Rob Williams, Socialist Party national industrial organiser and former Visteon (ex-Fords) Unite convenor
Unite the Union stages biennial conferences for its industrial sectors, and retired members’ and Community sections from 18 November. It is the first time that a significant layer of activists have met together since the election of the Keir Starmer-led New Labour government, and just a few weeks after chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, that has set out grinding austerity for the next five years.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has been more prepared to challenge Starmer’s government than most other union leaders. But in this new period, it is essential there is a real debate within the union on how it sharpens its industrial and political programme to ready its members for the struggles ahead.
The week of conferences is also the last big event before the Unite electoral cycle begins in January, with elections for workplace reps, including shop stewards, and branch officers, then for regional and national industrial sector committees and regional committees. In 2026, there are elections for the Executive Council (EC) and general secretary.
Sharon was elected in 2021 after defeating the right-wing, bosses-backed candidate Gerard Coyne, and the candidate of the United Left group (UL), assistant general secretary Steve Turner. Turner had announced himself as the candidate who wanted Unite to seek partnership with a likely Starmer government. Yet Starmer’s leadership represented a clear shift back to a Labour Party for the capitalist elite, not the working class.
‘Partnership’
And that Starmer government is now in office. At the Trades Union Congress in September, Starmer peppered his speech to delegates with the need for “partnership” between the unions, his government and the employers. This was necessary because of the “difficult choices” his government will have to make as it adheres to Tory spending limits after a decade and a half of brutal austerity. This has now been confirmed by Reeves’s first Budget.
Many of the union leaders are only too happy to sign up to such a trilateral agreement. This is indicated by the approving sounds made in response to Starmer’s rail and public sector pay offers, and his Employment Rights Bill, welcomed as a ‘historic’ gain for workers.
But in reality, Starmer and Reeves have consciously sought to buy time, by giving what are actually minimal concessions. Reeves admitted that there was a cost to not settling the long-running pay disputes that Labour inherited from the Tories – the cost of continuing industrial action. This is the priceless legacy of the strike wave of the last few years, the highest level of sustained workers’ action for three decades. It has left an indelible imprint of the consciousness of workers, as well as the bosses and their political representatives.
Unite under Sharon Graham’s leadership has been in the forefront of the upturn in workers’ struggle. The union has built upon the fighting tradition developed under Len McCluskey. This industrial militancy will be even more necessary now, given the austerity intent of Starmer and Reeves.
Demands on Starmer
The Employment Rights Bill, heralded by most of the union leaders, in reality strengthens individual rights of workers more than collective. Indicative of this is that, despite commitments to repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 (MSLs) and Trade Union Act 2016, which enshrines the undemocratic 50% ballot turnout thresholds, the main tranche of Tory anti-union legislation will remain intact. This leaves Starmer in the position of Tony Blair in 1997 when, in his own words, he rejoiced in presiding over the most restrictive anti-union laws in the Western hemisphere.
And even they may not actually be repealed until as late as autumn 2026! Scandalously, this year’s pay ballots in the public sector took place under the 50% thresholds, undermining the possibility of national action in the NHS and local government. The unions, and Unite in particular, should demand that Starmer immediately repeals the MSLs and Trade Union Act, rather than wait for the Employment Rights Bill to progress through Parliament. There is precedent for such rapid progress of employer-friendly legislation in the past.
But Unite should go further in setting such demands, and others, into the form of amendments to the Bill, and present them to the union’s parliamentary group. It must also demand that the real-terms funding gap for local government, already wracked by Section 114 bankruptcy notices, that was confirmed by the Budget, is filled by the Labour government. Unite should have demanded that Tata Steel be nationalised by the government, after Tata was forced into talks following threatened action by Unite members in Port Talbot.
Political voice
It is welcome that Sharon has led opposition to the cut to the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, including organising protests and now launching a legal challenge through a judicial review. Unite also defeated Starmer on the issue at Labour Party conference, but he made it clear that this will be ignored, further exposing the utter powerlessness of the affiliated unions in Labour.
It begs the question: who will represent this programme in parliament in the face of Starmer’s pro-capitalist premiership? Can Unite rely on its parliamentary group, if it is limited to this Labour intake of MPs? We should insist that it includes Jeremy Corbyn and the seven suspended Labour MPs – six of them Unite members – who were ostracised by Starmer for voting against the refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap, and who then voted against cutting the winter fuel allowance.
This represents something closer to the workers’ voice needed by Unite members and the wider working class. And it will raise concretely the need to reassess Unite’s political strategy.
At the last Unite Rules Conference in 2023, despite her criticisms of Starmer and her attack on cutting Labour councillors, such as those in Coventry who attacked striking Unite bin drivers, Sharon Graham unfortunately used her authority to successfully argue against any change to the union’s relationship with Labour. Undoubtedly, the closeness to the general election and the desire to get rid of the hated Tories was a major factor in this.
But the general election showed that support for Starmer among working-class people was grudging, and the lack of enthusiasm can turn into anger and frustration, as it is already amongst a layer of workers. The far-right riots are a warning that if the unions don’t attempt to fill the political vacuum with fighting socialist organisation and policies, other sinister forces can try to turn workers’ heads.
Hypocrisy
Such an approach, exposing Starmer’s role, is essential for militant members attracted to Sharon’s general secretary campaign, in taking on the United Left. In Unite, the UL represents the trend within the trade union movement which seeks to cover up for Starmer. Unable to argue against the industrial record of the union since Sharon’s election, the UL is hypocritically seizing on her insufficient response to the Israeli regime’s murderous assault on Gaza and its seeming intent to threaten a wider Middle East war.
Unite should, along with the rest of the union movement, put itself at the head of the anti-war movement, as it should the fight against the far right. It should convene a national meeting of its reps in the defence, logistics and docks sectors to debate and discuss a workers’ response to the war, including the defence of any worker who refuses to carry out duties that aid the Israeli war machine. Such an act would pit Unite against Starmer’s shameless support of Netanyahu’s government and military.
Unite’s role as a militant union, challenging Starmer, and potentially giving a lead for a political alternative for workers, is at stake in the electoral cycle due to begin in the union.
Build a fighting left
In this, it is essential that a real fighting left is built in Unite. Socialist Party members have been to the fore in establishing the Unite Broad Left. It is still at a formative stage, but it has brought together those who campaigned for Sharon’s election and the implementation of her manifesto. But it must continue to discuss and set out an independent industrial and political programme that it fights for within the union, to oppose any retreats that would be threatened by a UL recovery, and to act as a lever on Sharon’s leadership.
Such a struggle has never been so important as in the period heralded by the defeat of the Tories and the government of Starmer’s New Labour Mark 2.
- Socialist Party public meeting: How can unions build an alternative to Starmer? 7pm Monday 18 November at South Wing 2, Community Base, 113 Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XG (10 minutes from conference venue)
