Analysis comment

Labour expels Boulby to negate left’s elected majority on Unison LabourLink committee

More dirty tricks by party to attack left and insult Unison’s young members – and no backing from union management for expelled member of senior committee

The Labour party’s right-wing regime has acted quickly and scandalously to interfere in the democratic workings of the UK’s biggest union in support of the union’s right-wing management – by expelling one of the newly-elected members of Unison’s ‘LabourLink’ committee.

The left had won a majority of one on the committee to go alongside its majority on the union’s national executive – a situation that Unison’s management have been fighting tooth and nail to negate and ignoreputting themselves in line for summary dismissal according to the country’s top lawyer on union and labour matters.

Unison delegates ignored ignored the union’s executive and its official rules and policy to play a pivotal role in saving right-winger David Evans from rejection as Labour’s general secretary and disenfranchise Labour members at September’s annual party conference, by refusing to follow direction from the union’s elected executive to vote against Evans’s confirmation – and staff had blocked the LabourLink’s attempts to instruct delegates otherwise. The new committee was set to pull the Link and the union’s influence in the Labour party back in its proper direction.

But now Labour’s regime has returned the favour to its right-wing union colleagues – by dredging up old social media to expel Lilly Boulby, elected to the LabourLink by the union’s young members, as she reported on Twitter on Tuesday evening:

The democratically-elected left in Unison, together with any members who care about their democratic rights, face an inch-by-inch battle to retake the union for its members and to restore respect for democracy. The Labour party’s current regime is clearly prepared to stoop to any depths to aid its right-wing fellow travellers, even if that means interfering in the democracy of a huge union and slapping Unison members of all ages in the face.

The Unison left must stand firm and do more than stand firm – it must revise its tactics and be no less determined and ruthless than its avowed enemies.

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36 comments

  1. Apparently Ms Boulby’s expulsion is because of her support for Socialist Appeal.

    1. Yes, another wrong type of Jew/Opinion (delete as appropriate)?

      This new right wing regime in charge of Labour is hopeless, shameless and actually dangerous

      It’s fight or flight time. Time for the left to openly oppose the Labour leader to save itself and the party’s relevance and electability.

      1. querboi to oppose the leader you need to oppose the Labour party which is infected across the whole party from top to bottom with the Right wing.including the membership.You need to understand that the Labour party have deserted us and moved on beyond redemption and are much more dangerous at the moment than the Torys because of their infiltration into the unions.The whole idea of a peoples movement is effectively on the brink.I understand that you have withdrawn your funding but now we need to destroy the nest.

    2. SteveH, to apply a ban retroactively is against due legal process. It only confirms that the Labour Party has been overtaken by fascists.
      By the next round of elections I would not longer by a member as I would be in over 6 months arrears. I rather vote Tory under present management (Sunak is on the left of Reeves) that vote Labour.
      I am so disgusted by the tactics that I am prepared to openly canvass for the Tories in my area, if no alternative socialist candidate is standing.I rather elect right wingers than fascists.

      1. Spot on Maria! “Overtaken by fascists….”

        If I may, I think it’s worth pointing out that Starmer’s right wing regime is simply following capitalism’s opportunistic instinct to try to supersede democracy and impose a neoliberal authoriarianism in its place – which will become much more tyranical and anti-social (i.e. anti people) and anti science than it currently is – unless the Labour left stand up for and restore democratic socialism in mainstream British politics.

        Although I believe you are using the concept of fascism correctly in your diagnosis of Starmer’s clique, I believe most people are incapable of following our arguement rationally and see our use of the word against the labour right as a mark of conspiratorial insanity .

    3. Apparently Ms Boulby’s expulsion is because of her support for Socialist Appeal

      Oooooo…The bloody BASTARD!!

      Not for calling de piffle a coward (and retracting it pdq afterwards) then? 🤔

  2. A timely reminder that the ultimate aim of the Blairites, once the Labour Party has been castrated, is the destruction of the Trade Unions. As capitalism descends into a deep existential crisis the ruling class cannot allow any opposition.

    1. bevin, See this comment I made on another post on here….What you’ve said is the Trilateral end game. Starmer’s playing a blinder.

      “Tony, Guess what organization Brzezinski started with David Rockefeller ?

      Trilateral Commission…..And guess which Labour Leader is a member of said organization, along with Mandelson, David Miliband and the ex Mr Epstein.”

  3. When I think of the good times being lent a office by the TGWU many years ago and campaigning with the newly formed Unison to break the stranglehold that the Torys had on the NHS…..I could cry 😢….but I will not because unlike the Labour party who are behind most of the infiltration of the unions the battle is not lost.What the Labour party are selling is right wing deceit and smoke and mirrors,but the members of unison and all unions will not understand shrinking wages…hire and fire negotiations and a downward spiral in pay and conditions….IT will not sell to use market ideology the only thing these parasites against the working-class people understand and peddle.The unions are the last bastion for the working-class and the Labour party are the enemy not the solution and should be treated as such.Unison need to understand the power is in their hands so hit back and take back what you own.and stop funding the Labour party.

