Why Are Trade Unions STILL Funding Starmer?

Right, so why do Trade Unions fund Keir Starmer’s Labour Party? In the interests of the workers they represent? Becoming a bit of a hard sell isn’t it as Labour assaults workers and ordinary working class people instead of bringing in wealth taxes on the super rich.
This is a question that has been cropping up in video comments more and more and fundamentally it comes down to needing to think of trade unions as political parties in and of themselves if you like, especially if they donate to a political party, namely Labour, which was of course created by the trade union movement itself. They have internal elections and who you back at one point or another, as much as the ethos is of course being representation of workers rights, is a political one as well, because they influence politics, or try to, via donations.
The Unite union of Sharon Graham is Labour’s biggest donor and if you want a masterclass in why it is important to take part in union elections as much as political ones, Graham is a great one to look at right now, because such is her aping of Starmer and what he has done to Labour, she is now being taken to court by her own executive committee for tearing up democracy and backing the rights of workers, which Labour are increasingly attacking themselves. Starmer’s Labour shouldn’t be funded by any body purporting to represent ordinary working class people anymore, so if you want to know why some unions still do, well this is why.
Right, so trade unions, funding Starmer’s Labour, make it majke sense Damo some of you have been asking and its as much a case of like ther are right and left political parties, so it goes with trade unions too, but there is a particular distastefulness about a trade union funding Labour when it was ostensibly standing up for social justice and representing workers and still funding them now when it blatantly doesn’t and is serving the rich instead, therefore trade unions funding Labour now are taking ordinary working class people’s membership dues and using them to help prop up a party only interested in representing the elite – that is perverse in the extreme. Trade unions prior to Labour were literally the labour movement itself, fighting for workers' rights, fair wages, and dignity in the workplace, all the hard won rights you have at work, from the hours you work, to holiday and sick pay to maternity and paternity leave were won by the trade union movement, therefore it is equally true that trade unions are invaluable to our everyday lives and fighting for what is right and just for us all. Like political parties though, like Labour especially, they change and not necessarily for the better. You get what you voted for and good and bad leaders come and go. Today, Britain’s largest unions continue to fund a Labour Party that has abandoned its socialist roots under Keir Starmer, a leader who has purged the left, embraced pro-business policies, and betrayed the very workers Labour was founded to represent. So when it comes to answering the question about why unions still fund Labour, you need to look at who leads them right now too.
So to illustrate this point, lets pick on one union in particular and I’ll pick on this one for a couple of good reasons. For one, they are the Labour party’s biggest donor, coughing up £1m a year to Starmer’s Labour and for another it is my trade union, because as bad as the current leadership is, for reasons I’m about to go into, belonging to a trade union, and most importantly taking a proactive attitude to helping to shape it, taking part in those internal elections matters, because by not doing so, you end up with a union that acts like this one is now and funding Labour despite being led by arguably the most anti labour leader it has ever had in Keir Starmer.
Unite is led by its General Secretary Sharon Graham. While Unite claims to champion workers’ rights, that becomes a pretty hard sell given how it treats its own workers, its leadership currently embroiled in an anti-democratic crisis of its own, mirroring Starmer’s authoritarian tendencies. Graham is now facing legal action from her own union’s executive committee over abuses of power, including her refusal to uphold a democratic vote to remove Unite’s pro-Graham executive chair, a guy called Andy Green. Meanwhile, Unite continues to pour cash into a Labour Party that has sidelined trade unions, attacked the right to strike, and cosied up to corporate interests.
When Starmer became Labour leader in 2020, he promised to unite the party and uphold socialist principles. Instead, he has systematically dismantled Labour’s left-wing foundations, purged socialists, abandoning progressive policies, lied through his teeth about pretty much everything he ever said he stood for and aligning himself with big business, turning Labour from the party of workers into the party of work, siding with the bosses in which case. It’s a pretty hard sell frankly for any trade union funding Labour to keep on justifying it when Starmer has move to a position of opposing meaningful strikes once he became leader, after paying lip service to workers, labour members and affiliated trade unionists for their vote, Starmer ordered Labour MPs not to join picket lines during for example the 2022 rail strikes, undermining union struggles.
Starmer has also of course reneged on pledges to renationalise key industries, all despite overwhelming public support, but worst of all has been the embrace of pro austerity rhetoric since becoming Prime Minister, with hopelessly out of her depth Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledging fiscal responsibility, under her arbitrary and evidenceless fiscal rules, which have just been a euphemism for more cuts falling on workers and ruled out wealth taxes at the same time, signalling pro-business priorities over workers’ needs.
And then there has been the lack of democracy and the attack on labour members. The expulsions of left-wing members: Socialists, including former leader Jeremy Corbyn of course, having been suspended or expelled on spurious grounds and driving others utterly disgusted with the party away, Starmer having shown us the door if we don’t like what he is doing.
There has been the centralised control over candidate selections, Starmer’s team has blocked left-wing candidates, ensuring only loyalists are selected, blowing up in his face as that has recently with the Dan Norris scandal.
And on top of that there is the incessant ignoring of party democracy, where, for example, Labour conference votes on various policies that are supposed to be meaningful cast in stone resolutions, yet these get routinely ignored by the leadership.
And sadly, given such a record as that, its getting replicated in unions such as Unite, so when it comes to why a trade union like them still funds Labour, it is a question that falls squarely on the leadership of said union. On Sharon Graham.
Sharon Graham was elected in 2021 on a platform of "putting members first," shunning the political side of things as she pledged to do, despite that literally being half the job when you fund to the tune of £1m a year a major political party. What has happened since thoguh has been Graham instead presiding over an assault on union democracy, leading to open revolt and now legal action against her within Unite’s own executive. Whilst you might wish more Labour MPs would revolt against Starmer, we are actually seeing it in Unite it seems.
