By Yunus Bakhsh
The suspension of Labour’s candidate for Gordon Brown’s old seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is a bit of a rarity, in that it appears to arise from clear-cut evidence of overt racism and not some faux claims of antisemitism, based on criticism of apartheid Israel.
The suspended candidate, Wilma Brown, shared two posts, one accusing SNP leader, Humza Yousaf, of giving money to Hamas, and the other attacking a right wing Indian Tory in racist terms. According to a Guardian report, “a constituent in the Scottish seat had compiled a list of tweets highlighting Brown’s activity online. Brown had liked a post that told an Indian man he would ‘never be an Englishman’, and another calling Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, the ‘first minister of Gaza’ and ‘Hamas Yousless’”.
What will probably not be a surprise to many in UNISON, is that Wilma Brown is a leading member, and that so far the UNISON leadership seem to have said and done nothing about her racism. The UNISON leadership, certainly under former General Secretary Dave Prentis, had a reputation for witch-hunting its left activists, as I know only too well, even if that meant apparently turning a blind eye to racism within its own ranks.
What will amaze members of UNISON, the union sponsoring Wilma Brown, as well as Labour members, is an apparent lack of any ‘due diligence’ in finding out what her views were before she was selected. However, in the case of the union, it will not come as a surprise.
I was branch Secretary of Newcastle City Health UNISON from 1994, and I was also the first non-white person elected onto the NEC in an unreserved seat. I was also elected to the union’s Health Service Executive from 2001 to 2008. My branch was probably one of the best-organised and most militant, with some of the best terms and conditions in the NHS. In 2006, we were due to merge with two others, making the Northumbria, Tyne and Wear branch likely to be the biggest branch in the country.
Union and management appeared to be in cahoots to sack me
Then, in 2006, I was suspended, allegedly based on an anonymous letter that I was never allowed to see. Over the next two years I was subjected to what was in reality a pincer movement, with the bosses and UNISON relying on spurious allegations made by a small group of stewards from one of the smaller branches with whom we were supposed to merge. Central to this was Peter Cafferty the chair of the health group and his wife Kerry Cafferty.
On Xmas Eve 2007, I joined Facebook and, to my shock, Kerry Cafferty came up as a potential friend! Her profile was open, and what I found sickened me. I had already complained to both the union and the bosses that the preposterous allegations against me were motivated at least in part by racism and there, on Cafferty’s Facebook, was irrefutable evidence of it. She was friends and in dialogue with an open member of the racist British National Party, and a member of numerous fascist and racists groups, such as ‘England is our country…Our rules , don’t like it Fuck off’. At the same time, I discovered someone with obvious detailed inside knowledge of UNISON was posting stuff about my case on the neo-nazi Stormfront website.
Investigation into racist links of union member dropped
I sent all this evidence to the then General Secretary of UNISON, Dave Prentis, and to Clare Williams, then the chair of my branch and Regional Convenor, (now the Regional Secretary) as well as to management. The management did nothing, as you might expect, but UNISON? They promised an investigation into Cafferty, then, incredibly, a day before it was due to begin, I received notice that Cafferty had resigned her union membership and that the union was dropping the case. No apology and no acknowledgement of Cafferty’s role in my suspension.
The following day, UNISON Northern Region put out a post which made a brief mention of ‘alleged racism’ and didn’t mention Cafferty, but which attacked me! Clearly UNISON Northern region seemed more interested in getting me sacked and expelled from the union, even if it meant relying on lurid claims by a confirmed racist.
Incredibly, the Northern TUC had by pure coincidence printed a gushing four-page article in its magazine about the key witnesses against me, including Kerry Cafferty, who was described as a model trade union activist! I sent the TUC secretary all the evidence about her, but the reply was to ‘note’ my comments, and that was it.
I eventually won my Employment Tribunal for unfair dismissal due to trade union activities, a case UNISON had refused to support. The judgement noted, “The Tribunal is bound to wonder whether she [the Trust’s head of HR] found in Elizabeth Twist [Unison’s former head of health in the northern region, now MP for Blaydon] an ally and a shared sense of purpose”. In other words, it looked to the Tribunal like the union and management were in cahoots to get me dismissed.
Why then does the UNISON leadership seem to be so unwilling to act against racists in the ranks, given the union’s claimed anti-racist credentials? To me, it is no coincidence that Wilma Brown was chair of the union Health group. In my experience, UNISON always looked to promote those who could attack the left and be relied upon to offer the leadership unconditional support; and all the better, if they were low-paid NHS workers. And this irrespective of their views on wider political issues.
Some union officers hold very dodgy political views
Right-wing members, sometimes low-paid ancillary workers, are often courted by the union with junkets and ‘trips’ abroad, usually to somewhere warm like Cuba, all, of course, in the name of solidarity. The union bureaucracy doesn’t seem to care that some of these people hold views that are very dodgy, to say the least. So long as they can be relied upon to be wheeled out to speak against the left.
I remember that during negotiations over Agenda for Change, many of these right-wingers went on full-time release, often (despite union policy) on three or four grades above their substantive post, in order to negotiate AfC. Indeed, the use of full-time release as a means of creating a loyal layer of stewards was and remains something the right wing in UNISON use on a regular basis. NHS management were only to happy to assist.
I recall one particular NEC member berating the left for having the temerity to oppose an expenses increase for NEC members, on the grounds that this would discriminate against low paid workers like her. The fact that she was on a band seven and had not worked as a low paid worker for years appeared to have slipped her mind.
Whereas left activists (like Paul Holmes) could be suspended and expelled on baseless grounds, someone important to the leadership, like Wilma Brown, received no such treatment. I have little doubt that if she can be so open about her racist views, what she says behind closed doors is likely to be much worse.
The utter hypocrisy of someone like our Regional Secretary (a one time a SWP member) giving it large about ‘fighting racism’, yet willing to use the allegations of racists like Cafferty to drive a black activist out of the union and the NHS, tells us all we need to know about their actual commitment to combatting racism.
The response from the union to Wilma Brown’s suspension has been a deafening silence, and it shows that the problem isn’t just racists like Brown, it is the unaccountable leadership of union as a whole. The silence over Brown owes much, I suspect, to the precarious control that current General Secretary, Christina McAnea, has over the union, because she cannot afford to alienate her base in Health. Starmer, on the other hand, is desperate to shore up his waning support among the black population, where he is losing sympathy and support over his support for Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza.
I understand there is a petition circulating calling for Wilma Brown to be suspended from office, in the union, but the fact that there even needs to be such a move again shines a light on the rottenness of the UNISON leadership. UNISON members should be asking if the union leadership had known about Brown’s views, and if they even cared. Or was she is a position in the union because she was a useful battering ram against the left in Scotland?
