Letters: SW is wrong on Unite union leadership race, abstention is best

One of the ‘mega pickets’ during the Birmingham bin workers’ strike (Picture: Guy Smallman)

Socialist Worker’s article on the Unite union general secretary election rightly argues that the “buffet of bad choices” highlights the need to build a rank and file alternative.

But it says that Socialist Worker supporters in Unite will “cast a critical vote for Sharon Graham”, the incumbent general secretary.

Clearly, her challenger Simon Dubbins is no alternative to Graham, as your article rightly points out.

But your article seems to suggest that Graham will be slightly better, but doesn’t explain why. Where is the evidence for this?

Her strategy of “back to the workplace” has “allowed” more local strikes.

But in the key local strike—the Birmingham bin dispute which your article fails to mention—Graham refused to mobilise the membership of Unite.

Instead, she farmed the building of solidarity to third parties such as We Demand Change and Strike Map and sold out the dispute.

Yes, Dubbins attacks Graham for “leaving an empty seat” at Labour’s table, but she is not more left wing than him over the party.

Graham increasingly attacks the leadership of the Labour Party from the right. She has campaigned to prevent Ed Miliband becoming Burnham’s chancellor because of his opposition to new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

She welcomed “the long awaited” increase in arms spending and in her manifesto she boasts that Unite secured contracts for Leonardo, the arms manufacturer.

The arms and oil manufacturers will be cheering if she wins.

The danger is that advising Unite members to vote for Graham will disorientate those who feel let down by her and those who don’t support increasing arms spending.  

This confusion will not only be among Unite members, but also among the best activists within the anti-racist, Palestine solidarity, climate and anti-war movements.

A case for voting for neither is not a passive position, just a different approach and a more effective one.

We should be organising meetings led by striking Unite members where we can put an argument why both candidates will not build a rank-and-file led, militant union.

We must think again on this.

Liz Wheatley, Karen Reissmann, Sean Vernell, Regi Pilling, Jon Woods, Ameen Hadi, Tasha Bednall, Kambiz Boomla, Sean Wallis, Richard McEwan, Ken Muller, Jordan Rivera, Julie Forgan, Nick Ruff, Suzanne Jeffery, Saira Weiner, Huw Williams, Peta Bulmer, Margot Hill, Michael Holland, Helen Davies, Carlo Morelli

No need for nuclear

I read your interview with Matt Huber (Socialist Worker, 22 June). It is surprising that anyone on the left thinks there is a need for nuclear power.

Uranium mining, processing and transport requires huge quantities of water.

Two reactors in France had to shut down in the recent heatwave, as the temperature of the water for cooling was too high.

Most nuclear power stations are near the coast. The waste and dangerous fuel on site are at risk from storms and coastal erosion.

All coastal nuclear power stations–which is every British one–are extremely vulnerable to sea level rise.

That’s before we get into private contractors. Far better to reduce energy use, encourage solar, wind and other renewables and develop long-life, easily recycled batteries.

Nuclear energy is a technocratic solution that fails to take into account the unintended costs and fails to even mention the waste inherent in capitalist production and consumption.

The billionaires can set up their luxury “bunkers”, the rest of us need to organise and fight for a society that looks after all our needs.

Merlin Reader, London

Artificial intelligence is not liberatory tech

Recently I saw a digital flyer put out by the NEU education union protesting against Reform UK in St Helens, near Liverpool.

It was clear to me that the flyer had been generated using ChatGPT, with its generic icons next to bullet point lists and brush-stroke style blocks of colour.

Of course, I agree with the cause. Libraries in St Helens have already removed LGBT+ books from display after Reform UK won the local election. People need to see that there’s resistance to them.

But AI is not a liberatory technology.

The end goal of its creators is not to save workers time, but to save the bosses money.

And they do this by displacing workers. It is built on the labour—often stolen—of other workers.

Using AI gives the impression that you don’t care about the cause or about people whose work is being stolen.

And, on top of that, it’s contributing to our ecological destruction which can be felt keenly.

Matt, Liverpool

Fake frenzy on safety

Following the murder of Ann Widdecombe, the media is whipping up a frenzy around politicians’ safety.

The snivelling, grifting, racist coward Nigel Farage is currently bleating on the media about his “safety” and “security”.

But Farage didn’t give a damn about the safety and security of black nurses in Belfast after his far right lies incited violence.

He didn’t care about the safety of Asian pedestrians in Glasgow when he set racist mobs on them last month, did he?

Sasha Simic, east London