working class
Exclusive: Graham to be subpoena’d to testify in Ogle tribunal if she declines to appear
Latest news from today’s session of discrimination case brought by Irish trade unionist against Unite and Sharon Graham as witnesses again ‘rattle’ union barrister – and former GS Len McCluskey will be called again
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham will be legally summonsed to appear in Dublin at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) discrimination case brought by Irish trade unionist Brendan Ogle against Graham and Unite, if she does not accept an invitation from Ogle’s lawyers. The news was confirmed after an attempt by Unite’s highly-paid barrister Mark Harty, to claim that Graham was not relevant to the case because she is the UK general secretary, was rejected by Adjudicator Elizabeth Spelman after Ogle’s lawyers pointed out that Ireland is a Unite region and Graham has overall responsibility, as well as allegedly telling Irish officials to inform Ogle that there was no place for him.
Ogle is claiming that Unite discriminated against him by sidelining him on his return from cancer treatment – and that he was told that Graham ‘recognises loyalty’ from those who supported her in Unite’s 2021 general secretary election. Ogle, like many Irish figures and branches, supported Graham’s rival, Howard Beckett.
The question of whether a subpoena would be issued to compel Graham to attend was left open at the end of the last three-day session of the case. Harty tried to claim Graham was not relevant to the case and may not be ‘amenable’ to subpoena, as if a legal summons is a matter of whether one feels like being summoned. Graham and her alleged words about getting rid of Ogle have featured prominently in the case so far.
In other news from the tribunal, Irish Unite stalwart James ‘Junior’ Coss gave evidence corroborating Ogle’s account of sitting through the creation of a whiteboard chart about how the union would be organised after his removal, to the evident ire of Harty, whom attendees described as becoming extremely aggressive.
John Douglas, former general secretary of Irish retail union Mandate, also gave evidence in support of Ogle’s case, to a similar reaction from Harty – whose approach in the preceding session in February led to several ‘sidebars’ with Spelman and Ogle’s outraged barrister Mary-Paula Guinness.
Tomorrow’s session of the hearing was postponed after Unite’s lawyers called pro-Graham union employee Therese Maloney in an attempt to rebut former general secretary Len McCluskey’s testimony that he had assured Ogle his job would be kept open. Adjudicator Spelman ruled that McCluskey must be on hand for re-examination before Maloney can testify.
Sharon Graham has previously cancelled appearances in the Republic, avoiding members’ anger and scrutiny over the union’s ‘disgraceful’ treatment of Brendan Ogle. The situation caused such outrage in Ireland that union members picketed Graham’s long-delayed visit to Dublin, Unite’s Community section condemned it as ‘disgusting’ and a whole sector branch threatened to disaffiliate.
Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in a defamation lawsuit brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
She has also been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told 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
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive earlier this month.
Failure to obey a subpoena in employment cases is a prosecutable criminal offence under Ireland’s ‘Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2018‘.
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Starmer’s guest Herzog signs shells to fire on Gaza
Genocide-mongering Israeli president warmly welcomed and presented with gifts by right-wing Starmer and Labour Friends of Apartheid
Israeli president Isaac Herzog has been photographed signing shells to be fired upon Gazan civilians. Herzog, like other Israeli government figures, has said that there are no innocents being killed in Israel’s wanton slaughter of Palestinian civilians:
It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.
So closely identified is Herzog with Israel’s war crimes that his comments were cited byexpert Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, as an example of the Israeli regime’s expression of intent to commit that and other war crimes.
According to Euromed Monitor, Israel has so far killed 30,000 people in Gaza, well over half of them women and children. Approaching 60,000 more have been injured, many of them severely.
As Declassified‘s John McEvoy has pointed out, Herzog recently received a fawning welcome from ‘Labour’ ‘leader’ Keir Starmer – who left him a signed note in a copy of a book presented to him by Steve McCabe, the parliamentary chair of the so-called ‘Labour Friends of Israel’ (LFI).
Starmer and LFI are no friends of working-class people – but they can’t get enough of those eager for war crimes against the Palestinians.
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Webbe says Hunt’s measures fatten the rich at poor’s expense – and Labour little better
Independent MP slams latest damaging Tory budget measures and assault on poor, sick and disabled
Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe has accused the Tory government of using Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement to fatten business at the expense of the poor, of ‘snatching the assessment of illness out of the hands of doctors’ to punish the long-term sick and of doing the exact opposite of what the UK economy needs – and says that Keir Starmer’s Labour is little better in enthusiastically promoting the discredited austerity narrative.
In a statement issued today, Ms Webbe said:
Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement boasted of giving corporations the biggest tax handout in modern British political history, doling out billions to companies – many of whom are already making obscene profits in a cost of greed emergency of soaring bills and food costs.
And he is doing this on the backs of the poor, sick and disabled, with horrendous measures to whip those who are unfit to work into taking jobs their medical experts have said they cannot do – and to do it they will snatch the assessment of illness out of the hands of doctors and have it decided by the government’s agents instead.
The past decade has seen a steep rise in poverty, with fourteen million people below the poverty line, including well over four million children. In Leicester East, four in every ten children were already living in absolute poverty – now the Chancellor says if people do not submit to his new regime to get them back into work, he will cut them off completely from support after six months. The effect of this on my constituents and the poor and sick across the country will be horrific.
This country, since 2010, has seen an appalling rise in the misery imposed on those who were already struggling to get by. More than four in ten disability benefit claimants have attempted suicide under the government’s brutal regime. Suicide has become the leading cause of death in men under fifty. Poor mental health abounds, yet the government has today shown it remains determined to punish and persecute those who cannot work – and indeed that it is determined to deny the reality of life in this country for so many.
In my constituency of Leicester East, we have seen endemic exploitation and poverty wages in our garment industry. I told the Chancellor in response to his Autumn Statement that the unionised manufacturing base of Leicester East has long been diminished – not replaced by technology, innovation and good modern jobs with decent pay, but by fast fashion, sweatshops and unscrupulous employers paying illegally-low wages. All this has been exploited by brands and retailers who are in a race to the bottom for ever-increasing profits while their supply chains fail to pay the minimum wage.
I asked him what action the government will take to regulate and ensure that brands and retailers are held to account for the sustainable outcomes of their products in their supply chains and wage justice for the people that make their goods, and to tackle those British brands and retailers who threaten to seek cheaper labour overseas so they can avoid paying the new minimum wage that the he had just announced. There was no meaningful response.
The government is using tweaks to the minimum wage – which it misnames the living wage – as cover for its handouts to business, but its increases are still very far below the level at which a person working one job could live on. The government claims work is the way out of poverty, but millions who are working are among the poorest.
Mr Hunt claims the government is going for growth, when in fact they are doing the exact opposite of what our economy needs – and hurting millions to do it. Economists recognise that the best way to boost economic growth is to give more money to the poor, because they have to spend it. But yet again the Conservatives are giving more to the rich and to corporations who will put much of it into offshore bank accounts where it does no good. As it is, despite his claims of growth he has had to acknowledge that the Office for Budget Responsibility is downgrading growth forecasts for the next three years.
And it has to be said that the Labour party is largely in agreement with the government it is supposed to oppose. This country needs politicians with the courage to speak the truth that the punishment of the poor to enrich the wealthy is a political choice and not a necessity or even productive. Sadly such politicians are at the moment in very short supply at the moment.
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