Sharon Graham’s Hypocrisy Over Gaza Beggars Belief

Having Refused to Take Part in the National  Palestine Demonstrations Against Genocide Graham Writes to the Palestinian Trade Unions after Israel Bombed Their Offices Boasting About Her Support

Protest Outside Unite HQ

Unite for Palestine Activist Meeting

Wednesday March 27 2024 6.30 p.m.

Please register here

https://tinyurl.com/4fc49t2y

For once I was lost for words. Never was the saying that Hypocrisy is the Tribute that Vice Pays to Virtue truer. It takes a special kind of gall to have done absolutely nothing in support of the Palestinians as they are bombed and ethnically cleansed in Gaza, to have held hands with the far-right Campaign Against Antisemitism as she banned Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie from Unite premises and then to write to the General Secretary of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions boasting of Unite’s record.

On March 7, as part of its ‘war against Hamas’ Israel bombed the headquarters of the PGFTU in Gaza City. The Federation’s five-story building had attached to it several other facilities providing services to the Palestinians, including a kindergarten that served 380 children, as well as a large automatic bakery.

The PGFTU Offices in Gaza After Israel Bombed Them

In a statement, signed by Basheer Al-Sisi, a member of their General Secretariat, he spoke of how the Federation has “lost thousands of members, union offices, facilities, and other institutions” as a result of the “wholesale slaughter and forced dislocation—ethnic cleansing” committed against the Palestinian people in the last six months.

We send our solidarity greetings to our friends, the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions at this terrible time.

We demand a #CeasefireNOW #GFTU #GFTU125 https://t.co/qbHZmrlmYl

— General Federation of Trade Unions (@GFTU1) March 12, 2024

Palestinian workers from Gaza who were in Israel at the time of October 7 were rounded up, imprisoned and tortured. A number of them died yet Graham kept her silence throughout.

The PGFTU is controlled by Fatah, not Hamas, but that did not stop Israel bombing its offices. The ‘war against Hamas’ is a fiction meant only for stupid westerners and the BBC/Sky.

It is of course welcome that Graham has, at last, written expressing her solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. But it is long overdue. It is also welcome that she has, for the first time, condemned Israel’s ‘war crimes’ but we will never forget that this only came nearly 6 months after Israel’s attack and with deaths and injuries over 100,000.

Graham even boasted that Unite has donated £50,000 to Medicins Sans Frontiere, which isn’t even a Palestinian organisation when Unite could have donated a much larger sum to Medical Aid for Palestinians, which is permanently on the ground in Gaza, as a host of Unite branches have done.

Demonstration Outside Unite Exec Meeting by Unite Members, March 11

£50,000 is chicken feed. It is reported that Graham and Unite’s legal bill for defending itself in a labour court in Dublin, against its former Regional Organiser Brendan Ogle is over £1m (1.35m Euros) and that is before Graham starts defending herself against a libel action by Ogle which no doubt Unite will pay for.

There have been regular demonstrations in London against genocide in Gaza ever since October 7. Not only has Sharon Graham refused to attend or speak but she has forbidden Unite’s national banner being taken on the march.

Will Sharon Graham be attending the Demonstration next Saturday 30 March. I won’t be holding my breath. Graham even tried to prevent Peter Kavanagh, Regional Organiser for the London & Eastern Region speaking at the demonstration on January 13^th and threatened him with loss of a pension bonus if he did.

This is in addition to suspending Simon Dubbins, a Unite official who organised a meeting on Palestine at the Labour Party Conference in defiance of her wishes.

Graham also didn’t mention that Unite members had staged a demonstration/lobby outside Unite headquarters on March 11^th at the beginning of the Executive Meeting in protest at Unite’s complete inactivity on Palestine.

Suffice to say that Graham also failed to mention that she and her supporters had opposed any discussion of Palestine at the meeting and in response to those who did wish to discuss it told them that ‘Palestine is not a service that Unite offers to its members.’

Perhaps the height of Graham’s hypocrisy was her boast that ‘I am sure you are aware that Unite has a longstanding policy in support for the Palestinian people.’ How would the PGFTU be aware when she has refused to put the policy on Unite’s website. Is Shaher Saed, the General Secretary of the PGFTU expected to be telepathic?

