 Since 2010, Lin McCloskey has been the general secretary of United Trade Union, Britain's largest private sector trade union. That's going to change very soon. There are three people who are vying to replace him as the union's general secretary. One is Sharon Graham, another is Gerard Coyne. Today, we're joined by Steve Turner. Steve. Hi, Aaron. Welcome to Downstream. How are you doing? Very well. Thanks. Great to be back again as well. I think the last time I was with you was just before we locked down in March last year, so 15 months ago. But yeah, great. It was a really long time ago. It was, yeah. I think we were talking about the furlough scheme at the time and what was going to come. We've just done the negotiations with government. And then it was announced about three or four days later already. Well, that's why they call you Mr. Furlough. Let's start right from the top because obviously I think people are going to be really interested in the United Race for two reasons. One is obviously there's the labour dimension. Everybody's talking about that. It's been this huge player in the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, the reinvigoration of the left. But of course, there's this other much bigger aspect, which is fighting for your members, especially in the context of the pandemic. Let's start right from the beginning. Tell me a little bit about yourself, your parents, where you come from? I joined our union as a non-in-unit. I left school without any qualifications, couldn't wait to get out. I think it was a bit of a mutual part in a ways. And I went to work for my dad. My dad was, he was self-employed at the time and he did a bit of window cleaning, washed cars, bit of painting, put a fence up, did anything that he could put his hands to. I was one of five kids. So I went and did some work with him. I had quite a difficult upbringing myself and I got into some trouble. And anyway, cut long story short, I joined our union the day I went to work for London Buses as a bus conductor in South London at Worf. And I had a shop steward put their arm around me at that point and took me on the next stage of my journey, straightened me out really and gave me an opportunity to become the person that I am now. And I think I could have been a very different person and a lot of my friends were very different people and ended up in very different places. So yeah, my whole journey started as a shop steward on London Buses and from that I've spent 39 years learning and listening to our members, leading our members, hopefully in the right direction. We've won lots and lots and lots of battles. We've lost a few battles and we've lost some people on the way. But the reality is I'll never stop learning. I've never stopped listening to our members. I've been an officer of our union in London region. I've been a national officer of our union and I'm very proud now to be our assistant general secretary for manufacturing. And we're in Bermond's. You were sort of raised quite near here, weren't you? Yeah, I live at the Elephant and Castle on a council estate which is now no longer with us, the Agate estate in a gross act of class cleansing. The local council pulled it down in favour of luxury apartments that now you couldn't afford to move anywhere close to. And so yeah, the Agate was my sort of life upbringing really. I've got a lot of my life experiences from the Agate estate and I'm still passionate now about the need for council housing. I mean, I still campaign for council housing. I think it's important that our members have a decent, affordable, secure, safe roof over their heads as it is to have a decent wage at work. I never left my trade unionism at the factory gate and I never left it at the office door. It was always about making a difference for people and you can make that difference in so many different ways. Of course we do that at work. That's our primary focus as a trade union. But so much that impacts on our members' living standards and their lives happens outside of the workplace. Whether that's big capital P politics or small community politics, local government, mayors, decisions about housing, decisions about social support, community local services. And I've been really proud of the work that we've done as a union to support those services and oppose 10 years of austerity, failed ideological cuts in local government and elsewhere with our community initiative, which I'm very proud to have led since the start. We gave a home to those that weren't in paid employment. For the first time since the unemployed workers movement, it's really decades ago, Unite opened its doors up and it gave people an opportunity to come together and collectivise what was really a very individual pain that people were going through in their communities. And it gave them not just that voice, but the ability to stand in solidarity with one another. And we've done that all the way through. They stand with our industrial members and we stand with them on campaigns from hospital closures or local surgeries right through the education of their children to the provision of a greener environment in their community or home. Whatever it may be, the issue is important to