Questions to Answer
Eric Joyce, the former Labour MP and sitting Member for the seat of Falkirk East has posed a blog about the sudden resignation of Stephen Deans - former Unite convener at the Grangemouth oil refinery and petro-chemical plant.
To my mind the five questions posed by Eric Joyce in the third paragraph of his post are all entirely reasonable and sensible - even if some folks might be tempted to say 'he would say that anyway'.
Because this is a squalid and unbecoming affair which has, literally, been playing party politics with people's jobs and livelihoods.
Just imagine the 'grotesque chaos' (to borrow an old phrase from Neil Kinnock) that would have resulted - if the plant at Grangemouth had remained closed, with thousands of jobs being lost.
The Labour Party and Unite have a lot of questions to answer although as Eric Joyce points out - with so many Labour MPs and MSPs having close links with Unite that will be no easy task.
Stephen Deans resignation
Grangemouth is moving into a phase where 1600 jobs at Ineos, and the many thousands more in the local supply chain, are more secure than they have been for years. What workers need now is decent, intelligent representation.
For now, Stephen Deans’ resignation was inevitable, and it’s a shame anyone has to lose their job, but it does move things onto some larger questions.
Will the Labour Party re-open the inquiry into Falkirk’s selection-fixing by Deans? Will Unite’s Director of Legal Affairs, Howard Beckett, who organised ‘nasty stuff’ on Labour figures and wrote the script for the undermining of Labour’s inquiry, resign? Will Len McCluskey and Pat Rafferty, whose instructions Deans was following, accept responsibility for the worst ‘leadership’ in the history of the trade union movement? Will the politicians, who attended Grangemouth and encouraged Unite to lead workers into oblivion, apologise? Will Deans remain chair of Falkirk West Labour Party?
The answers to some of these questions are, I suppose, obvious. Unite and the frightened Scottish politicians they sponsor won’t be coming clean anytime soon. The largest question of all, though, is for Labour. Unite has betrayed thousands of Falkirk workers by putting juvenille Cuban flags and empty ideological rhetoric before them. Can Labour have the courage to confront Unite’s leadership now? Or are too many MPs and MSPs in just too deep?
It really is as simple as that.
Stephen Deans resignation
Grangemouth is moving into a phase where 1600 jobs at Ineos, and the many thousands more in the local supply chain, are more secure than they have been for years. What workers need now is decent, intelligent representation.
For now, Stephen Deans’ resignation was inevitable, and it’s a shame anyone has to lose their job, but it does move things onto some larger questions.
Will the Labour Party re-open the inquiry into Falkirk’s selection-fixing by Deans? Will Unite’s Director of Legal Affairs, Howard Beckett, who organised ‘nasty stuff’ on Labour figures and wrote the script for the undermining of Labour’s inquiry, resign? Will Len McCluskey and Pat Rafferty, whose instructions Deans was following, accept responsibility for the worst ‘leadership’ in the history of the trade union movement? Will the politicians, who attended Grangemouth and encouraged Unite to lead workers into oblivion, apologise? Will Deans remain chair of Falkirk West Labour Party?
The answers to some of these questions are, I suppose, obvious. Unite and the frightened Scottish politicians they sponsor won’t be coming clean anytime soon. The largest question of all, though, is for Labour. Unite has betrayed thousands of Falkirk workers by putting juvenille Cuban flags and empty ideological rhetoric before them. Can Labour have the courage to confront Unite’s leadership now? Or are too many MPs and MSPs in just too deep?
It really is as simple as that.
