UNISON General Secretary election - Local Government Service Group Executive rewrites the received wisdom...

 Today’s news that the UNISON Local Government Service Group Executive (SGE) has nominated Paul Holmes as candidate for General Secretary is justly being trumpeted by Paul’s campaign. This is the first time that a Service Group Executive has nominated a rank and file candidate for UNISON General Secretary.

 

This isn’t just any SGE – it is one which represents about half of UNISON’s membership. Its nomination does not dictate the vote of any member, or the nomination of any local government branch, but it certainly identifies Paul Holmes as a serious challenger.

 

It is not, of course, a complete novelty for the Local Government SGE to break ranks with the UNISON establishment. Five years ago, the Local Government SGE was the one SGE to nominate Heather Wakefield, when all six of the others nominated Dave Prentis.

 

Heather was, however, Head of Local Government and, as much as “Team Dave” deplored her nomination from the Local Government SGE they had expected it. Paul’s nomination by that SGE is a horse of a different colour. It begins to challenge the received wisdom – expressed here only recently – that a rank and file candidate may face insurmountable obstacles in this election.

 

It is probably worth looking at the nominations from the last General Secretary election, compared to the votes cast, as the nominations begin to come in this time, in order to gain some perspective;

 

Candidate	Nominations				Votes (%)
	Branches	SGEs	Regions	NEC
Bannister	25	0	0	0	12.6
Burgess	62	0	1	0	11.6
Prentis	204	6	8	1	49.4
Wakefield	82	1	1	0	26.4

 

There is no necessary relationship between the number of nominations and the number of votes and, although the candidate with the most nominations has always previously been the winning candidate, that candidate has either been the incumbent (Prentis in 2005, 2010 and 2015) or the sole “official” candidate and heir presumptive (Bickerstaffe in 1995 and Prentis in 2000).

 

If this election shapes up to be between two Assistant General Secretaries and one rank and file candidate, and a rank and file candidate who has been nominated by the Service Group Executive representing our largest Service Group, then it may be this whole election which is a horse of a different colour.