    1. Joseph
      Make that defunding the Red Tories the campaign message across the movement
      2nd question
      Being kicked out the Labour party does that men she loses her position in the union, if not then get on with destroying ersatz Tories
      If it does then my prediction is the left will walk the rerun for this position then its back to afore mentioned

  4. “Apparently Ms Boulby’s expulsion is because of her support for Socialist Appeal.” – Could you provide the link please?

    1. goldbach

      This is the start of her twitter thread, all the “evidence” given against her relates to the time before Socialist Appeal was proscribed.

      “I recently received a message from the Labour Party, informing me that I was being auto-expelled for being a supporter of Socialist Appeal”.

      “Despite the fact all the evidence they presented to me dated from before the point the proscription of Socialist Appeal came into effect (!!) I was duly expelled – and in turn, I’ve been kept from taking the seat I’d been voted onto on the union’s Labour Link”.

      Stalinist Labour are still data scraping social media and retaining the data.

      https://twitter.com/LillyBNEC/status/1460651599714467840

  5. As stupid as it may sound I’m not too up on how the Union operates in these kind of things. Will there be another election to replace Lily, or will the Committee operate with what members are left?

    Unison left need to get their act together and follow the advice of the lawyer. Those who are ignoring the rules should be expelled. If they don’t many others on LabourLink and their NEC will be expelled by the party leaving only the right wing zealots left.

    1. Mmmm.
      Starmer says “Israel’s Declaration of Independence committed the new state to
      Freedom, justice and peace; Complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; And freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture.”
      Who would have known it?
      He goes on to say “…. we, in the British Labour Party, will always say when we believe there are wrongs or shortcomings.”
      Well, we’re still waiting for him to say something but I won’t hold my breath.
      Seems he forgot when he backed Tzipi Hotovely to the hilt.

      1. And he recognises the corrupt Palestinian authority, which many Palestinians don’t and won’t recognise Hamas. It’s America’s foreign policy, nothing new, nothing that has the slightest chance of working. Instead he wants to impose the fragmented two state on the Palestinians, enclaves that will be reliant on Israel to survive and lay the groundwork for greater Israel while destroying Lebanon, Syria and Iran and committing war crimes on their citizens.

      2. see Nation State Laws of Apartheid & Exclusion. Israel is a racist endeavour, a self evident truth..

      1. “Comedy is the new rock n’ roll’. Yeah, totally corporate.

    2. Lundiel, once thing is what the US and Israel want to achieve (Greater Israel) a very different thing is what they will get (destruction of Israel)
      Nothing unites the masses in the Middle East like their hatred for Zionism. Their governments like in Saudia Arabia can support the Zionists but no its peoples and that includes many Mizrahi Jews,that feel discriminated by the Zionist’s project.
      https://csalateral.org/forum/cultural-constructions-race-racism-middle-east-north-africa-southwest-asia-mena-swana/cooption-erasure-mizrahi-culture-israel-crasnow/

  6. It’s a fight to the death lads and lasses, so let’s get on with it
    Cancel your direct debits but don’t tell the fuckers is a good start, did mine a couple of weeks ago, no idea what I’m going to spend the money on, but it feels like I’m doing something

    1. Exactly right Doug: cancel your payment mechanism (don’y worry, it’s only a ‘suspension’), don’t officially inform the party, but immediately addopt a council of war mindset and tell every person who you believe respects or trusts you that you’ve beeen forced into this wretched situation by a well-funded, militant pro-capitalist’s not very subtle efforts to destroy Labour, its mission and purpose.

      The more things change the more they stay the same.

      1. lundiel
        So if needs be, will be able to pay the arrears to vote in a leadership election
        If so then every member who still has a democratic bone in their body should cancel D/D

    2. I allowed my membership to lapse in 2020 (on the day of the payoff to the so called ‘whistle blowers’ as it happens) and for sometime felt very conflicted about the leave/stay to fight argument. However, my predictions about Starmer on the very day of his election have come to fruition – with bells on! Never in my wildest imagination did I think things would get so bad. I am in my 70’s and I weep to see the Labour Party destroyed and many many fine people trashed and treated so badly on the most spurious of grounds. In this particular case, the very people the LP needs to thrive – future generations. I have found there is no shortage of more worthwhile causes to spend your money on Doug!

      1. Lundiel

        “If you ever want to rejoin you will have to pay subs for the suspension period”.

        Interesting you should bring that up, with the investigation into the Labour data breach going on. One suspicion is that lapsed members are part of the missing data, mostly likely for that purpose. But it’s not exclusively lapsed members who have been affected, so obviously there are other nefarious reasons for keeping information for unreasonable periods of time.

        One of the actions members and ex’s are pushing the party and the ICO, is for all our data to be deleted. If sucessful, we may get to have our cake and eat it.

      2. If that happens you’d get a sudden, catastrophic drop in membership numbers…. they’d be forced to reveal the truth.

    3. Doug you are doing somthing,you are basically hitting the right wing freaks were it hurts.Little else other than a boycott of the CLP campaign which the right wing dont like doing.They want to control the CLPs via video,lets see how they campaign and knock on doors,deliver leaflets and compile a list of “dont knows “labour voters and the whole drudge remotely from a video screen.via Hq fawlty towers….Reality will bite.back because traditionaly the hard work was done by the motivated left wing,not dopeys that think a knight of the realm a good choice for leader of the Labour party.

