Sharon Graham has won re‑election as Unite General Secretary with 68,000 votes to Simon Dubbins’ 31,000 — a decisive defeat for the United Left (UL) machine that had dominated the union for years. Graham, once seen as an outsider, has again beaten the faction of senior officials and Stalinist‑lite loyalists who long controlled Unite’s structures and priorities.
Sharon Graham was the incumbent General Secretary, following her shock victory in 2021, while Simon Dubbins is a career senior official of the union, having headed up the union’s International Department since 2008.
The campaign was toxic, especially from the Dubbins camp, but the result confirms that Graham’s base — workplace reps, organisers, younger activists — is now the union’s driving force.
Factionalism blocked scrutiny
Sharon Grahanm has made powerful enemies within the previous United Left leadership by relentlessly pursuing an inquiry into the millions of pounds missing from the Unite Birmingham hotel project [Unite and ‘that’ hotel: what is going on? – Left-Horizons] and the murky ‘affiliated services’ contracts (mortgages. car loans, insurance, wills etc.) entered into under the previous leadership.
“Move on, nothing to see here” they say, or “Building projects always go over budget”. Not by £60 million they don’t! Police are involved.
The problem was that the previous control of the Unite EC by the ‘United Left’ faction meant that no-one could look too deeply into the hotel finances without risking removal from the UL slate, as the UL was ultimately controlled by the previous General Secretary, Len McCluskey. The Stalinist type discipline of the UL faction was used and abused to avoid scrutiny on this and other issues in the union.
Under the UL the focus of the union was elsewhere, on who got which highly paid posts, trips abroad, ‘power-broking’ in the Labour Party…whatever the focus was, it was not on the workplaces, and the workplace reps who keep the whole thing going. Because we, the reps, do it because believe in it, not because we seek power, privilege or money.
Rebuild our lay member structures – the only answer
Under the leadership of United Left the lay member structures of Unite have been going through a slow-motion collapse for years. Reps were not allowed to meet each other, except in the official committees enshrined in the Rulebook (in Unite termed the RISCs and the NISCs) and some of the RISCs were (and are) getting attendances of two or three people – in sectors of thousands. In the NHS we have whole hospitals where we have recognition, and members – but NO REPS. What a state of affairs!
The union now has a desperate shortage of lay member reps, and one third of members are sitting in moribund branches, while another third are in branches with a precarious existence, meeting intermittently, or else with all the branch officers being long-retired.
Without lay reps, the only people left to pick up the workplace cases are the fulltime officers, who are often running around dealing with simple workplace disciplinary issues. These cases usually are not particularly complex – disputed conversations, sickness absence, pay errors – but often there is no-one else to do them. Officers are left firefighting basic disciplinary cases instead of strategically building workplace strength, often burning out under impossible workloads.
Sharon’s solution is simple: organising basics. Sector‑wide “combines” where reps can meet, share experience, and rebuild industrial power. With a hostile EC no longer blocking her, there is finally space to repair the union’s grassroots.
By contrast, Dubbins, and the UL, behave as if this is still the 1980s and we literally have a queue of workers wanting to be reps. Probably the fact that most of them were last employed in an actual workplace in the 1980s explains it.
Sharon Graham at least recognises the problem, and wants to correct it, and in some places she has. There is more to be done, and now she is no longer blocked these problems may actually be acknowledged and dealt with. We in Health hope to see regional combines of health reps springing up, resourced to bring reps together to defend our members from the constant attack they have faced from the austerity governments, both Tory and Labour, and most recently from Wes Streeting.
The Labour Party
One myth deployed against Sharon Graham by Dubbins and the UL was that “Sharon ignores the Labour Party”. This is not true. She has been as active as she can be, given the structures bequeathed to her by the Collins Report – which Len McCluskey voted for, in defiance of both the Unite and the UL policy. The Collins Report effectively severed the organic links between union branches and Labour Party constituencies, leaving just a bureaucratic affiliation at regional level through the Regional TULO (Trade Union Liaison Organisation), controlled by full-time regional officers of the affiliated unions, and a national affiliation through the National TULO (composed of the General Secretaries of the affiliated unions, and which has no published minutes).
In that environment Sharon has done what she could: she organised the walk out of the Unite delegation from the Labour Party NPF when Keir Starmer wanted the unions to sign off a drastically watered down version of the ‘New Deal for Working People’ – without them even being allowed to read it! To their eternal shame, all the other General Secretaries, and their delegations, voted for this betrayal of Starmer’s so-called iron clad pledges – sight unseen. [A ‘New Deal for Workers’: how it was repeatedly diluted – Left-Horizons]
Later Sharon Graham and fellow Unite delegate, David Agbley, walked out of the Labour Party NEC – another unminuted meeting – when Keir Starmer passed his manifesto ‘by acclamation’ (whatever that means) because he knew Unite were going to vote against, again in protest at the further watering down of workers’ rights it contained. Sharon denounced it on the steps of the NEC meeting instead.
But Unite could do more with the Labour Party structures. There are still a few good MPs in the Labour Party and we could support them with donations and seconded staff, just like the lobbyists do for their favoured MPs and SPADs [The 700 freebies: how lobbyists and businesses courted Labour’s special advisers]. We could create a whole alternative policy platform based on our Policy Conference motions and campaign for it within the Labour Party structures – those that remain of course. Sharon sometimes veers into denouncing ‘the politicians’ in general, and many do deserve denunciation, but the union should support the alternative politicians – those who are NOT taking freebies, crawling to the ‘Labour Friends of Netanyahu’ and voting for austerity.
