic injustice which still exists in our country. There is a clear and tragic pattern emerging of the pandemic’s impact on those communities which must be better understood.”
https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-appoints-doreen-lawrence-as-race-relations-adviser/
Why does the membership article keep disappearing? Sometimes it’s there and then it’s not 🤔 ??