LABOUR’S biggest donor has been ordered to re-run an internal election after complaints by a senior Scottish party official and her husband.
The super-union Unite is to hold a fresh contest for the Scottish representative on its governing body after a ruling from the government’s union watchdog, the Certification Officer (CO). The CO’s involvement has lifted the lid on internal feuding within the union, which has donated nearly £14m to Labour since 2010.
The Scottish rep’s post was won in April last year by Davy Brockett, a Unite officer in Glasgow, who says he has been forced to work in England after being blacklisted in Scotland.
His case was raised at a Holyrood committee by Unite Scottish secretary Pat Rafferty, who named him as a victim of unlawful blacklisting.
However, Agnes Tolmie, a former president of the STUC, chair of Scottish Labour’s policy forum and chair of the Scottish Women’s Convention, complained to Unite HQ about Brockett.
She said he was ineligible to be the Scottish rep on Unite’s Executive Council as he didn’t live in that region.
Union officials agreed Brockett was technically ineligible, but after hearing evidence from him in person in December, the Executive Council voted unanimously to let him stay in post.
It is understood Brockett was backed by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.
Tolmie’s action angered many of her fellow members in the socialist United Left group within Unite, which in January expressed a lack of confidence in her for going against a comrade.
That prompted Tolmie’s husband, retired solicitor Ian Murray, to escalate matters with a formal complaint to the CO.
In a written judgment, the CO has now ordered Brockett to quit his post immediately and ordered Unite to re-run the election of its Scottish rep by the end of January.
Murray, a Unite member in Glasgow, said he had complained to the CO because he felt Brockett undermined his wife at the United Left meeting as payback for her complaint.
He said: “When he did that to my wife I thought that, even though it sticks in my craw using Thatcherite legislation [against unions], I thought, ‘F*** him’. He personally attacked my wife, and I did not take too kindly to it. If he had left it alone he would probably have got away with it.”
Brockett denied being behind the United Left action against Tolmie. He said: “As a victim and blacklisted worker, I’m extremely disappointed that someone went to the Certification Officer, but I look forward to contesting the seat again.”
A senior SNP source said: “If Labour are fighting amongst themselves again, I think we should just leave them to it.”
A Unite spokesman said: “A Unite rule was inadvertently broken during last year’s election to the union Executive in one of the Scottish regional constituencies. The union acknowledged this to the Certification Officer, who has directed that the election in that seat only should be re-run. This is now in hand, with a result to be declared in January 2016.”
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