  7. Why, why WHY the bleedin’ hell are the so called left allowing these parasites to shit all over them time, after time, after time?

    Unless you’re some sort of weirdo masochist, if you purport to be on the left then you really ought fuck the labour party off altogether. While your cash and help is welcome, you and your views are most definitely NOT.

    So WTF are you doing by countenancing your own ostracism ffs?

    See how they get on without your financial and manual/physical support They’ll be left with a bunch of upper-middle class wankers who think they’re not quite tory enough to be or vote tory, when in actual fact most of them are to the right of at least 30% of the toerags and wouldn’t have the first fucking idea of how to garner support from, or connect with anyone who isn’t one of them.

    Keef smarmer is your prime example of what that shitshow aspires to be. You want that gobshite dictating whats best for you?

    I don’t think you do, do you? But like an abused wife thinking she can change her abusive husband’s ways, you’re completely fucked of you think anything’s gonna change for the better whil him and his bootlickers have ANY say – nevermind have the whip hand.

    Support him in any way any further and as far as I’m concerned you’re a bigger fucking toerag than he is and you have NOTHING to complain about.

    1. Support him in any way any further and as far as I’m concerned you’re a bigger fucking toerag than he is and you have NOTHING to complain about.

      *By ‘him’ I mean smarmer and his party.

      1. Toffee its like an addiction the Labour party and a few on here are struggling to aceppt that the Labour party have moved on to support the right wing fascists that infest the Labour party from Top to bottom.I can understand the pull of belonging “and having comrades to rely on but for me a recovering Labour addict the Labour party are basically a bigger problem than the Torys,and I have never said that before and never will again if the problem can be put out of the misery its causing to the working-class movement and the unions that are infiltrated by the Labour party.All funding and capitulation needs to stop and more members need to go if they are in anyway left wing and have a sense of morality.Look what happened in Germany when the Nazi party thrived with members that didnt support the fascist dictator and see how that worked out for the vunerable and the jews….ITs gone too far with the Labour party and reform of the majority including the members is effectively impossible for a Socialist or even the left wing.who are a rare bird in this Labour party whos only job is to distract whilst the grown ups tory boys strip the country and destroy the economy…..Just look at the value of the pound and with mortgages and interest rates rising along with rents we cannot and should not expect anything from the establishment Labour party.

  8. Parliament has to legislate on MP’s paid advocacy because it has to We know that MPs will the first to drop their snouts in the trough as concepts such as honesty & integrity are not in their vocabulary, they cannot be trusted to control their greedy instincts. £82K & they demand more. May I suggest performance related pay set initially @ ‘the legal minimum wage’ & incorporate a bonus system dependant on the standard of living for the poorest in our society. A nice little number!

  9. Starmer hiding behind the Israeli Declaration of Independence is morally abject and intellectually vapid. The American constitution didn’t stop Vietnam nor slavery nor Jim Crow laws nor the mass incarceration of blacks. Holding aloft the fine words of the constitution while killing people in Gaza is typical of the actions of regimes based on violence and injustice which cloak themselves in respectability. Starmer is just a twerp. As for Baddiel, he’s the anti-racist who blacked up and put a pineapple on his head to mock the black footballer Jason Lee. These people are beneath contempt. During his campaign for the leadership Starmer spoke of “an insecure Israel”. Insecure? It has the most powerful army in the ME and nuclear weapons. Any rational person would judge the condition of the Palestinians as far less secure. Starmer is continuing the fiction that the Jews are discriminated against in the contemporary world. Let’s look at the facts. There are about 15 million Jews in the world. 7 million are in Israel, 6 in the USA. Out of 15 million, 13 live in societies hugely biased in favour of Israel and Zionism. The Jewish population of the UK is 291,000, 0.43% of the population. There are 5 Jewish MPs. 2.5% of the representation. Prior to the 2015 GE, therefore no Corbyn effect, 69% of Jews intended to vote Tory and 22% Labour. Most Jews in the UK are prospering materially and have switched their political allegiance accordingly. In 2019 there were 327 Jews in UK prisons, 0.38% of the population. The Muslim percentage is 15. 60% of Jewish children attend Jewish schools funded by the State. About 30% of UK Jews are self-employed compared to about 14% of the general population. In 2010 the average hourly pay for Jews was £15.44, well above the living wage. The picture in the USA is much the same. The Jews are thriving in Israel, in the US, in the UK, in France, in Canada. Good for them. Long may it continue, but don’t tell us they are a persecuted minority. That, like the diaspora is, an anachronism.The Jews are no longer part of a diaspora, they are hugely concentrated in a handful of countries where they are favoured. Their presence across the rest of the world is virtually non-existent. There are about 5,000 Jews in Africa. Starmer’s prostration before the Zionists is simply a defence of the indefensible: the oppression of the Palestinians, an apartheid State and persistent violation of international law. Let’s see it clearly: the man is a fascist.

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