Benefit of the doubt given where none can be remotely merited – and replies on social media show how ill-judged it is
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has long been criticised for her cosiness with Keir Starmer, her willingness to accommodate his wishes despite his broken promises and his betrayal of workers and the war she has waged, seemingly on his behalf, on those showing solidarity with those murdered, maimed or smeared by Israel.
Graham and her team have been accused of banning films combating racism and revealing the sabotage of the party and its members by Keir Starmer from the union’s buildings, along with a book exposing the Labour right’s collusion with the Israel lobby against supporters of Palestinian human rights.
One of her team allegedly threatened a soon-to-retire regional official with the loss of his pension bonus if he did not cool his support for the people of Palestine against Israel’s genocide, while Graham herself has been alleged by Unite insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
And now, after Keir Starmer signalled he would water down the one decent Labour policy – a new bill of workers’ rights to protect workers from unscrupulous employers, now to be jettisoned like every other promise Starmer has made – Graham has given an interview to right-wing radio station LBC in which she claimed that Starmer will be good for working people, said she was ‘really really pleased’ with Starmer’s plan and talked up Labour’s intention of doing anything, despite an evident lack of concrete commitments from Starmer’s red-Tory team:
As well as her failures and alleged betrayals over Gaza, Sharon Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in both an employment tribunal for discrimination and a defamation lawsuit brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
She has also been accused by Unite’s national officers’ group of showing contempt for the union staff’s collective agreements, taking an anti-trade union stance and attempting to use legal action to intimidate staff with grievances. Graham has suffered an unopposed vote of no confidence by at least one significant union branch over her conduct – and is spending a huge amount of members’ money on expensive lawyers to try to defeat Brendan Ogle’s legal actions against her and her allies.
This cosying-up came in the same month that Staer welcomed far-right Tory defector Natalie Elphicke into the parliamentary party.
Graham shared the interview on her timeline, scoring a huge own goal as the scathing replies showed, of which a few are displayed below:
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