Unite General Secretary speaks at Trotskyist rally before TUC Conference.

 

Recent polls seem to suggest that Labour is beginning to surge quietly back in the polls as Boris finds himself coming unstuck over National Insurance and probably Council Tax increases that will hit the less well off hard. The so-called "Red Wall" which turned blue at the last election could well turn red again now that Brexit is over.

However Boris still has some accumulated credibility with the roll out of the vaccine programme and if he can spend the next three years turning things around for enough people there remains a chance the Tories will win the next General Election. In this he is likely to be helped by the far-left who though battered inside the Labour Pa\rty are far from down.

It's already known that at least three of the recently proscribed organisations Socialist Appeal (SA), Labour Against the Witch Hunt (LAW) and Labour In Exile (LIE) will be either demostrating outside the conferece hall or in the case of the latter two planning disruputions and other stunts to attract attention to their nasty little outfits. On their own these may only have a minor effect thouigh this will depend on the level of hard left delegates in attendance.

The biggest threat to the current leadership is the actions of those opposing the ratification of David Evans as the Party's General Secretary. The Unite National Executive has already indicated it will oppose and this bodes ill with the election of their new General Secretary Sharon Graham.

Many were prepared to give Graham the befit of the doubt following her surprise victory in the Unite elections but it seems that her connections with the far left was actually greater than realised.  Graham had been backed by the revolutionary left via the Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party (SWP)and the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL).

The Socialist Party (Militant) organise their trade unionists around a front organisation known as the National Shop Stewards Movement which also feeds into their miniscule electoral front with the RMT Union. Graham is due to speak along with a number of other far-left trade union leaders before TUC conference.

The Socialist Party muses that

Already, in the short time following Sharon's election victory, her strategy to get Unite 'battle-ready' has seen the right-wing press alter their views on her leadership. Initially, they, and New Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, clung to hopes that her election could strengthen the right politically. But her position of 'no blank cheques' for Labour is now seen by them as a fighting not a passive position.

The Economist predicts: "Under Ms Graham's leadership, strikes will probably become more common", and the viciously anti-union Daily Mail reported: "Labour distances itself from new Unite leader after it emerges she once vowed to break the law in fight for workers' rights".

Sharon made this declaration in her speech at the 2019 National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) Conference. On Sunday 12 September (see ad opposite), she is addressing the online NSSN Rally, that for the 12th successive year will lobby the TUC for the fighting programme that is needed for the trade unions.

If Labour is to continue to recover than the battle to contain the hard left has become even more important. Despite Grahams assurances that interfering in "politics" is less of a priority it seems that her postioning herself as a "compromise candidate between the hard left and the moderates in the Unite election was disingenuous to say the least.