Recently I wrote the following letter to the general secretary of my union Unite, Sharon Graham:
Dear Sharon,
I am a Unite retired member who, because of this Labour government, has lost my winter fuel allowance.
I am very grateful for your campaign to reinstate this payment. I’m disgusted that my Labour MP, Peter Lamb, a Unite member, voted along with nearly every Labour MP to take this payment away from pensioners who have contributed a lifetime of work and taxes to this country.
Pensioners face freezing or dying because of a Labour government that people believed was for working-class people.
What are the consequences for these Labour MPs’ cruel actions?
They keep warm at our expense. Workers’ taxes pay MPs’ energy bills.
Unite sponsored MPs should not be allowed to get away with their contempt for pensioners.
I ask you to, at the next Unite Executive Committee, put a motion that says all Unite-sponsored MPs who voted to take away the winter fuel allowance from millions of poor pensioners will be suspended from the union.
I note that Coventry councillors who were Unite members were suspended from Unite when they refused to support the striking bin workers and used scab labour to try and break the strike.
Labour MPs who are go against union policy should face the same disciplinary action.
Perhaps then, and only then, they might think twice before taking more anti-working class actions.
Please let me know what the EC decides in regard to my requested motion.
Robin Burnham, Crawley, Unite retired member
Robin was a Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate for Crawley at the 2024 general election, fighting for a working-class socialist alternative to Keir Starmer’s Labour. At the 2023 Unite rules conference, Socialist Party members supported a motion calling for Unite’s political fund to be opened up to allow the union to support candidates outside Labour who support the union’s policies. Unfortunately the motion fell. Less than two years on, and less than a year into Starmer’s Labour government, how many Unite members would agree that Unite members, and the working class as a whole, need political representatives prepared to fight on our side against the bosses?
