Len McCluskey

Leonard David McCluskey (born 23 July 1950) is a retired British trade unionist. He was general secretary of Unite the Union, the largest affiliate and a major donor to the Labour Party. As a young adult, he spent some years working in the Liverpool Docks for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, on 23 July 1950, the son of Leonard, a painter-decorator, and Peggy ( Margaret Fulton), a housewife who reportedly politically inspired her son. He failed the 11-plus, but passed the 13-plus, intended for late developers. A Catholic, Leaving school with three A-levels, in history, economics and general studies, he began his working life on the Canada Dock, part of the Port of Liverpool.

Early trade union activism McCluskey joined the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&GWU) in 1968, and became a shop steward for the union the following year. He was involved in unionising the white collar staff in the Liverpool docks among whom previously there had been an absence of trade union organisation. In 2007, he was appointed as the assistant general secretary for industrial strategy of the Unite the Union, a merger of the T&GWU and Amicus. In a speech at the 2010 Durham Miners' Gala he said political developments in Cuba and Venezuela should be better known, and suggested the reason they were not was because of "the fear of the good example".

However, in March 2012 the industrial correspondent of the Press Association, Alan Jones, distinguished McCluskey during the BA dispute from the former National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill: "I think he's more willing to cut a deal". He argued in June 2016, that the changes made by those governments have "left the lowest paid and the most vulnerable workers in our society in dire straits".

Unite and McCluskey backed Ed Miliband to become the next Labour leader in 2010.

General secretaryship of Unite 2010 and 2013 Unite election In 2010, McCluskey ran for election as general secretary of Unite to replace joint-general secretaries Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, who had both announced their retirement. On 21 November 2010, it was announced that McCluskey had been elected to the post, beating Jerry Hicks, Les Bayliss and Gail Cartmail.

Simpson retired in December 2010, and Woodley followed shortly after that, leaving McCluskey to take office as general secretary on 1 January 2011.

In 2013, McCluskey announced that he would be running for re-election as general secretary. He was re-elected in April 2013 with 144,570 votes against Jerry Hicks with 79,819 votes on a turnout of 15.2 per cent. In September 2013, Hicks complained to the trade union watchdog, the certification officer, that the result should be declared void as 156,000 ballot papers had been sent to people no longer paying union subscriptions. However, the union was obliged by law to give them a vote (very few actually voted).

Relations with Ed Miliband In an April 2013 interview for the New Statesman, McCluskey urged Miliband to drop three "Blairite" shadow ministers from his frontbench team.

In July 2013, there were allegations of vote rigging in the Falkirk constituency. A consultation over an all-women shortlist was abandoned over fears that not all members had been invited to participate. This was thought suspicious because Unite's preferred candidate was Karie Murphy. Meanwhile, Unite had paid for scores of people to join the Labour Party in line with the union's political strategy. Miliband called in the police to establish whether there had been criminal behaviour. The police investigation was dropped in July. Murphy dropped out as a potential candidate in September 2013, and the Labour Party investigation and report found that there had been no wrongdoing. Charges against Murphy and the CLP's chairman Stevie Deans were dismissed.

McCluskey threatened to disaffiliate Unite from Labour and launch a new workers' party in March 2014 if Labour lost the 2015 general election, which could cause Labour to cease to exist in its current form, according to Jim Pickard of the Financial Times.

2015 and 2016 Labour leadership elections During the 2015 Labour leadership election, Unite and McCluskey supported Jeremy Corbyn's candidacy, later reasserted by McCluskey when some senior figures in the union wanted to support Andy Burnham. According to George Eaton of the New Statesman, McCluskey was thought privately to share this view (which was denied by McCluskey, who was always a Corbyn supporter). Office space was supplied to Corbyn's campaign

McCluskey later termed the events of June and July 2016 concerning Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party as a "crazy vote of no confidence, this mass resignation" and "this coup attempt" in an interview with Decca Aitkenhead of The Guardian.

