Rule change pushed by general secretary means members of Unite’s groundbreaking section for unemployed people and voluntary section can no longer sit on ‘highest committees’

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has been heavily criticised for her bizarre letter to all the union’s staff last month, attempting to undermine a number of criticisms that have been levelled at her and her management of the union. The letter was described by union insiders as ‘unhinged’ and a ‘rant’ – and it backfired heavily.

As Skwawkbox has already covered, Graham told recipients that the union under her will always prioritise jobs in the weapons industry above the fight to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Her letter also claimed that an unfavourable interim financial report had been faked wholesale and that the forger had gone to the extent of copying the font and layout of actual reports to fool members. The union did not respond to an enquiry whether it stood by the claim despite the screenshots of the report appearing to show that it was found on the union’s official ‘Sharepoint’ network. The letter also claimed the union’s financial value was ‘pushing up towards half a billion pounds’ – but insiders say that the value was already around half a billion when she took over two and a half years ago.

Graham also used the letter to attack the membership figures published by the union’s previous management – compared to which she has been accused of losing members – as ‘phony’. Yet insiders also say that the person responsible for compiling and reporting those figures to the management in those days was… Sharon Graham, then Unite’s head of organising.

And the letter also flags a major attack by the union’s management on Unite’s unique ‘Community’ section, the first attempt to bring in unemployed people, disabled people, voluntary and other unwaged workers into the union movement.

Unite Community, around 20,000 strong, has played a vital role in the union’s industrial actions, as members have often had the flexibility to be able to support striking workers by participating in pickets that many others could not get to. Unite Community members have also tended to be among the most politicised and radical – a tendency that puts them at odds with a general secretary who insists that Unite should not be ‘political’ and who has been accused of ever-increasing cosiness with ‘red Tory’ Keir Starmer.

And members have long feared that Ms Graham does not want the section as part of the ‘workplace only’ union she said she was going to create. She reportedly denied this during her election campaign and shortly after – but a section of her letter to organisers, staff and officers contained news of a major attack on the status of Unite Community within the union and the opportunity for its members to have a meaningful voice in Unite’s decisions.

Graham wrote:

Following the Rules Conference, only people who are elected representatives of workers from within a workplace(s) will be eligible to sit on our highest committees. This will ensure that decisions being taken are decisions that workplace representatives want the Union to take. This will be communicated in the coming weeks.

At a stroke, Unite Community members have been ruled out of standing for senior positions in Unite, depriving them – and the millions they represent – of a real say in Unite’s decisions and policies.

Sharon Graham seemed to be trying to put out fires through her bizarre and self-justifying letter. But she seems instead to have stoked them higher and lit new ones.

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