them. You said you got involved in the union 19 and that was kind of like a big moment for you. Were you political before then? Were you political as a teenager, as a young adult? Yeah, I was. My brother was very political. He was on one of the first brigades to go out to Cuba a long, long time ago. And he worked on London buses as well. I remember one of the falling outs that I had in score calls was I was part of a group that called himself Scan. It was school kids against the Nazis with the rise of the NF as it was then in the 1970s. And I remember my first political awakening, I suppose, was in Lewisham Archery, opposing the NF marching in Lewisham, which then became a very famous incident. We're standing there as a young kid being faced down, really, by coppers on allspac. It was charging us, not charging fascists, not stopping fascists remarking for our community, but they were stopping us from protesting against fascists. And then, of course, they diverted the fascists away and came on to attack us once again, while the fascists went off and had their little valley somewhere else with police protection. And it was quite disgraceful. And that was a real awakening for me, a political awakening for me, not just about the role of fascism, but also the role of the state and the police in protecting the fascists. And then, of course, two years later, we were in the Victoria Park for Rock Against Racism and the big festival that we had there engaged, you know, thousands and thousands of young people in politics for the first time, a bit like the movements of today, like the People's Assembly that I'm really well associated with. I mean, I've been the chair of the People's Assembly since we formed it nearly 10 years ago now. And that has attracted a different audience, a different demographic. It's opened up politics to a younger, more diverse generation that have got things to say and they're angry and they're frustrated and they want to protest and campaign and take actions to improve their lives. Do you think, because obviously you're from South London, you're a Millwall fan, aren't you? I am a Millwall fan, yeah. You're a guy, sort of middle age, white guy. The media would try and portray somebody like you, working class person, as having a bunch of attitudes clear. You come from a very different place, posing fascism in Lewisham. You obviously have a socialist politics. How do you feel about the sort of the misrepresentation of working class people by the media? Do you think it's a new thing? Is it getting worse? Is it just something we're always going to have to put up with? I don't think it's a new thing. I think they don't understand working class communities. I mean, most people are right for the press in that professional way. Very few of them would know working class community if they walked through one. I mean, I'm very proud of my upbringing. I came from a society we're meeting today in the Peak Friends Factory. Peak Friends, I know my mates' mums worked in Peak Friends. Yeah, when it was a biscuit factory, the women of Peak Friends were some of the first women to come out, workers to come out, to support the general strike in 1926. We had a Hartley's Jam Factory down the road. We got the Sarsons Vinegar Factory on Tower Bridge Road. These were working, deep working class communities that were very proud and stood in solidarity with one another. And that's what I think the press don't understand. The ruling classes will never understand solidarity in the way in which working class people do. I mean, we never locked our doors because we had fuck all, you know, and we had nothing to nick off of. We were all in the same place. And that developed a sense of unity and solidarity and common purpose to improve the lot of not just your life, but the lot of everybody. We want to raise everybody, give everybody the opportunity to raise themselves and to fulfill their ambitions in life. Everybody's got talent. We're not born into, you know, unless you're born into riches and wealth and a good education, you know, you're in a very different place. And I want people to, you know, fulfill their ambitions in life. I had nothing when I left school. It's the union that gave me the opportunity to be the person that I am. And I want to put my collective arm around all of those that are out there now, looking for support. Do you think Steve Turner, 19-year-old Steve Turner today, if they were in the same situation going on the buses and they joined, you know, the union, do you think they would be given the same opportunities that you've enjoyed over the last 30 years? Or do you think that the labour movement's taken such a big step back that actually the young person probably wouldn't? Or, you know, where do you stand on that? I think young people are in a different place now. We've got to reach out to young people. We've got to be relevant to young people. And we've got to organize or give hope in those sectors that we can do better. We deserve better and we can win better. So we've got to reach out into the areas where young people are now. Very few young people start work on London buses. Now, very few people will start work on the post office. Now, those traditional