Union that is still funding genocide-complicit Labour puts stop to support for anti-war campaign group
Sharon Graham’s Unite union has suspended its affiliation with the Stop the War (StW) campaign group, according to union insiders, because of StW’s campaign of protests outside BAE Systems sites that manufacture arms and components used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Last March, Graham sent an email to Unite organisers telling them – while also boasting of her support for Palestinians – that the union would always prioritise jobs in the arms industry over stopping the Gaza genocide:
It is important to highlight here that it is a core principle of Unite that as a trade union the ‘first claim’ on our priorities is always the protection and advancement of our members’ interests at work. It is very simple. Unite cannot and never will advocate or support any course of action which is counter to that principle. We are a trade union, not a political party or single-issue campaign group.
Sharon Graham, March 2024.
Anti-genocide campaigners in the union slammed her comments as an ‘extraordinary’ attack on activists trying to stop the slaughter. Despite this, three months later the union polled members about Gaza, including among the questions the option of taking a ‘very pro-Israel’ position.
While suspending support for StW, Graham’s Unite continues to provide huge funding to Keir Starmer’s Labour, which has colluded in Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians. In the eleven months from October 2023, when Israel began its genocide, to September 2024, Unite gave Labour some £1.7 million.
The StW decision is the latest in a string of appalling decisions and actions that union insiders allege that Graham has taken, including:
- banning Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banning and smearing films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placing an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- telling her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Graham’s supporters have prevented debate and votes on Gaza at meetings of the union’s elected executive. She has also been heavily criticised for anti-union tactics used against Unite staff on strike in a dispute over complaints of bullying by her husband Jack Clarke and other managers in the unit she set up for him to run and against Unite officers trying to organise and unionise. Unite’s and Graham’s lawyers also recently admitted that the union had destroyed recordings and other evidence against Clarke in earlier complaints, primarily by women.
Israel has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, overwhelmingly women and children, and used starvation as a weapon against more than a million others while destroying Gaza’s health and school systems, often using US- and UK-made weapons and systems. Almost two million people were forcibly displaced and Israel is formally on trial for genocide, with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
The regime of UK PM Keir Starmer continues to provide both logistical and material military support to the genocidal apartheid occupation. Starmer refuses to admit that Israel is committing genocide and remains silent on even its worst atrocities and its admitted mass murder of its own citizens on 7 October 2023.
Unite was contacted for comment but had not replied by the time of writing.
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Some suggest Ms G thinks workers do the work and don’t THINK – and about anything else?
And when they clock off they have no lives, no kids in school or college or university, no older relatives who need social care or are on NHS waiting lists etc etc.
SG in my view is pretty lumpen and her & the ‘Bourgeois Socialists’ behind her should be booted out of powerful positions.
History will record that SG stuck her head in the sand re Palestine.
Her head’s – metaphorically – in the sand re Palestine because physically it’s physically so far up Starmer’s arse that her total field of vision is his ever-enlarging prostate. Sharon Graham and Sir Keir Starmer: Two people whose prominence in the Labour Movement tells me that it doesn’t take itself very seriously.
Here’s some breaking news
https://news.sky.com/story/andrew-gwynne-sacked-as-health-minister-over-comments-posted-on-internal-whatsapp-group-13305272
The sum of this report boils down to a regurgitation of am allegation in which the alleged offensive words are not actually reported, just the interpretation of those making the allegations. Making it impossible for anyone to make a reasoned judgement as to the efficacy of those allegations.
Regardless of the accused making and alleged statement of apology* – doubtless done under pressure as with so many other cases – this is no different to the process in which people have been smeared on the basis of AS, transphobia, and other allegations. Or the oft repeated allegations amplified in the yellow media made by the Zionist Israeli State against Palestinians in regard to the events of October 7th 2023.
Maybe he is guilty, maybe he is not? However, this is certainly not due process. If these allegations have any legs, let the public know what the words used were to enable us to make a reasoned conclusion for ourselves,
*As per the process favoured by Rebecca Long-Bailey quoted here….
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-will-sign-up-to-all-of-boards-asks-in-antisemitism-fight/
“My advice to Labour Party members is that it is never OK to respond to allegations of racism by being defensive.
