Unite insiders accuse management of weaponising harassment complaint – made against Graham ally

Suspended Scottish secretary is close ally of general secretary – but ReUnite says her camp is trying to blame predecessor

Some days after Skwawkbox first broke the news, the ‘mainstream’ media has caught onto the fact that Unite’s Scottish regional secretary – a close ally of general secretary Sharon Graham – had been suspended after complaints of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ toward women.

But the way in which ‘sources’ within the union have framed the issue has infuriated insiders – and one group has gone public with its condemnation of what they say is an attempt by the union’s current regime to weaponise the allegations against the former management, even though the alleged culprit is, as the ‘msm’ reports admit, a close ally of Graham and senior insiders have told Skwawkbox that her advisers were warned about his record before his appointment as Scottish secretary. an allegation that the union has denied through lawyers.

A statement, titled “Harrassment accusations: The duty of a responsible union”, by a left group called ‘ReUnite the Union’ accuses Graham’s team of withholding the news of the suspension until it broke in the press and then ‘weaponising’ it by claiming it concerns ‘historic’ accusations – and of intimidating women. In full, it reads:

Harassment accusations: The duty of a responsible union

Today’s report In the Daily Record confirms that a senior figure in our union in ScoUand has
been suspended pending an investigation into misconduct. It is unacceptable that this issue
had to be confirmed through the press following a week-long silence from senior
management, leaving a damaging internal vacuum in Scotland.

It is also unacceptable that an article of the kind in the Dally Record is used to immediately
politicise the issue without any mention of the support being offered to the person who has
come forward with the complaint.

Our union has a serious duty of care and a responsibility towards any members of staff or
lay rep who comes forward with such an accusation, just as It has a duty to see that due
process 1s followed concerning the person facing misconduct allegations.

Politicisation of accusations must end

The mishandling and even weaponisation of sexual harassment accusations by Sharon
Graham and her senior team have toxified our union. This makes our union a more
dangerous place for women to work. It must end.

Last year. staff in our Holborn headquarters were balloted for strike action following
completely fictional allegations which were used to smear researchers who dared to speak
out against “toxic and bullying culture” of Jack Clarke, their manager and Sharon Graham’s
husband.

More recently, members of the Executive Council have made serious complaints against
Chris Stiles, Sharon Graham’s self-styled enforcer, about the intimidation of women reps.

These complaints have been dismissed and no action has yet been taken. This is the same
Chns Stiles who attempted to intimidate the staff picket line outside Holborn with banners
about the (then fictional) harassment of women staff.

Now the Daily Record article suggests the accusation made in Scotland is ‘historic.’ This
inevitably poses the question about whether Sharon Graham knew of the accusation before
making this appointment.

The ugly truth which emerges from this patten of instances is that serious accusations about
women are only considered against one question: Is the person in question loyal to Sharon
Graham or not?

It is time to end this toxic culture

The Sunday Mail was one of the first, after Skwawkbox, to cover the suspension. An unnamed ‘Unite source’ gave the paper a comment clearly insinuating that the complaint against Thomson – in which police are involved according to insiders – is some kind of factional attack against Graham, and apparently trying to extend the claim to cover the complaints against Clarke too, then immediately backpedalling:

A second source told the Sunday Mail: “There is a bitter split in the union between those loyal to the previous boss Len McCluskey and those who back current general secretary Sharon Graham.

“That has manifested itself in various allegations of bullying and harassment.

“However that is not to say this has anything to do with that and all allegations against anyone, no matter how senior, need to be treated with the same level of seriousness.”

Before Sharon Graham became Unite’s general secretary, her husband Jack Clarke was the subject of complaints from female members of staff in his previous role with the union. In December last year, the union admitted that evidence gathered by complainants against him, including recordings and transcriptions, had been destroyed.

After Graham became general secretary, Clarke was promoted – without the usual union procedures – to run the newly-created ‘Bargaining and Disputes Support Unit’ (BDSU), despite having been on a final warning after complaints of bullying and threats, and was subsequently at the centre of complaints from staff about his and his management team’s conduct, which led to a full strike.

Striking staff accused Graham and her allies of ‘strike-busting’ behaviour to try to undermine the collective action against her husband, as did the union’s national industrial sector committee (NISC) for the print and graphics sector. The general secretary of the Community union made similar accusations against Graham relating to attacks on attempts by Unite’s officers’ group to organise collectively. Nine out of ten staff across Unite’s Holborn HQ subsequently voted in favour of industrial action.

Three out of five women working in BDSU quit, with union sources saying they had complained of bullying and abuse – allegations denied by Clarke through Unite’s lawyers, who further claimed that the destroyed evidence wasn’t related to the earlier women’s complaints of abusive language but were in fact recordings of Clarke’s “extreme language and rudeness in relation to [then-]senior figures of the union”, a claim that evidence seen by Skwawkbox shows not to be true.

When given the opportunity in 2022, two years earlier, the union had failed to deny that the destroyed transcripts and recordings had shown bullying by Clarke.

Skwawkbox put the ReUnite accusations to the union:

Statement attached which you’ll no doubt already have seen. Does the union have any comment? Was Sharon Graham aware of the allegations before he was appointed? She was allegedly warned by EC members.

Why does a union source mention the supposed in-fighting as if Thomson’s alleged misconduct has something to do with it – then in the same statement backpedal and say it’s probably not connected? ReUnite’s ‘weaponisation’ allegation looks substantial in that context.

As seems to have become routine for Skwawkbox’s enquiries, the union responded via lawyers. The lawyers denied that Graham was aware of Thomson’s alleged record, spoke darkly of defamation, claimed that “no stone will be left unturned” to find out the truth and linked this determination to her ‘investigation’ of claimed corruption surrounding the union’s Birmingham hotel and conference centre.

In the more than four years since she took Unite’s top job, Graham has repeatedly alluded to corruption and has spent what must be considerable sums of union funds on lawyer-led investigations, but last month was still posting to her social media only that there “may have been” wrongdoing.

Her predecessor Len McCluskey responded publicly and furiously last month to what he called the “61 pages of smears and innuendo” in Graham’s “interim report”,

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