areas where working class kids would go into, you know, big mainstream workplaces that don't really exist any longer. They're now talking about the gig economy, people working to an algorithm, getting their jobs on an algorithm and getting sacked. I know people that work in that sector. I mean, I talk to them whenever I'm out on my history and they'll tell me that they've got, you know, 10 hours work and if they don't deliver the last job, they simply don't get any more work tomorrow. They're sacked. They've been sacked by an algorithm, not by a voice. They haven't got nobody to appeal to. There's no phone number. There's no personnel manager. There's no appeals process. They just simply don't receive any more work through their smartphone. And that's the environment that so many young people are in. And we need to find answers to that. I'm not saying that there is this magic. No one's got a magic wand. There is no magical answer to that. But I think what the GMB did recently with Uber, challenging the false pretext that they're self-employed and winning employment status, I think that's a fantastic achievement. And I take me out of the GMB for doing that. I'm talking to Just Eat tomorrow about doing something very similar in that sort of delivery environment and seeing whether or not together jointly as unions, I'm not doing this on behalf of Unite. I'm doing this on behalf of our movement. I think our movement needs to reach out to young people, give a home to young people, be relevant to young people, give them the confidence that someone's got their back. And I think that's really important. When I grew up, the unions, they had my back. They gave me an opportunity to be something different from what I was. And they gave me the education to do that as well through our shops stewards program, a training program. They gave me the confidence to start. I was always a cocky little kid, you know, but they gave me the confidence to stand up and articulate an argument and win an argument with an employer that came from a completely different background to me. But I could win it through power of argument. And the fact that I had 400 workers standing behind me, I wasn't just standing there alone. We talked about the misrepresentation of working class people. Do you think that we're talking about young people right now, some hours I'll ask the question. Do you think young people are hated by the media in a way that again seems relatively new? I mean, I saw a statistic not long ago, and it said the average age of, I think, a seasoned ticket holder in the Stratford End, Manchester United in the late 60s, early 70s, was 18, 19 years old. And you think today a young person, a rebellious working class young person, can't afford to go and watch the football. And it feels to me that it's almost like a real animosity, a hatred of young people, of young workers that just wasn't maybe there 30, 40 years ago. I mean, young people going to Stratford End probably couldn't afford to travel to get to Manchester. But the reality is that there's young people are being treated like that. Young people have been priced out of their communities. I mean, I've got three kids myself, you know, outside of them pitching a tent in the garden, they're opportunity to get home, to start on that first rung of the ladder. There is no council housing. So they're having to rent in a private sector economy, where landlords will evict you at the drop of an app or just simply increase your rent to a state that you can't afford to pay rent. I mean, people in London, people in big cities, people in rural communities now being priced out of private landlord accommodation. And there's no security in that course. So they're looking to try and see whether or not they can put, you know, their roots down and start a family. They want to do that. And they want to buy a property. They want to buy a flat or something. And they're just completely priced out of it. They've got no hope of doing that. So young people are finding it really, really difficult now, much more difficult than I found it. I think when I was 19. And that is the way in which society has treated young people and is treating young people now with a contempt really, and trying to create this intergenerational divide between the elderly generation, those that are in retirement that have got occupational pensions and that they fought for, by the way, one of the biggest tragedies of our last 10 years has been the way in which we've allowed employers to dismantle occupational pensions. So we're now reliant just on a state pension. But that intergenerational, false intergenerational divide that the state is trying to create between the abs and the avnauts, the shirkers and the workers, you know, I mean, it's completely false, completely false. And we have to argue that one out. We have to win that argument and win that battle of ideas that are better, fairer, greener economy, full employment, decent employment, not precarious jobs, decent employment, unionized jobs, well paid, secure work, is possible. It absolutely is possible. We just talked about media and staying relevant in the 21st century. Unite TV, is there going to be a Havana bureau, you