The rightwing of the British Labour Party and their Blairite allies having been soundly thrashed in two leadership contest by the membership have retreated into the constituency's they still control and the party machine. Having realised the policies they advocate are as dead as a dodo as far as the overwhelming majority of the membership are concerned, they've reverted to type in the hope they can smear and sneer their way to controlling the party. No where is this better demonstrated than the part they have played in the Unite leadership contest.
There horse in the race is Gerald Coyne, a Unite regional secretary in the West Midlands, his front man is deputy leader of the LP Tom Watson and between the two of them with a little help from Sion Simon, Labour's Blairite candidate in the West Midlands mayoral election, they've made a complete hash of Coyne's Campaign. As Phil writes in the piece below all Coyne's campaign has done is moan about Labour, taking potshots at Jeremy Corbyn, and busily morphing into the very caricature his pitch attacked when he accused Len McCluskey of meddling in the Labour Party to the detriment of Unite members.
After rumours circulated the Coyne campaign had breeched the data protection laws a 44 page report was drawn up by Howard Beckett Unite's assistant general secretary for legal affairs who had this to say:
I began this inquiry after receiving complaints on Jan 31 that “the Gerard Coyne campaign was using the Labour West Midlands Mayoral Campaign, in which Sion Simon MEP is the candidate, to contact Labour Party members to persuade them to support Mr Coyne in the Unite General Secretary election”.
The report went on that it appeared that “the Labour Party had shared membership data for Labour Party members who also members of Unite with one candidate in the Unite General Secretary election in possible breach of data protection legislation”.
Volunteers were given “the names of people to call on excel spreadsheet” on Jan 10 and a request that they ask if callers want to help Mr Simon or “hear more about the Coyne campaign”.
Affidavits in the report suggest the calls continued through January. One man who was contacted on Jan 26 told how he was contacted by “Rachel from the Labour party” who then was asked him about Mr Coyne.Since then Coyne has all but admitted his campaign breeched the data protection act when speaking to the BBC's Jon Pienaar, on his Pienaar's Politics show: voice-001_sd.m4a
Following this Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary also admitted Simon’s phone bank was used for the calls and said he had “required that better management is to be put in place immediately.” McNicol who has lost the confidence of many party members is known by the derogatory term 'the witch finder general' by some party members having wrongly bared them from voting in the LP leadership contests.
What I find so pitiful about all this, is Coyne, Watson, and Simon have been touring the TV and Radio studios implying Jeremy Corbyn's leadership is in chaos. Me thinks these folk would be wise to look closer to home as they have a less than distinguished record of running chaotic and failed campaigns over the last two years.
M.H.
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Update.
A Unite spokesman said:
Emphatically clear: Coyne is on his own and the consequences of his actions are his to bear and not the union’s. The spokesman went on:
It couldn’t be any clearer that as far as Unite is concerned, Coyne’s actions were ‘rogue’ and he’s on his own with their consequences.This update first appeared on the ever excellent Skwawkbox.
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Gerard Coyne: Another Reason to Vote Len McCluskey by Phil Burton-Cartledge.
Got nothing against Gerard Coyne, but in 20-plus years associating with the labour movement I have never seen a candidate run such a desperate and rubbish General Secretary election campaign. Kicking off his Unite leadership bid, Gerard criticised Len McCluskey for spending more time talking about and fiddling with the Labour Party than looking after the welfare of the members. And since then, all his campaign has done is moan about Labour, taking potshots at Jeremy Corbyn, and busily morphing into the very caricature his pitch attacked. Meanwhile, Len has run a sensible Unite-focused campaign talking about workplace rights, pensions, attacks by bosses, members’ interests. You know, speaking to the people who pay his salary.
It’s not just this that irritates about Gerard’s challenge. His campaign has effectively gone out of its way to troll Unite’s activist base. Let’s just add the interventions up. Pitches in the Daily Express and The Sun (the latter coming with the endorsement of anti-union “hardman”, Trevor Kavanagh), the backing of Richard Littlejohn, daft (and ill-timed) student-style stunts, an attack on the union’s record with women workers, accusing it of bullying and intimidation(!) without a shred of evidence, praise for Stoke’s Indy/Tory/Kipper council, blaming Len for Labour losing Copeland, driving campaign placards around in the middle of nowhere, and the pièce de résistance, a leading member of the English Defence League campaigning on his behalf without comment from Gerard himself.
