Meeting misrepresented in apparent attempt to save general secretary’s shredded reputation over Gaza and Israel
Supporters of Unite general secretary Sharon Graham have smeared elected executive members through a blatantly false briefing claiming that Graham was all for an unconditional ceasefire call but was stymied by ‘factional’ exec members.
Graham’s reputation has been further badly damaged – after a series of controversies and undenied allegations about her conduct in the union – by her public silence on Israel’s genocide in Gaza and her attempts to block a Palestinian solidarity event.
And after a fraught executive meeting, it seems her supporters saw an opportunity to undo some of the damage by putting out an untrue version of what happened at the ‘closed doors’ emergency executive meeting.
One social media account, apparently taken in by the false briefing, tweeted:
Reports in from Unite EC Palestine meeting: General Secretary wanted UNCONDITIONAL CEASEFIRE statement to go out BUT factional groupings who oversaw millions overspend on Hotel & backed candidate who left Unite under cloud to do with finances ONLY voted for another mtg instead!
The reality is as follows:
- The exec meeting was called to discuss whether a new statement from Unite was required, after the previous Graham-approved statement was slammed for its asymmetrical language used about the deaths of Israelis versus the deaths of Palestinians – and whether the TUC’s statement could be used as a basis for this
- Graham has been hammered by both Unite regions, branches and Doctors in Unite for her failure to make a statement in support of Palestinians, in line with Unite’s democratically-agreed position
- Her faction have been trying to retake control of the exec after members voted against her preferred slate and gave a majority to the left slate
- The meeting quickly a new statement was essential. Graham agreed with the exec’s view that a call must be made for an unconditional ceasefire rather than the ‘humanitarian ceasefire’ of the TUC statement
- The general view of the meeting was that the TUC statement was more or less usable, as long as the call for only a humanitarian ceasefire was amended to an unconditional one
- Late in the debate, someone raised the existence other possible statements and motions, including BDS – the campaign to boycott Israeli goods and services from illegally-occupied territories – and asked to see them all – which could not be achieved during the time available for the meeting
- A vote took place on whether to issue an amended version of the TUC statement or prepare a new document in the coming week after all the other versions had been circulated. The vote was 24-14 in favour of examining all the options
Update 30 Oct: Tribune co-editor Taj Ali has this morning tweeted further details that make even clearer how misleading the briefing by Graham’s faction is:
It is easily arguable that this outcome does not properly reflect the urgency of what is happening in Gaza – but to present this as Graham going all guns blazing for a full ceasefire call and being blocked by factional operators is both farcical and appalling.
Worse, the Graham faction has tried to exploit this for factional gain by even going as far as implying that the ‘factional groupings’ were voting based on links to the alleged ‘millions overspend on hotel’ – Graham’s regular hobby horse and diversion even though her right-hand man was the union’s lead on the project and she was on the executive that voted for the hotel project. The same ally was subsequently let off by the union after he made racist comments on social media.
To attempt to use the suffering of the people of Gaza for such petty gain and for restorative PR is unforgivable.
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