know, correspondence in Gaza? If there was an Havana bureau, I'd probably be visiting it myself, you know. But no, that's not that's not on my my agenda, to be honest with you. I mean, Unite TV is a really interesting concept. This is about using digital platforms to better communicate with our members, to sell our story. And we're not going to do that for the mainstream media. So we have to be thinking about how we can use digital technologies, how we can use podcasts and vlogs, all sorts of different methods to get messages out to our people, but also to talk to our people and to listen to our members. So I want to use that sort of, call it Unite TV, call it what you like. I want to use that opportunity that we've got now with new technologies to reach out, to listen, to learn from our members, to engage with our people, to open our union to our members as well. I want our members to see what our union looks like from the inside. And we can do that, doing podcasts with members, staff and officers, a day in the life of, if you like. And also, of course, most importantly, probably, it's about sharing our stories and building solidarity around the disputes that our members are participating in, making sure that, you know, when workers can offer very practical solidarity to workers in trouble, that they won't know about that dispute, but also know about what they can do to support it. And we've got to find ways of doing that. Like I said, we won't do that in the mainstream media. So we can do that. You can do it on Twitter, of course, you can do it on Facebook, but we can do it on YouTube. We can do it through posting on various different platforms. So I want to, I'm interested in that. I think there are opportunities to do that. So Unite TV is one of those. And I want to invest in that. I think this is a good investment for us. Len McCluskey, who's the President General Secretary. I mean, he's been a really huge influence in terms of the political contours of the Labour Party, not just as Jeremy Corbyn, but getting candidates from the left selected as MPs. And then since 2015, of course, Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. What would Unite under your leadership do regarding the Labour Party? Would it look a bit different? You've had, Howard Beckett has now pulled out, talked about defunding Labour. Sharon Graham and other rivals said, didn't say that, but she said something similar. And then you've got Gerard Coyne, who effectively seems to be saying that he would give money to Labour. No questions asked. You know, regardless of what happens, you can have the cash, which I mean, personally, I find a bit of a strange position, but at least you've got choices there. Your position. Yeah. What's yours? Well, I developed our political strategy many years ago with many others on our executive and with Len, of course. And our political strategy has been one of engaging our members with Labour and making our voices heard within our party, making our party look and sound more like the people that it represents. And also empowering our people, good shop stewards actually, good representatives, whether locally in local councils to stand for election in mayoral elections, or indeed to stand for election at Westminster. And we've been pretty successful at that. We've had a lot of good people who have come through our political program. And we'll continue with that. We have to continue with that. Labour's my party. Labour is my home. I'm disappointed with the direction of travel at the moment. I mean, I'm under no illusions about the difficulties that we face. I want Labour to reach out with its voice back into the people that it represents, into working class communities with a vision that allows people not just to trust it, but to believe in a message from Labour. And I think we've lost our way there. We're not talking to communities right now. We haven't got a vision. We're not articulating it. We're not campaigning. We've lost our way. And in order to regain that, I'm not talking about a change in leadership or anything. I mean, Labour, party MPs, Westminster will talk for itself on that. But look, the reality is we have to shape up and shape up fast. Because we're losing ground in our communities. Working class people are losing confidence in our party. We're not saying what it says on the tin. Doesn't the leadership matter though? Because you have this, to Barclay in 2019, a bunch of reasons. One of them is Brexit. Arguably one is Jeremy Corbyn. One is too much policy. I think the biggest is always going to be media ownership in this country. Put that to one side. And then heartlands are lost principally because of Brexit, places like the West Midlands and the Northeast. And the response then is a London lawyer. I like London lawyers. I'm not denigrating London lawyers. But this seems a strange response to me politically. A London human rights lawyer who was the face of a second referendum. And obviously he has to have a compensate because of that. And now we have a situation where nobody really knows what he stands for. Is he a social conservative? Is he a social liberal? Does he want to, you know, is he a pro-European? Is he actually agreeing with the