2017 re-election as general secretary In December 2016, McCluskey resigned as general secretary and stood again in a leadership election. McCluskey's main challenger was Gerard Coyne, then Unite's organiser in the West Midlands. McCluskey was re-elected in April 2017 by less than 6,000 votes over Coyne; 59,067 votes (45.4 per cent) to Coyne's 53,544 (41.5 per cent) on a turnout of 12.2 per cent. The other candidate was Ian Allinson who received 17,143 votes (13.1 per cent). An investigation into Coyne's actions during the election, led by Andrew Murray, the union's chief of staff, resulted in Coyne being fired for the misuse of data in June 2017. Coyne's subsequent complaint to the Trades Union Certification Officer was dismissed on all ten counts, and the officer found that Coyne had included misleading information in some of his election literature.

Announced retirement and election of successor In August 2021, McCluskey announced his retirement as the general secretary of Unite after ten years in the role. In the lead up to electing a replacement for McCluskey, the union's left-wing United Left faction held a hustings and ballot to determine a single candidate for the faction, which was won by the union's assistant general secretary Steve Turner. Turner, who was seen as close to McCluskey, was subsequently endorsed by McCluskey in the upcoming election. Four candidates, including Turner, made it through to the ballot to replace McCluskey as the Unite general secretary. On 25 August 2021, the candidate Sharon Graham won the election taking office as Unite general secretary the following day.

Allegations of financial mismanagement within Unite McCluskey has been the subject of controversy regarding financial dealings by Unite when he was general secretary. In 2016, it was reported that Unite had contributed £400,000 towards a London flat purchased by him in his role as general secretary. Union officials defended the arrangement, stating that it was an equity agreement rather than a loan and that Unite would hold 60% of the property and receive that fraction of the sale price when eventually sold. McCluskey bought out the union's share of the flat in 2018, amidst a potential probe into his re-election as general secretary.

In January 2021, Unite's executive counsel convened to discuss cost overruns on a union-funded building project undertaken by Paul Flanagan, a close personal associate of McCluskey; the construction works, which were originally supposed to cost £7 million pounds, had reached a cost of £96.5 million by January 2021, with an estimated £15 million in profits accruing to Flanagan. In December 2021, Sharon Graham announced an independent inquiry into the project. In February 2022, it was revealed that independent valuations of the completed building project, which includes a hotel, a conference center, and Unite's regional offices, came in at between £27 and £29 million pounds, roughly £70 million less than the project's cost of just under £100 million. McCluskey defended the building project, describing it as a “sensible investment of members’ money, resulting in a world-class facility that will return an income for our union for generations to come”.

Retirement After retirement as Unite general secretary, McCluskey's second book Always Red was released in December 2021; his first book, Why You Should Be a Trade Unionist, was published in 2020, during his third term as general secretary.

In October 2021, McCluskey told Scottish Labour to back another Scottish independence referendum in order to win back support from the Scottish National Party. "We've been telling Labour in Scotland since 2007 – when a certain Nicola Sturgeon won a seat in Glasgow – to wake up and smell the coffee," he told Good Morning Scotland. "The reality is the SNP have stolen the radical clothes of Scottish Labour and Scottish Labour have lost the trust of ordinary working people. They're going to have to battle really strongly [to regain that trust]. In my opinion they should support a second referendum on independence - what they actually do when that referendum comes can still be debated."

Books

Personal life McCluskey was married to Ann for more than 20 years; the couple had a son. After moving to the T&GWU lead office in London, McCluskey had a child with Jennie Formby in 1991; both names are listed on the birth certificate. From 1994, McCluskey lived with Paula Lace (now Williams) with whom he had a daughter.

Prior to the 2015 general election, he was a close friend and ally of Tom Watson, with whom he had briefly shared a flat in south London. He fell out with Watson over the latter's involvement in the 2016 challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.