The only acceptable response to any accusation of racist prejudice is self-scrutiny, self-criticism and self-improvement.”
….which does not even pretend to recognise centuries of due process principles and standards.
The follow-on question here, is have the RSPCA been made aware that Billy boy has slammed another dead cat on the table?
Dave – …….Did you miss this – https://x.com/GwynneMP
Andrew Gwynne MP
@GwynneMP
I deeply regret my badly misjudged commments and apologise for any offense I’ve caused. I’ve served the Labour Party all my life and it was a huge honour to be appointed a minister by Keir Starmer. 1/2
6:17 pm · 8 Feb 2025
·
I entirely understand the decisions the PM and the party have taken and, while very sad to have been suspended, will support them in any way I can. 2/2
6:17 pm · 8 Feb 2025
·
Billy, did you miss this:
“Regardless of the accused making and alleged statement of apology* – doubtless done under pressure as with so many other cases – this is no different to the process in which people have been smeared on the basis of AS, transphobia, and other allegations. Or the oft repeated allegations amplified in the yellow media made by the Zionist Israeli State against Palestinians in regard to the events of October 7th 2023.
Maybe he is guilty, maybe he is not? However, this is certainly not due process. If these allegations have any legs, let the public know what the words used were to enable us to make a reasoned conclusion for ourselves,”
So do try and stick to the point rather than deliberately hijacking the thread with these dead cats.
Dave – You really do need to get over yourself.
Ah! I see today’s stock phrase to avoid dealing with the point is number three of three.
You really need to widen your repertoire of pathetic excuses, Billy. You’re beginning to sound like and resemble Frank Spencer.
Beat me to it.
Wonder what the result would’ve been had gwynne been a convicted nonce? 😙🎶
Sorry, I meant convicted smarmerite nonce.
I see there’s mention of another mp from the Manchester area.
If it isn’t RLB I doubt we’ll hear any more of it.
A party [Labour Party] spokesperson told the Mail on Sunday:
“We are investigating comments made in this WhatsApp group in line with the Labour Party’s rules and procedures. Swift action will be taken if individuals are found to have breached the high standards expected of them as Labour Party members.’
https://labourlist.org/2025/02/andrew-gwynne-health-minister-new-labour-appointed-sacked/
“We are investigating comments made in this WhatsApp group in line with the Labour Party’s rules and procedures. Swift action will be taken if individuals are found to have breached the high standards expected of them as Labour Party members.’
In other words, guilty on the basis of allegations. The same absence of due process standards which has been operating for so long under the right wing cabal running the LP which many of us have experienced first hand.
Billy – Thank you for proving my point for me, sucker.
Dave – Please feel free to carry on making a numpty of yourself. 🙄
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I see that the (alleged) Caribbean’s answer to Arnold Rimmer has come up with a new catchphrase (or at least a variant on an old used one of his).
I take it you are after a gold star from the stationery cupboard, Billy.
Dave – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/11/labour-suspends-12-members-who-joined-offensive-whatsapp-group
From that Guardian article:
“I know from talking to councillors some of them are fuming because they’re being associated with those vile posts. Just by their suspension it looks like they’ve been involved but they’ve never posted anything on that group,” they said.”
Yet they have been punished in the form of being suspended with no due process rights applied. Found automatically guilty without being given the opportunity to defend themselves.
That, presumably, is something you have no problem with then, Billy. Glad you’ve made that explicit.
And this kangaroo court internal LP procedure is, as example after example of similar lawfare highlighted on this site in article after article, demonstrates, is regularly inflicted on the rest of the citizenry.
Keep digging, sucker.
Dave – “And this kangaroo court internal LP procedure is, as example after example of similar lawfare highlighted on this site in article after article, demonstrates, is regularly inflicted on the rest of the citizenry.”
Really, do you have any examples❓
How many examples of the reverse of centuries of due process procedures, protocols and standards would you like, Billy?
Let us commence with all those LP members who were retrospectively expelled the other year for having once been involved in or associated with organised initiatives opposed to the witch hunts and similar after they had ceased association with those groups and before the decision was made by the LP NEC – with no wider democratic debate in the party – to proscribe those groups.