Sharon and her supporters do criticise McCluskey and the United Left for the time spent “meddling in the Labour Party”. But the problem was not the activity within the Labour Party itself, but how badly it was done! To take one example – reselection of MPs. During Corbyn’s leadership there was an opportunity for the members of the Labour Party in each constituency to vote on whether to retain or replace their current MP as the Labour Party representative in the area. Basic democracy, which would have spelled the crack of doom for the right-wing careerists who currently infest the PLP. The unions mysteriously failed to place this on the agenda of the Labour Party conference, but the small, and formerly insignificant affiliate, Labour International, did have a motion for something very similar, which they called ‘Open Selection’, on the agenda. [ Labour International is backing open selections for MPs – here’s why – LabourList]
But when it came to it, McCluskey told the Unite delegation to vote against. They were told “Jeremy does not want this”. That was the fateful mistake which allowed the right-wing MPs, now secure in their rotten borough seats, to unravel Corbyn’s leadership. Ironically, McCluskey’s advice in all this came from his trusted advisor, Andrew Murray, a leading member of …the Communist Party! At the other end of this conversation the other Stalinists around Corbyn played their own inept part in the Open Selection debacle. Unite could, and should, have done better. It was the Stalinist-influenced United Left that failed the test – and now accuse Sharon of being ineffective in the Labour Party!
We cannot avoid politics, and that means we cannot avoid doing the work in the Labour Party. Strikes can only get us so far: The Edwardian trade unionists who set up the Labour Party to overturn the Taff Vale decision knew that. [Taff Vale Rly Co v Amalgamated Society of Rly Servants – Wikipedia].
What will Unite do if a Reform government introduces unpaid work for benefit claimants, as is their policy? How else can we get that anti-union laws repealed? And politics makes itself felt even on less weighty matters – fully 80% of motions to Unite conference asked the union to use its influence in Labour to secure improvements in working class people’s lives – from public toilets in town centres, to decent pensions and a restoration of council housing. We have no option but to engage in politics, and the Labour Party is a ready-forged instrument to do so. But only if we, and the other unions, assert our rightful influence, and deal with the ignorant carpet baggers who have been allowed to take it over.
Climate
Another criticism of Sharon Graham from Dubbins and the United Left was to imply that she is a climate denier. And yet Dubbins was not saying much different to Sharon when he spoke on the record.
In an interview with Counterfire Dubbins stated:
“A just transition is not only achievable it’s an absolute necessity and must be a priority for Unite. Climate change is a reality. We have to tackle climate change as a matter of urgency, but it also has to be done in a manner that protects jobs and living standards and there is a real and justifiable anger that until now the transition has been happening without replacement jobs being created. All too often it feels like hollow words for Unite members, so any future plans have to start with the measures in place to create new jobs for people to move to.”
That is no different to Sharon’s position – that climate change is here, and it is serious, but that we as a union cannot allow plants to close and jobs to be lost on the excuse of climate change – in reality the pursuit of profit – without proper investment in the green technologies of the future, and the creation of thousands of high-pay, high-skill jobs in those sectors. Unfortunately, there is little sign of decrepit British capitalism making the necessary investments.
On that theme Dubbins claimed that Sharon has done nothing to prevent plant closures at Port Talbot, Grangemouth or Luton. His answer? “A new industrial strategy within 100 days of winning”. It’s not hard to work out what it would look like – state aid for struggling companies! Which is exactly what Unite called for under Sharon Graham’s leadership for Port Talbot and Grangemouth. Again, he was trying to make a distinction without a difference. Over the years Unite has many times called for state aid for failing companies, and sometimes it has been given. But…it does not work. The capitalist owners take the money and usually fail to invest it, and then declare bankruptcy a few years later. We should be calling for public ownership, or at the very least for equity stakes in return for ‘cash injections’ (free money) and bail outs. At Port Talbot it was Reform that called for state ownership, and then they nearly won the Caerphilly byelection!
Reform
Dubbins blamed Graham for members backing Reform, but as well as being a reflection of the massive disappointment with Starmer, this also stems from years of UL neglect of lay structures, leaving members disconnected from the union. The fiasco of inviting Reform’s Lincolnshire mayor to a Unite rally against the closure of the Lindsey oil refinery shows how deep the structural rot goes — and it wasn’t Sharon Graham’s doing.
Palestine
On Palestine, Graham was poorly advised in 2023, leading to avoidable controversy when motions on Gaza motions were repeatedly ruled out of order. None called for workplace closures or attacked defence workers. A simple condemnation of the IDF’s murderous attacks and a donation to Medical Aid for Palestinians would have defused the issue.
Summary
Sharon Graham is not perfect, but she is responsive and not bureaucratic; she is honest and hard-working; and she reflects the living and active part of Unite. Dubbins and his support reflect the old ways, where the Stalinists more or less created Unite’s policy, based on yesterday’s world of work. That world has gone forever. Now with a clear victory and a majority on the EC, hopefully Sharon Graham can rebuild Unite’s lay member structures so that they are fit for the new and challenging world of the 21st century.
2026 Unite GS Election result August 2026:
- Sharon Graham: 68,694 Elected
- Simon Dubbins: 31,130
- The total number of votes cast was 100,089
2021 Unite GS Election
- Sharon Graham: 46,696 Elected
- Steve Turner: 41,833
- Gerard Coyne: 35,334
- The total number of votes cast was 124,147
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