Graham faction sweeps Unite election

Pic: the Graham faction's logo

The recent election (closing 27 April 2026) for Unite the Union’s national Executive Council (EC) – a mixture of geographical, industrial and equalities seats – saw the Back to the Workplace (BTTW) group pick up 41 seats, the Members United (MU) faction pick up 18 seats, and non-aligned candidates pick up two seats. The newly-elected Executive is in office until 30 April 2029.

The average voting turnout for the different seats was slightly higher than 5%. The (exceptionally) highest turnout was for the Retired Members seat (29%). The (by far) lowest turnout was for the Young Members seat (2.5%). Four seats were not contested.

The election was dominated by a factional dispute within the Unite bureaucracy, with good militants and useless time-servers standing on both slates.

It is good, on balance, that the UL/MU faction lost, tainted as it was by the multi-million pound Birmingham Hotel fraud and silly factional games.

MU is the continuation, under another name, of the United Left (UL) faction. The UL faction was previously strong enough to ensure that its candidate would be elected as General Secretary and that its members would win a majority of seats on the EC.

But now the UL/MU faction has lost control of both. Where it goes from here remains to be seen. Its hallmark, and reason for existence, was always a form of machine politics – but now it has lost control of the machine.

The BTTW slate was the pro-General-Secretary-Sharon-Graham slate. But its success in winning 41 seats is a heavily qualified one. The average turnout in the elections was abysmally low. And its candidates were often successful against the UL competitor by only fairly narrow margins.

More important is the question of what the BTTW faction will do with its majority on the EC.

Will it follow in the footsteps of the UL and end up as cheerleaders for Graham, in the way that the UL functioned as cheerleaders (and worse) for McCluskey? Or will it take initiatives to rebuild the union at grassroots level?

One important issue is Unite’s affiliation to the Labour Party. Graham, who espouses an essentially apolitical form of trade-unionism, is moving steadily in the direction of disaffiliation. The pro-disaffiliation Socialist Party sees the EC election results as a major step forwards in that direction.

Going forward, Unite activists need to push back against the drive for disaffiliation, develop a serious political strategy for the union (including using its affiliation to the Labour Party), and establish mechanisms for holding EC members accountable to their constituencies. The challenge for the left in Unite is to build a genuine rank and file network that can push socialist policies and a fighting industrial programme on its own terms.