Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Unite General Secretary Election

Tell you what, have to give Beckett credit for making this thread considerably more lively than I would've expected. Also, genuinely spoke to someone today who said "I'm glad Beckett won", apparently based on having looked briefly at the news, seen a headline with his name, and jumped to some fairly ambitious conclusions without reading any further.
 
By coincidence I found my first Union membership card over the weekend. I joined the AUEW 47 years ago this month. Since I joined we have seen the reduction in the involvement of the grass roots rank and file in the running of the union. Sharon Graham appears to making the right sounds for bringing back some influence to the shop floor and I will be voting for her at the upcoming election. Workers Unite are also backing her campaign.
 
Last edited:
Sprocket. said:
By coincidence I found my first Union membership card over the weekend. I joined the AUEW 47 years ago this month. Since I joined we have seen the reduction in the involvement of the grass roots rank and file in the running of the union. Sharon Graham appears to making the right sounds for bringing back some influence to the shop floor and I will be voting for her at the upcoming election. Workers Unite are also backing her campaign.
Click to expand...

It was 30 years ago later this year that I joined the T&G as an apprentice Sprocket. I was a kid at the time and didn't get active for a few years but the comparison of then to now (and let's face it the 1990's was not exactly a high point for rank and file organisation) is stark. The union has moved further and further away - or been allowed to move further and further away by the erosion of a sedimented working class culture in industry - over that time.

I'll be voting for Sharon Graham as well, although I would like to hear more from her about the objective measures she would put in place to re-energise and divest some influence and power back to shop floor stewards. The Beckett campaign increasingly resembles an ill advised top down attempt to further turn the union in on itself and appears obsessively focused on the Labour Party. Turner's campaign feels low key and outdated and I note is heavily backed by the old guard.

But....... our Branch is likely to come out for Turner, with the SWP types going off and campaigning for Beckett. Graham needs to be aware that in low turn out elections winning the argument and pitching to members is refreshing but that winning stewards is essential. Both Turner and Beckett are focusing their entire pitch on that constituency. Not seeing as much from SG.
 
Guessing it must vary quite a bit from sector to sector as well? Like, as I understand it Turner's been in charge of manufacturing for a while, so you'd expect him to have a fairly strong support base there, whereas Graham being head of organising and leverage means she'd be mostly known in areas that have had a big campaign or dispute recently, I'd guess?
Fwiw, the convenor at Go North West just released a video endorsing Graham - dunno how much that endorsement's worth in terms of the wider membership, but seems like someone who knows his stuff:
 
Smokeandsteam said:
But....... our Branch is likely to come out for Turner, with the SWP types going off and campaigning for Beckett. Graham needs to be aware that in low turn out elections winning the argument and pitching to members is refreshing but that winning stewards is essential. Both Turner and Beckett are focusing their entire pitch on that constituency. Not seeing as much from SG.
Click to expand...
Swappies are supporting Graham I believe
 
hitmouse said:
Like, as I understand it Turner's been in charge of manufacturing for a while, so you'd expect him to have a fairly strong support base there, whereas Graham being head of organising and levera
Click to expand...

Yup. In the West Midlands manufacturing branches it’s a bit more complex as Beckett was the Regional Secretary here. But yeah, Turner is definitely doing well (including in some Branches Coyne might have expected support from)
 
What are the negative aspects and fears of a Beckett leadership? He has only come on my radar in the last 6 months and I was relatively impressed with some of his statements I've seen since then.
 
splonkydoo said:
What are the negative aspects and fears of a Beckett leadership? He has only come on my radar in the last 6 months and I was relatively impressed with some of his statements I've seen since then.
Click to expand...
I mean, the main reason why I think Graham is the best candidate is that she seems to have more of a focus on how to build Unite's strength in the workplace, whereas Beckett says a lot of stuff about broader political issues, some of it quite good, but doesn't seem to have as much of a strategy for building power and reversing the decline that others talk about above.
But in terms of specific negative aspects of Beckett:
1) he made a silly tweet, as discussed extensively above
2) seems to have been involved in a bit of dodginess involving money from miners' pensions ending up resting in his account
3) this is the AWL's assessment of him - feel free to treat with as much skepticism as you want, but I reckon the actual claims made about him in this paragraph should be possible to investigate and verify if anyone has the energy:
Howard Beckett is McCluskey’s favoured successor. He embodies many of the worst aspects of the McCluskey leadership: left-wing posturing and militant-sounding speeches as a front for influence-peddling, patronage, and back-room politicking. Beckett has now been tasked by McCluskey to shut down debate and challenges about the scandal of the failure to keep the union's Executive Council informed of the rocketing costs of the construction of its new conference centre in Birmingham. As head of the union’s legal department, he led Unite’s disgraceful response to an employment tribunal claim brought against it by a female officer who suffered sexist abuse.

