On the day that the desperation of the campaign backing the continuity candidate became clear (as UNISON took down a news report from the national website which was exposed as breaching the election procedures) it began to look like the General Secretary election was opening up and that UNISON members would have the opportunity to choose change.
Although clearly the front runner in terms of nominations, the fact that the campaign of Christina McAnea could only boast about 500 "likes" on Facebook revealed why some of her supporters had misused UNISON resources (there is no suggestion the candidate was implicated). Though way ahead of other candidates in nominations, Christina is well behind where Dave Prentis was in 2015.
Serious rank and file challenger, Paul Holmes (with more than twice as many "likes" on Facebook) has become the first lay candidate for General Secretary to win the nomination of more than one Region (including the largest) and also the first lay candidate to be nominated by a Service Group (also the largest). Paul is set to exceed the number of nominations won by Heather Wakefield in the last General Secretary election. For the first time, a lay member could win a General Secretary election.
On the same day Roger McKenzie's campaign (with roughly three times as many "likes" on Facebook as the McAnea campaign) had won its first Regional nomination, which – taken together with the impressive range of political endorsements and the innovative notion of a crowd sourced manifesto suggests that his campaign has the potential to turn his nominations (around the same number as Paul Holmes) into more votes than will be cast for Christina McAnea.
Heading into the voting period, if those three were to be the candidates on the ballot paper, it began to look – today – as if UNISON members really would have a choice about who our next General Secretary would be.
And then the Wirral branch decided to nominate Socialist Party candidate Hugo Pierre, who is not fighting to win but simply in order to secure a sufficient number of votes so that Socialist Party members should know that their Party remains relevant on the left in the trade union movement.
It's not just me being cynical about the approach of the Socialist Party in this election.
To quote from long standing Socialist Party member, John McInally; "in the current run-up to a general secretary election in UNISON the SP/CWI are opportunistically placing their own narrow interests of prestige above the priority of building an effective left campaign to elect a socialist general secretary, an event that would have a potentially transformative impact on the movement." McInally goes on to say – of his former SP comrades – that they "are now using the abhorrent methods of the gutter press." Rather than back Paul Holmes (the candidate of the nascent "left" organisation which they helped to bring into existence) the SP have insisted on running their own candidate.
Hugo's friend and comrade Roger Bannister could not restrain himself from commenting about this nomination on Facebook, believing that the Wirral nomination would be Hugo's twenty-fifth and would secure his place on the ballot (remembering that when Roger got only twenty five nominations five years ago none of them were disqualified, in spite of questions having been raised about at least one of the nominations). Socialist Party comrades took the Lidl Prosecco out of the fridge.
At the same time a somewhat more expensive beverage was being poured by supporters of Christina McAnea, to whose rescue the supporters of Hugo Pierre had come at such an opportune hour. If the Socialist Party get Hugo onto the ballot paper they will mobilise the remnants of their once significant political organisation to leaflet and lobby, and they will target branches where members would otherwise be likely to be persuaded to vote for either Paul Holmes or Roger McKenzie.
If Christina McAnea is elected as General Secretary of UNISON, to continue the approach of the current leadership into another decade, she will be able to thank Hugo Pierre and the Socialist Party.
Hurrah!
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