Not only is this a bad campaign, it’s a bloody stupid campaign. Yet there is method behind the madness. A campaign document leaked to the Indy at the fag end of last year pointed out that deposing Len and getting Gerard in would depend on boosting the turnout. A not unreasonable supposition. And, typical of those in and around Westminster who think workers are thick and solidly behind UKIP, boosting the numbers voting means a race-to-the-bottom anti-Labour campaign. Hence the Express. Hence the love for rightwing local authorities. Hence the attacks on Unite’s relationship to Labour. Should we be surprised then that the likes of Littlejohn and the EDL are on board?
Even worse is this campaign is being run and directed by Labour people, and people who, until recently, had a fearsome reputation for fixing and the dark arts. What in fact their strategy underlines is the pickle the trade union and Labour right are in. In the Labour Party, union influence was used to stymie and then reverse the gains made by left during the 1980s. Today, unions retain significant clout but are no longer at the beck and call of the Labour right. The latter has retreated almost entirely into the apparatus, the cadres of councillors, and the PLP. It means their capacity to intervene in the big unions is limited as most lay activists and officialdom are well to their left, even if they’re not Corbyn supporters. And if they could they’ve shown they haven’t a clue how to relate to trade unionists as workers anyway. Their political collapse is ultimately a consequence of their organisational collapse.
Thankfully, there is something Unite members can do about this. There are a number of positive reasons to vote for Len. His industrial record, and how enemies and opponents of the labour movement loath him immediately spring to mind. But Gerard Coyne’s campaign have supplied another. A vote for Len McCluskey is a vote against cynical, anti-Labour politics and sends a message that this is not acceptable in our movement. My ballot paper is filled out and ready for posting. I hope yours is too.
Phil blogs here.
More on this from Unite's Scottish Secretary Pat Rafferty.
Following Gerard Coyne's admission on live radio that he has been using Labour Party data - in clear contravention of the Data Protection Act (DPA). Unite's Scottish Secretary, Pat Rafferty, issued the following statement:
If all you have to offer is smears and slurs, then you have nothing to offer working people.Gerard Coyne doesn’t seem to get Unite in Scotland. To be fair, it is reciprocated. Every time he sets foot in our country he has a knack of saying the wrong thing – and not usually to our members, preferring the company of sections of the hostile media to actually meeting the men and women of Unite.Astonishingly, his latest journey across the border has seen him trash the union he seeks to lead. He peddles slurs, deliberately and methodically, without a care for the effect this has on the morale of members and those he seeks to lead on the workplace frontline, day in, day out fighting for fairness.Let’s be clear. At Ineos, Unite’s members had no other option but to take on an abusive employer who sought to drive down their wages and destroy their pensions. I was more than proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our members in this fight, along with Len McCluskey. Today our union at Ineos is strong, committed to getting the best deal for this workforce and for Scotland’s foremost industrial site.Instead of attacking our reps and members, Gerard Coyne should be applauding them for never laying down their principles and standing together in solidarity. Or perhaps this is something novel to him? And he is wrong again about Unite’s defence members. I know because I led the push at Scottish Labour for the party policy to mirror that developed with and backed by Unite’s defence members.That policy says quite clearly that Unite’s foremost priority is the protection of our defence members’ jobs and communities, and that unless and until there is a viable alternative, providing the same skilled work, then we will always put or members’ jobs first.Lastly, Falkirk. As Gerard Coyne also well knows this union did nothing – nothing - wrong in Falkirk. We were in fact taking forward the party’s own policy – to encourage working men and women to join the party their forefathers and mothers built, to re-engage so that the party again reflected their aspirations.Three inquiries found that Unite acted properly at all times. For Gerard Coyne to revive a dead and discredited story in the sorry pursuit of votes is a disgrace. I am staggered that anyone seeking to lead the biggest union in Scotland comes here with the purposeful intention of slurring our organisation, undermining decent shop stewards and offering not one word of hope to the men and women of this union who work tirelessly to improve working life in Scotland.If this is a tactic, it is a new one on me. But not on Gerard – earlier this week he was attacking Unite members in Ireland for campaigning against water charges.Mark my words, our members in Scotland, just as they have in workplaces across the country, will reject his slurs and smears. Unite Scotland is proud of its members, of our tireless officers and convenors.If Gerard Coyne cannot offer them the respect and decency they deserve, then he has nothing to offer them at all.
