Zionist subversion of the trade union movement in United Kingdom

By David Miller

The British trade unions have become a new target for subversion by the Zionist movement, as evidenced by the actions of Unite, one of the largest and most left-wing trade unions in the country.

In June, Unite issued a decree to ban from all its buildings the film ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn - The Big Lie’. The film tells the story of the sabotage, racism and coordinated smear campaigns of the Labour right and the influential Israel lobby to bring down Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader and defame the left.

The move appears to have been triggered by the showing of the film at Unite’s Tony Benn House in Bristol, but it first came to light in the union’s south-east region, where a planned showing at Unite’s regional headquarters in Portsmouth was cancelled by its regional secretary.

The union has even gone so far as to ban its branches from even making donations to support the film and its makers.

In July, it emerged that a book launch event had been cancelled. It was the best-selling book ‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism’ by Asa Winstanley. The meeting was again scheduled at the Tony Benn House, the Unite building in Bristol.

On this occasion, it appears that both the General Secretary and the President of the union were personally involved. The assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail confirmed that she was acting on the express instructions of her boss, the-President Sharon Graham, which dismissed claims by Graham’s supporters that she was not personally involved.

The email also confirmed that the union has been co-opted by Zionist talking points because Cartmail referred to the propaganda line about the ‘deep hurt’ caused to British Jews by factual reporting on Zionist subversion of UK politics.

As it appears, Zionist subversive groups were not slow to take responsibility for the censorship carried out by the union. The so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism boasted on Twitter that it was behind the banning of the meeting.

Perhaps more worrying is the fact that the whispering campaign against the film and Asa Winstanley’s book is being carried on in left-wing unions, both in the Unite and in the famously left-wing RMT - the Rail Maritime and Transport union. 

It turns out that a key vector of the Zionist penetration of Unite and the RMT is a little-known and cult-like left-wing group called the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.

It advances discredited Zionist talking points that there is a specifically “left-wing” anti -Semitism and that critiques of Zionism as a political ideology on the left are often a camouflage for racism against Jews. Winstanley tweeted a screengrab of a message sent by Pete Radcliff, an AWL activist, smearing the author as an “antisemite”.

There are many Zionist infiltrators in the Trades Union movement in the UK. But, there is also a formal Israeli lobby group - the Britain-Israel Trade Union Dialogue, formerly known as Trade Union Friends of Israel. 

Its Vice President is Doreen Gerson, who has been involved with TUFI for over 35 years.  By 2011, she had “taken more than 30 delegations of trade unionists to see Israel”.

Zionist subversion of trade union

The UK’s biggest trade unions are all affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the Trades Union Congress has a long-standing policy promoting Palestinian rights.

At the same time as working for TUFI, Gerson was the Embassy of Israel’s Representative, in the North West of England – running its Israel Information Centre.  BITUD claims she ceased this position in 2016, but she is listed in that role to this day.

A decade ago, unions like the GMB opposed Trades Union Friends of Israel and banned members from going on propaganda trips. The GMB voted at its 2013 annual conference to uphold a 2011 decision to “take a lead in driving forward” BDS -boycott and divestment and sanctions. 

The union also noted that “a major priority” of TUFI is to fight BDS and it thus “campaigns against the policy of this union.” Hence it determined that GMB members be banned from participating in TUFI visits to Israel.

As part of its fightback, TUFI renamed itself so that it would be less obviously a pro-Israel group and more seemingly neutral. Thus the name: Britain Israel Trade Union Dialogue.

Today, the senior leadership of the GMB has been captured by Zionists with General Secretary Gary Smith writing in the Zionist press in 2022 about the union’s commitment to fighting a fictional “rising antisemitism”.

The union is at the forefront of attempting to cancel pro-Palestine speakers and activists.

A key moment was the role of Momentum leader Rhea Wolfson in allegedly targeting GMB shop steward Pete Gregson for his anti-Zionist activism. 

Wolfson was an organiser for the GMB in Scotland and is a longstanding Zionist hate-monger. For example, she is a member of the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement and was Community and Outreach Manager at the New Israel Fund UK (Sep 2013 - Aug 2015) as well as the National Chair of the Zionist youth group RSY-Netzer, The Movement for Reform Judaism (Sep 2011 - Sep 2013).

She was also close to the cult-like Zionist group, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, having been on the editorial board of its magazine Clarion.

She is now the Head of Internal and Industrial Relations at GMB, where she continues to pursue Zionist objectives against the interests of the mass of members of the GMB.

Union General Secretary Smith was behind de-platforming the rapper Lowkey from the Tolpuddle festival in 2022. In May 2023, the GMB suspended a former employee and current member – simply because his branch passed a motion calling for disaffiliation from the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.

Predictably, the Alliance of Workers’ Liberty sprang to the defence of the Zionist witch-hunters who had targeted Pete Gregson and extended the smear campaign against him.

They also unsurprisingly supported both Gary Smith for leadership of the GMB and Sharon Graham at Unite.  And now we see the results in the attempt to blunt the edge of pro-Palestine campaigning in the trade union movement.

David Miller is the producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy. 

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