Gerard Coyne told he must leave the union after 28 years after investigation concluded he had misused data

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A senior Unite official who lost a close battle with Len McCluskey to lead Britain’s biggest union has been sacked.

Gerard Coyne, who was the union’s West Midlands regional organiser, was told that he must leave after 28 years for the misuse of data.

He lost out in the April election by fewer than 6,000 votes after challenging McCluskey’s leadership.



The union election was described as a battle for the heart and soul of the Labour party, which Unite bankrolls with £1.5m a year.



McCluskey, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s key allies and leader of the organisation that is Labour’s most generous donor, has called for the deselection of MPs who fail to back Labour’s leader. Coyne was backed by many MPs unhappy with Corbyn’s leadership.

The investigation into Coyne was led by Andrew Murray, Unite’s chief of staff who was seconded to the Corbyn campaign during the general election, it is understood.

Coyne was found guilty of using Labour party data and a call centre used by the party’s West Midlands mayoral candidate, Siôn Simon, to contact potential supporters.

During the campaign, McCluskey’s supporters were angered by Coyne’s claim that McCluskey had behaved like a 1970s “union baron”, throwing his weight around in Westminster, making and breaking political careers.



Following the Guardian disclosure that Unite gave a “loan” to McCluskey of £400,000 for a flat, Coyne promised to review payments made for the benefit of union officials.

The incumbent McCluskey, 66, defeated Coyne after a bitter month-long campaign that culminated in Coyne’s suspension from his union role 24 hours before the vote declaration.



McCluskey won 59,067 votes (45.4%), Coyne won 53,544 (41.5%) and grassroots candidate Ian Allinson took 17,143 (13.1%), on a turnout of just over 12%.

Coyne has asked Gerard Walker, the certification officer who oversees union elections, to investigate whether the leader of Unite and his staff manipulated the union’s procedures to win the poll.

Documents show that alleged rule breaches include allowing McCluskey to use databases while stopping Coyne from doing the same during the campaign to become general secretary; union employees actively seeking to prevent Coyne raising the question as to whether union resources were improperly used to assist with the purchase of a luxury flat; and repeated harassment of Coyne and his supporters by union employees.

Coyne said he was tried by a “kangaroo court” and despaired that he was tried by Murray, a former Communist party member.

“I am deeply disappointed but not surprised at my dismissal. When you are in a kangaroo court, you are rarely surprised by the outcome. I have held the post for 16 years and no complaint was raised during the hearing about how I carried out that role.

“However, during the disciplinary process I was informed that union rules require a regional secretary to be ‘the general secretary’s representative in the region’. It was implied that because of the way I criticised Len McCluskey during the campaign I could not fulfil that role any longer,” he said.

Coyne said: “The disciplinary hearing was nothing more than a show trial and the irony is not lost on me that Mr McCluskey’s chief of staff, Andrew Murray – a self-confessed admirer of Joseph Stalin – was the investigator and decision-maker on the charge I was dismissed for.

“It is beyond parody that I, as a 30-year member of the Labour party, should be accused of harming Unite-Labour relations by Mr Murray, a member of the Communist party for 40 years.”

Coyne said he would appeal against the union’s decision and pursue a complaint to the certification officer in the hope the election could be rerun.

“I will not be bullied into silence. Once the certification officer has considered my complaint about the conduct of the election, I am looking forward to a re-run of the contest. We will build a union where members’ interests are always put first – not subordinated to the political machinations of a clique. I will be appealing against the decision.”

A Unite spokesman said: “The decision is subject to a right of appeal to Unite’s executive council, and the union will be offering no further comment on the matter.”