Graham boasts of beating Starmer over Winter Fuel motion – Unite funded Labour £1.7m in 11 months

Cosiness with red Tory regime in cash terms

Sharon Graham’s recent Twitter feed has been full of congratulation for herself and Unite because it and other unions won a vote at Labour’s party conference on Wednesday – after Keir Starmer and most of his front bench had gone home – on a motion against Starmer’s announcement that ten million out of twelve million pensioners will lose their Winter Fuel Allowance (WFA).

The WFA is a vital payment of hundreds of pounds a year to ensure that pensioners can afford not to freeze to death. Labour knows that its WFA cut will kill at least four thousand people each winter – but the union motion was non-binding and will be ignored by Starmer.

Despite this, Graham’s recent posts have been exultant:

So much for the posturing and preening. But a search of the Electoral Commission’s donations website shows that Unite has donated a staggering £1.7m to Starmer’s party since 13 October last year, despite calls for Unite to end its funding of Labour because of Starmer’s betrayals of workers and sidling up to corporations and billionaires – and his support for Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.

Ms Graham has been criticised for turning Unite into ‘Starmer’s poodle’ for refusing to challenge Labour’s breaches of natural justice to persecute union members who were also members of the party, and for her cosiness with the red Tory leader, despite Starmer’s lies, his contempt for democracy, his u-turns on promises to Unite members and his regime’s repeated blocking of Unite-backed parliamentary candidates.

That cosiness has extended to attempting to clamp down on union activists’ solidarity with Gaza against Israel’s genocide. Graham has been exposed behind the union’s decision to ban showings in Unite’s buildings of a film exposing racism, smears, rigging and abuse by the Labour right and has appeared to grow increasingly cosy with red-Tory Labour ‘leader’ Keir Starmer – and she was accused of trying to have a pro-Palestine Unite fringe meeting at the 2023 conference cancelled, then put the union official who refused under investigation.

Graham also said she would prioritise jobs over action to try to end the Gaza genocide and canvassed members about the union taking a strongly pro-Israel position and her chief of staff  threatened a (now-retired) senior officer with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians against Israel’s genocide.

Her tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other serious allegations, which neither she nor the union has ever denied – of abuse, cover-up and failure to protect women:

• that she attempted to have evidence destroyed in bullying and misogyny complaints about her husband, whom she now employs in her office despite a final warning from the union for his behaviour
• after her supporters failed in their bid to take control of the Unite executive despite ‘dark money’ spending on advertising, ineligible and racist members being allowed to stand and the alleged use of paid organisers in and following the exec election campaign, her faction has resorted to Starmerite tactics to try to discredit the executive members
• that her chief of staff threatened a (now-retired) senior officer with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians against Israel’s genocide

A LabourList puff piece earlier this month gave Sharon Graham opportunity to lionise her achievements and attack supposed ‘factional’ opponents but did not ask her any questions about the above issues.

A union source told Skwawkbox:

Sharon’s boasting about standing up to Starmer, but keeps pouring in the cash.

SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – 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 as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:

Thanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!

If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.