Perhaps you, Billy, could provide examples in which recognised due process has operated in such a way as to automatically issue a guilty verdict and punishment with no opportunity provided for a defence when rules or laws are changed and people who “breached” that rule or law prior to it becoming an offence are retrospectively found guilty of it?
Maybe you can furnish us with an example of someone being retrospectively prosecuted, with no right to a defence, for failing to wear a seat belt before the seat belt law came into force and after that law was enacted ? Or, similarly, prosecuted and punished for smoking in a prohibited place before that law was came into force, perhaps?
Or retrospectively prosecuted for doing thirty-five miles an hour in what was at the time a forty MPH zone, before it was changed to a thirty MPH zone?
Or we could, if you wish, consider all those LP members who were denied a vote in the leadership election as a result of arbitrary decisions taken in secret through the expediency of trawling social media accounts for anyone who had ever liked a particular environmental policy of someone else’s, or even the Foo fighters and so on?
Will you, Billy, be providing us all with an example in which, say, people who work for, let’s go with, Spear and Jackson being disciplined by their employer for buying tools from Bosch?
Not forgetting all those members – a significant number being from Jewish voice for Labour – who were suspended and called in to prove their innocence on trumped-up charges of anti-Semitism and other dubious charges (some of whom in the latter case I know personally) which is the exact reversal of normal disciplinary procedures even in large corporations. At least for those of us familiar and experienced – as well as qualified – in such matters.
Can we expect some examples from you, Billy, of UK organisations or institutions commencing discipline or legal proceedings on the basis of subjective based allegations in which the onus was on the accused to prove their innocence rather than the organisation or institution to prove their guilt?
On the other side of that coin there are all those members who submitted complaints of breaches of party rules by favoured members whose complaints were consistently lost in the system by those who were involved in the Panorama hit piece a few years back. Which in my case, to cite one example, included illegally (under GDPR – never mind Party Rules) recording members in a private meeting without their knowledge in order to instigate a malicious and unfounded complaint .
Which, like so many others, were never properly investigated.
Do you want any more, Billy? Or are you going to stop digging, sucker.
Dave – Do you you have any specific examples that you can detail?
Dave – Instead of hiding behind hyperbole could you give specific details of what has proved to be untrue?
Just to make matters interesting, let’s run a poll.
Which of Billy no mate’s three stock responses is going to appear?
A. You’re not as clever as you think you are?
B. Get over yourself?
C. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?
Meanwhile, to get the discussion back on track after Billy no mate’s pathetic dead cat attempt, in the USA:
https://theintercept.com/2025/02/06/betar-palestine-school-activists-target-deport-trump/
“President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” that “demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws” and calls on the Department of Justice to “protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” …..
…..Betar U.S., the American branch of an international organization founded by the early Zionist writer and settler colonialist Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1923, took to social media….
……Betar announced that it was compiling a list of critics of Israel for the Trump administration to deport and has since said it shared the list of the “names of hundreds of terror supporters.” In the days since Trump’s inauguration, the New York nonprofit has been ramping up its calls for deportation. It said it planned to meet with “elected officials” in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to provide the names of “terrorist jihadis in America.””
No process, just smear anyone who goes against The Official Narrative with allegations which are equated to a guilty verdict and commence straight to the punishment. Just like the old Stalinist show trials where people were made to stand up and admit to their “crimes”.
Is the penny dropping for you yet, Billy?
Dave – Thanks for taking the time to highlight my informative interjection above. Even if much of what you had to say unfortunately didn’t make much sense your efforts are still appreciated
Far from informative, Billy. Simply peddling a pile of shite, as usual.
As explained in Janet and John style for you here:
https://skwawkbox.org/2025/02/10/exclusive-gwynnes-listing-as-supporter-of-labour-friends-of-israel-removed/#comment-264355
Dave -Has anything of significance that was reported in Sky News’s initial report proved to be untrue?
Again, Billy, for the cognitively challenged. Yes.
The whole report failed to reveal to readers the significant context of a specific agenda being behind the allegations – which, as the Guardian article concedes, punished councillors who have never taken part in that whatsapp group in order to achieve the objectives of that agenda.
Omitting such information is, as any court will tell you, not “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Ready to stop digging yet, sucker?
Dave – Could you give specific details of what has proved to be untrue?