Tonight we will be holding a meeting of Unite activists who do want Unite to start giving real solidarity to the Palestinians – this includes

1.           Unite being present on all future national demonstrations

2.           Instructing dockers and Unite workers to boycott all arm shipments to Israel and all trade with Israel as and until its genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza stops.

3.           To fund members wanting to attend the demonstrations and to publicising the demonstrations on the website and internally.

4.           Unite policy on Palestine to be displayed on Unite’s website

5.           That Unite donate £250,000 to Medical Aid for the Palestinians

6.           That an Emergency Executive Committee Meeting be called in order to discuss what Unite can now do on Palestine.

7.           That Unite let Keir Starmer and the Labour Party know that until they reverse their position of support for Israel’s genocide they won’t get another farthing from Unite.

Let us hope that Sharon Graham’s letter to the PGFTU is a sign that she has at last recognised that her previous stance of support for Israel’s genocide is unacceptable and that the Union must revert to its traditional position of support for the oppressed not the oppressor. I fear though that Graham’s letter is about as far as she intends to go and that these are mere empty words.

Tony Greenstein

Unite Members Lobby Executive to Demand that they Implement Union Policy & Oppose Israel’s Genocide

For 5 months Sharon Graham has Opposed All Solidarity with the Palestinians, Following Starmer in Refusing to Campaign Against Israel's Ethnic Cleansing

Jonathan Fluxman of Unite Doctors Criticises the Rape Narrative that Israel is using to justify genocide

 Last Monday at  midday about 50 Unite members from as far away as Birmingham, held a lobby of Unite’s national executive which was due to meet an hour later.

The lobby was noisy and vociferous and hundreds of leaflets were distributed. Drivers passing by made clear their opposition to genocide in Gaza by honking.

Jonathan Fluxman of Unite Doctors

Amandla the cry of Black South Africans when they fought apartheid

There was an open mike and a number of demonstrators spoke including Jonathan Fluxman of Unite doctors. Jonathan, who is from South Africa, condemned the false rape narrative that has been used to demonise both Hamas and the attack of October 7.

He rightly drew our attention to the way rape has always been weaponised against indigenous people as an excuse for murder e.g. in the Deep South and with the ‘Black Peril’ in southern Africa.

It is a sad commentary on Unite, which has a long history of international solidarity stretching from the Spanish Civil War, which Jack Jones a former General Secretary of the TGWU (the precursor of Unite) fought in to the support the union gave to the ANC and the fight against Apartheid in South Africa that we needed to picket a Union Executive Meeting in order that the Union extends solidarity to the Palestinians who have been slaughtered and ethnically cleansed by the Zionist butchers.

Sharon Graham, the ‘non-political’ General Secretary of Unite, has chosen to side with the Zionists and their anti-Semitism smears. As Gail Cartmail, her previous spokesperson admitted, so-called ‘anti-Semitism’ has played a role in their decision.

Graham is a Zionist sympathiser. Even before October 7 she banned, at Starmer and the Zionists’ behest, Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie from being shown on Unite premises. The far-right Campaign Against Antisemitism, an Israeli government  front, whose sole mission is to equate opposition to the Israeli state and its genocide with anti-Semitism, boasted of having entered into correspondence with Unite despite the denials of Cartmail.

The reason given for the banning was they didn’t wish to offend Unite’s Jewish members, despite the fact that Jews were prominent in the film. Clearly Graham equates Jews with Zionism and goes along with the false anti-Semitism narrative.

If the CAA is to be believed, and for once I do believe them, Unite under Graham entered into correspondence with the CAA about banning the film. The CAA claimed

Following correspondence with Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Unite union has cancelled the screening of a propaganda film about the antisemitic former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn that was due to be shown alongside a book signing and talk from Asa Winstanley.

