n By Hajera Blagg
As Unite FDA national officer Bev Clarkson retires after over 30 years of tirelessly fighting for Unite members, Landworker looks back on her remarkable career.
For all her tremendous achievements, her involvement in trade union work had an unlikely start.
Like many young women, Bev, then 19, was more concerned with going out with her friends than being involved in the union.
“My uncle worked at Associated Weavers which made carpets, and he got me a job. It was a closed shop, so you had to join the union.”
To this day, the smell of new carpet transports Bev to her time at the factory, where the work was seasonal. This arrangement suited a teenager like her just fine. The busy periods helped fund her nights out, and the ‘low season’, when she worked only a few days a week, afforded her time to enjoy herself with friends.
“One day, our shop steward, a man – they were always men – called a mass meeting,” Bev recounted. “He said, ‘Great news, overtime is back, and we’ve secured an agreement – four hours minimum overtime on weekdays, and six hours minimum on Saturdays. Everyone in favour, put your hand up.’ And then he just walked away.”
Bev piped up and said he’d not asked who wasn’t in favour.
“He looked at me like I’d grown two heads. I told him, ‘What if I wanted to go out on a Friday? I don’t want to be working six hours the next morning. What if I only wanted to work one or two hours overtime? And what about women with children? They can’t work that many hours, so you’re excluding women’.”
Dumbfounded, the convenor, George, told Bev he’d never thought of it that way.
“You’re right,” he said.
Thanks to Bev’s intervention, a more flexible overtime policy was agreed. Soon after, George urged Bev to stand for shop steward elections. Although hesitant, Bev eventually stood – and won.
And so began Bev’s decades-long dedication to union work. Interested in becoming further involved, Bev recalls attending her first regional committee meeting.
“I put myself forward for the women’s seat. Everyone voted for another woman. The winner later came to me, smirking, and said, ‘Oh never mind, you’ll get it one day’.
I found out later she worked in an unrecognised workplace with only four members, and I was in a fully recognised workplace with 4,000 members. I started to see another side of the union – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
Unfazed, Bev was determined to find a place for herself – and to take on the ‘jobs for the boys and girls’ culture. She put herself forward for other positions unsuccessfully, after which she became a tutor.
“This is when our now general secretary Sharon Graham asked me to help with an organising campaign at a textiles factory.”
The campaign was a major success, and it also led to the first-ever CAC recognition case, which the union won.
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Don’t be afraid to challenge people. Don’t let anybody put you off – be confident in yourself and never, ever give up
Bev Clarkson, Unite national officer
Up until then, Bev’s union work was voluntary. Also at this time, the textiles industry went into rapid decline. Redundancies were rife. Bev saw the writing on the wall and decided to seek work in the union full-time.
“I applied for a regional officer position, unsuccessfully, and then I got in the second time round. I was the only female officer in the region.
“One officer told me, ‘You only got it because you’re a woman,’” Bev recalled. “That really stuck with me. I always felt I had to be better than the men just to prove myself.”
Bev served as regional officer and later regional coordinating officer for many years. In 2017, she became national officer for food, drink and agriculture.
Recalling her first impressions of the sector, she said, “Agriculture is mostly unorganised. You’ve got people working in silos. And you’ve got a huge migrant
25 uniteLANDWORKER Spring 2026
workforce, whose voices aren’t heard; who don’t trust unions. We had to work to gain their trust.”
Bev later became involved in Unite’s international work with global unions EFFAT and the IUF.
“It became clear why we needed links with international unions – supply chains in the industry span borders.”
In 2022, Bev – to her surprise – was elected IUF president for agriculture, unopposed. It was in this role that Bev had her proudest moment – she helped successfully secure new policy guidelines for the UN’s Decent Work Agenda for the agri-food sector.
Securing these guidelines had been tried before but ended in failure. The negotiations that Bev led were especially fraught, with the week-long meeting lasting 10 hours or more every day, until Friday at midnight, when negotiators finally reached consensus in the eleventh hour.
“It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
It was a difficult decision for Bev to retire. But, she says, it’s time to pass the baton to others, to fight future battles – for legislation to protect migrant workers; for the return of the agricultural wages board in England; and for the government to take on supermarket profiteering.
“It’s appalling seeing food sector workers using food banks,” she said. “Then you see shareholders at the top making millions.”
Bev hopes to be remembered most of all for her work in amplifying the voices of the voiceless. She’s given many migrant workers and women in the sector the confidence to take up leadership roles in Unite and global unions.
Bev’s desire to mentor and encourage may in no small part stem from the many times she herself was told she wasn’t good enough or didn’t belong. She urges new members wanting to become involved to ignore the naysayers.
“Don’t be afraid to challenge people,” she said. “Don’t let anybody put you off – be confident in yourself and never, ever give up.”
• Landworker wishes Bev and her family all the best for a happy retirement. Ed
Mark Thomas
Alamy
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