Recently, Beckett has used his substantial social-media following to post about how Unite will fight militantly against “fire and rehire”, but has been oddly silent when called out about the fact that, in British Gas, the site of the most significant dispute against fire and rehire, Unite accepted British Gas’s new contracts, scabbed on the GMB’s strikes, and signed a sweetheart deal. Activists involved in the dispute report that many of Unite’s rank-and-file members wanted to reject the contracts, but were overridden by officers including Beckett himself.
Click to expand...
 
Cheers for that hitmouse. I signed up as a community member last year in the Irish region so a lot of this information is new to me. I was talking recently with a Unite acquaintance in the UK who has been organising binmen in a really good campaign, and he told me Graham is the one to go for - that she has her eye on the ball in terms of on the ground and rank and file led engagements. Previous to this I had thought Beckett was the best candidate, mostly from sloganeering which I agreed with. Being wedded to the fortunes of the Labour Party seems like a huge hindrance though, and he has little experience of on the ground organising. Sadly the community branch I am a member of gave the bid to Beckett though. This isn't a surprise though.... Unite Ireland are a bit shite and recently we're giving the signal to their members to cross a picket in an ongoing situation with a rival union.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
Not a bad summary of each candidate by the AWL to be fair. They are bang on that Beckett and Coyne are beyond the pale and that Turner and Graham both need to be clearer.
Click to expand...
Mm, it’s pretty shallow on Graham and Turner. Fair enough to mention Graham’s ‘apoliticalness’ but the mention of the lrc is rather laughable. They make Turner sound simply boring, which is probably because they have similar views on Islam.

I haven’t heard anything about two of the left candidates pulling out if coyne makes it on, I think they’ve made that up (not that it’s a terrible idea, one definitely should pull out)
 
andysays said:
I think Workers' Unite is essentially a group set up to support Graham's campaign for GS.

Happy to be corrected if it's a pre-existing group though.
Click to expand...
I might need to stand corrected on Workers Unite, I assumed it was a continuation of the old, well established AUEW Gazette, that became Amicus Gazette before they amalgamated into Unity with the TGWU.
They have always stood and campaigned for shop floor and members involvement in policy.
I used to attend the AUEW gazette meetings regularly in years past, but my union involvement as a rep has dwindled over the last decade.
 
An interesting aspect here:
morningstaronline.co.uk

Unfinished business over blacklisting

Far from being confined to corporations and the police, blacklisting of trade unionists in the construction industry was colluded in by the trade union movement itself. DAVE SMITH hopes that the full truth will finally come out
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline.co.uk

Again, without wanting to act as a Graham spambot or anything, I know that Graham's promising a new inquiry into union collusion with the blacklist within her first 100 days, I'm not aware of the other candidates having said anything about this potentially rather uncomfortable subject.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

TopCat
Unite Executive Council By-Election
Replies
5
Views
589
TopCat
TopCat
Elpenor
Rewatching the 1997 General Election (bbc iplayer) and memories of it
2 3 4 5
Replies
132
Views
5K
isvicthere?
isvicthere?
editor
  • Poll
Do you want a separate sub forum for the General Election 2024?
2 3
Replies
83
Views
4K
PR1Berske
PR1Berske
Eric Jarvis
New group to challenge Steve Reed at general election
Replies
20
Views
1K
Eric Jarvis
Eric Jarvis
beesonthewhatnow
UK general election - the U75 poll
5 6 7 8 9
Replies
256
Views
11K
tim
tim
Back
Top Bottom