Graham was happy to speak with Ukraine flags fluttering around her but she hasn’t been seen dead with a Palestinian flag. Unite has done absolutely nothing nationally since Israel embarked on its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

It is a disgrace that allegedly revolutionary groups like the SWP, Counterfire and the Socialist Party have acted to protect Graham rather than calling her out. Her attraction is that she supports militant action by workers in struggle, which is fine, but strikes alone do not a world change. The question is whether you challenge the imperialist consciousness of British workers who will never overthrow the chains of capitalism whilst they have illusions in British imperialism.

Counterfire’s Richard Allday, the ‘angry trucker’, dismissed the leaflet for the lobby as

negative, insulting, confrontational and counterproductive. I’ve said it before: if the intention is to get the Union to carry out Conference decisions, then let’s concentrate on that and not turn it into a slanging match which will harden the divisions which are part of the problem. 

Thus ignoring completely Sharon Graham’s obstruction of all solidarity work nationally.

These ‘revolutionary’ groups claim to be Marxist and it is therefore instructive to read what Marx wrote in April 1870 in a letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt

"The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker, he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently, he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself.

He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this."

Our present day Trotskyists fetishise strikes and ignore the fact that the fight against capitalism is a political struggle not simply economic. The failure to oppose Zionism and Israel isn’t a mistake it is fundamental to opposing British imperialism and its foreign policy and thereby capitalism itself. Sharon Graham is an open British nationalist. She supports NATO in Ukraine and the United States’s watchdog in the Middle East, Israel.

Allday’s post was in response to criticism of the complete inactivity of the national leadership under Graham which has refused to have the national banner on the national demonstration and which has failed to publicise them or indeed anything about the genocide on Unite’s website.

Indeed Graham has gone out her way to obstruct the actions of others ‘advising’ Jim Kelly of the London & Eastern Regional Secretary not to speak at the national demonstration on 13 January 24. She has suspended a senior Unite employee, Simon Dubbins, who organised a Palestine meeting at the Labour Party annual conference in Liverpool last October.

On 16 October 23 Unite put out a statement which

‘unreservedly condemned and expressed its revulsion  at the recent appalling acts of violence by Hamas against innocent civilians in Israel’

But it could only ‘deplore the subsequent suffering and loss of life being endured by civilians in Gaza.’

On November 3^rd after considerable pressure from activists including an online petition Unite issued a second statement which this time called for an immediate ceasefire. The statement was however pitiably weak calling on ‘all parties to respect international law’ as if the Palestinians experiencing genocide were equally culpable as the murderers. Nowhere did the statement mention genocide.

Jim Kelly, Chair of London & Eastern Region Unite Speaking to a London Trade union Rally for Palestine

Unite has done nothing to campaign for a ceasefire such as telling its sponsored MPs that it wouldn’t continue to finance them if they didn’t support an immediate ceasefire.

Nor did the statement mention the fact that Israel had imposed a Nazi style food, water and fuel blockade on the Gaza strip resulting in starvation according to the United Nations.

On Monday there were 2 motions to the Executive. Both were problematic.

Motion 1 from the Passenger National Industrial Sector Committee talked about Israel’s genocide being in ‘retaliation for the 7 October brutal atrocity carried out by Hamas.’ An uprising of an oppressed people against 57 years of occupation was not a brutal atrocity. Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza was not a retaliation for October 7. 7 October was the pretext for long standing Zionist plans for ethnic cleansing.

Motion 2 from the Unite LE Region also calls October 7 a ‘retaliation for the 7 October brutal atrocity’. It also calls for a two-state solution.

Both motions call for a national Unite presence at the national demonstrations. That there be a prominent national speaker from Unite to speak at all future marches/demonstrations and that Unite’s website and social media platforms advertise prominently all future PSC mobilisations and that they call for Unite to urge members to join it.

The motion instructs Graham to write to all branches nationally, urging members to join these marches and that resources are in place to facilitate members wishing to travel to attend PSC marches/demonstrations.

What the motions don’t do is talk about ethnic cleansing, the Israeli state’s real aim in Gaza nor about the role of British workers in facilitating the genocide by transferring arms to Israel. The key demand, that workers refuse to handle weapons destined for Israel and better still refuse to load or unload Israeli ships, is missing.