COMMENT Labour Party
BY LEN McCLUSKEY, UNITE GENERAL SECRETARY
UNITY NOW MORE THAN EVER
Labour: It’s time to commit to dignified democracy
Just a few weeks ago Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley made a confession to MPs at a business select committee hearing – a grilling he only had to face because of Unite’s relentless campaigning at his Shirebrook establishment. He told the MPs, “I’m not Father Christmas”.
Several thousand of his workers would agree, including the hundreds who have had to leave work in an ambulance; the woman who went into labour in one of his toilets because she was scared to take time off; and the thousands denied the legal minimum wage.
Yes, Mike Ashley you’re right, you’re no Father Christmas – you’re the Grinch who steals people’s wages, dignity and lives.
Shirebrook tells another story too. Denis Skinner reminded us that when there was a colliery on the site where Sports Direct’s operation now sits, there were hundreds of foreign-born miners among those digging the coal. Yet there was no tension – because they were all getting the rate for the job, all covered by the same agreement, all in the same union, the dignity of everyone’s labour was upheld.
It would be an over-simplification to say that the anti-migrant hysteria whipped up by the right could simply be tackled by better conditions at work but stronger trade unionism is not just good for people
at work, it is a gain for society as a whole. After the EU referendum, the Tory government was plunged into a deep crisis – rudderless, blamed for dispatching the country, via an unprepared referendum, into a pit of uncertainty.
What a chance for Labour to step forward and speak for the country, to offer itself as the strong opposition and government-in- waiting that millions hunger for.
Instead we have seen an attack launched against the Party’s elected leader which has deprived the country of parliamentary opposition and let the Conservatives off scot-free in their moment of turmoil.
This was the responsibility of people who had never accepted Jeremy Corbyn’s victory last year.
Of course it has been a bumpy ride since. Mistakes have been made. But most of the attacks on Jeremy are deeply unfair, such as over the EU referendum where his position of remain-and-reform was very close to the centre of gravity of Labour voters, two-thirds of whom backed him.
But whatever doubts there may have been, surely the whole movement could agree that here was an opportunity after the referendum. To speak for Britain. To provide real opposition to a broken government.
10 uniteWORKS Summer 2016
What followed was squalid – an attempted political lynching, designed to bully and bludgeon Jeremy Corbyn, a deeply decent man, out of the job he was elected to do.
I know some of those who quit did so with a heavy heart, and some with a measure of dignity. But the instigators of this will be remembered forever for putting their selfish personal interests first when the times called for solidarity and statesmanship.
On the other hand, I have nothing but praise for those people who stayed in the shadow cabinet and those who stepped forward to fill the gaps to make sure that there was something like a functioning Labour frontbench able to hold the Tories to account.
Unite made its views clear from the start. We stood by Jeremy Corbyn and his anti- austerity message. How could we not? Not only was he the democratically-elected leader of the party with an unprecedented mandate, here was a man who had always stood by us.
What sort of people would we be, had we joined in the witch-hunt? I could not have looked myself in the mirror, had this union done anything other than stand by Jeremy.
But I also recognise the traditional role
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