You see, last month, Unite’s executive committee voted to remove its chair, Andy Green, after he repeatedly blocked democratic procedures seemingly to protect Graham’s leadership. He was elected to the position on a left slate, but quickly became a pro Graham ally. Rather than accept the vote, which Green lost, 31 votes to 28 with one abstention, Graham’s administration refused to recognise it, suddenly deciding a two thirds majority was needed, contrary to the union rule book, leading to Unites own executive now boycotting executive committee meetings and now, having taken legal advice on the matter, is now taking legal action against both the cling-on Andy Green and their own General Secretary. None of this benefits the people they represent, but when power is being prioritised over the running of the union, what choice is there and what a mess this is and isn’t it awfully reminiscent of the sort of stuff Starmer has been doing?
Under Graham Unite is now ignoring constitutional procedures, bypassing elected bodies to impose decisions.
Is prepared to go to court against her own executive committee, wasting members’ funds to defend her authority and for those aware of what is going on, woefully underreported as these events are, the most essential source for all things to do with Unite being without doubt Skwawkbox, has alienated grassroots members, with many now questioning whether Unite truly represents them, now over this all on top of the issue over the funding of Labour
This hypocrisy is staggering and it is Starmer 101: a union that claims to fight for workers’ rights is suppressing democracy within its own structures while funding a Labour Party doing the same. Is it becoming apparent yet how important it is to take part in trade union elections if you want one that will hold Labour to account rather than keep throwing your money at it? That will represent you in the face of the assault on ordinary working class people’s lives being inflicted by this Labour in name only regime? Lets dig into this a bit more though.
If we’re going to ask the question of why some trade unions are still funding Labour, there’s a bit more to it than just copying Starmer as Sharon Graham seemingly does.
On one hand many unions have long-standing ties to Labour, with leaders reluctant to break tradition despite the party’s betrayal and members may feel likewise as votes to disaffiliate don’t necessarily materialise in success and again that comes down to member participation in no small part. The fear of losing influence is often a mentality that keeps them tethered, even as Starmer sidelines them, weak leadership I would call that, but disaffiliation can and has happened under Starmer as founding member of the Labour Party, the BFAWU, the bakers Union, did vote to disaffiliate citing Starmer’s Tory-litism as part of their reasoning to walk away.
I keep coming back to lack of member engagement again and again as well, because it is shockingly low. We might observe that by elections and local elections for political parties might only elicit turnouts of 20-25% in many cases which is regarded as low and barely democratic, but Sharon Graham was election in 2021 on a turnout of just 10.3%.
Union elections suffer from shockingly low turnout. If members do not hold leaders accountable, those leaders can be incredibly poor and can act with impunity as graham is seemingly proving.
Some union bosses may believe funding Labour grants them leverage, but Starmer has shown he will ignore them when convenient and again I can come back to Sharon Grhaam, here who refused to sign off on Labour’s manifesto because it was too anti worker but it went ahead anyway and Graham continues to fund the party. A strong leader would have cut Labour off. Fear of letting in the right wing if you do? Look at the polls, you’re funding that. The Labour-union link is now more a one-way street than ever before where soft, weak union leaderships keep giving money, which Labour takes whilst disregarding their concerns and demands.
So what do we do to fix these unions then Damo? Well workers sure as hell deserve better than a Labour Party that abandons them and union leaders who undermine democracy. To reclaim the labour movement, members must demand an end to blank-cheque funding—pressure on the unions should come from us all, not just the executives and unions should make financial support conditional on Labour adopting pro-worker policies and follow through, when as Starmer is making clear, they absolutely aren’t.
On top of that members must realise that trade unions are not just bodies to represent them in their workplaces, but lobbyists for government of the day and most of Labour who many of these unions fund directly. Participate in union elections, because if members do not vote, poor quality, unaccountable leaders will continue betraying them and where many people are leaving said unions, that is the worst thing you can do in this case, because where the comparisons to political parties are certainly there, who you get leading a union can make a dramatic difference, when power is so centralised amongst a relative handful of people.
We need to challenge undemocratic practices when we see them, what Unite’s executive is doing is fighting back on behalf of the democratic will of all members against two individuals who think they matter more and therefore members must support them against Graham’s authoritarianism.
And where the Labour Party was created to represent the trade union movement, the workers movement in parliament, if they are no longer going to do that, no longer capable due to the mass rigging of processes within the party, then unions need to consider alternative political representation, because if Labour will not fight for workers, unions should explore supporting genuinely socialist candidates and back leadership candidates come election time pledging to do just that.
The continued funding of Starmer’s Labour by Unite and other unions is a betrayal of workers. It can’t be seen as anything less than that now and if they won’t shift on that, then we need new leaders. Starmer has abandoned socialist principles, while Sharon Graham’s leadership is mired in anti-democratic scandals. If trade unions are to remain relevant, they must cut ties with a Labour Party that no longer represents workers and restore democracy within their own ranks.
The fight for workers’ rights always begins at home. Union meetings, in internal elections, and in holding leaders accountable. We must do in our unions what we would do with our political representatives and leaders too, because union reps are also political reps and we need to keep that in mind far more than we do. There is no more time for complacency on this. Either union members reclaim their unions, or they will continue to be sold out by those meant to defend them.
For more on Sharon Graham’s giving in to Keir Starmer, here’s a prime example of that from last year, where her red lines on workers rights once again washed away all too easily in this video recommendation for your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe before you do so though, so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new daily content as well as supporting the channel at the same time, which is very much appreciated and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.