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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Trade unions are key to Labour being a party for the many
From its foundation to today, it has been the unions that guarantee the working-class politics of the party, writes RICHARD BURGON MP
Unite members march through London as part of the TUC's campaign for a new deal for workers in May 2018

LAST weekend I was honoured to be the guest speaker at the biannual meeting of Unite the Union’s United Left — the left network within the UK’s largest trade union.

Addressing that meeting gave me an opportunity to reflect on the key role that the United Left, and more widely the left across the trade union movement, has played in getting us to a socialist-led Labour Party and hopefully a socialist led government.

United Left played an absolutely central role in making Unite the Union a fighting, left-led trade union. Key to that was the development of Unite’s Political Programme which Unite general secretary Len McCluskey declared was “to reclaim the Labour Party for working class values.”

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