toys on Brexit? Do you not think it's a problem for Labour that right now nobody really knows where the number one person is actually at and what he thinks? Well, I'm not sure where Keir Starmer knows where Keir Starmer is. I mean, I think that's part of the problem. I don't agree that we lost the Red Bull seats in 2019 due to Brexit. I think we were losing Red Bull seats for a long time before that. Politics have disengaged from communities and we've taken far too many people for granted for generations actually. I think that's a long, deep-rooted problem that we've got to find solutions to. We've got to re-engage and be relevant to those communities. I mean, Brexit was clearly a big issue in 2019. It was the issue of the election. Some under no illusions about that. I don't take the 2019 election and say, well, you know, it wasn't about the programme. It was about anything other than Brexit. We had a fantastic manifesto. I didn't support Keir Starmer in the election. He wasn't my preferred candidate, but I'm a socialist, but I'm a Democrat. And he was elected as the leader. He was elected, though, on the 10-point plan. And I want him to deliver his 10-point plan. I want him to unite our party. We can't be a divided party. We have to act and we have to act quickly now to get back into our communities with a very clear message that gives people hope in a very clear vision of a better, fairer, greener society. And we're not doing that. We're not doing that. So at some point, it's going to come to a question about leadership of the party in the direction of the party. Absolutely right. I don't take that decision on the basis of what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow, but I do want to give the party the opportunity over the next short period in order to put things right because it has to put things right. We're in a bad place at the moment and we're not talking to communities. We're not talking to our people that we haven't got a clear coherent message. We haven't got a vision. We're not articulating a vision. And that's a problem. People won't vote for you if they don't know what you stand for. If Labour came third in the battle in the Spen, surely Keir Starmer wouldn't be able to carry on then? Well, I don't know what the election result is going to be. I mean, they could win it, obviously. But that's the opportunity for the leadership, isn't it? If they win it, then these questions disappear. Yeah, absolutely. There are other issues in battle in Spen, no doubt. But you do have to go out and you have to... People need to know what you stand for. You have to have a vision in politics. Like we have to have a vision for our union in this general secretary election. You have a vision and you've got to instill confidence in people that you're going to deliver on it. People have to trust you. They need to know that you've got their back. And people don't know that Labour's got their back right now. They're confused about Labour right now. They're not sure the direction of travel. We've got too much naval gazing, too much in-fighting, too many suspensions going on, the silencing of democratic debate in our local constituency parties. All of that is wrong and must stop. Those that are suspended must be brought back to the party. Jeremy must be brought back into the BLP. I'm under no illusions about this. And I'll work as hard as I can work to make sure that that happens. I want Labour in government. I want Labour in government locally. Labour governments make a difference for working people, a real difference for working people. They don't always deliver what we want them to deliver, of course, but I know what a Tory government is delivering for working-class people and I don't like that. I want a Labour government, but I want a Labour government with a passion and a vision and a government that I can be proud of, that speaks for working people, but delivers on the aspirations of ordinary working people. And we're miles away from that right now. So we have to shape up and we have to shape up very, very quickly. And if Keir at the end of the day is not the person to do that, then we'll have to reconsider where we are. Final question. I don't know what your plans are, if you do win or how long you'd want to be the General Secretary, but just speculatively, if you were in the job for as long as Lamb and Classy, 10 years time, 2030, where would you like the union and the Labour Party to be? What would be the ideal situation? What would be the legacy of somebody like you being in charge? Labour will be in government and our movement will be the largest, most powerful voice for working people in our nations. I think we are there right now in terms of the 10 years we've got to replace that we can be incredibly proud of, speaking for our members. And we are the most powerful voice for working people in our nations. I want us to grow. I want us to reach out into new emerging sectors of the economy. I want us to build an organisation that we can be proud of. I want us to be front of the line in terms of transition in our economy to meet the challenges of the climate emergency. I think that's one of the biggest challenges of our generation as trade unionists actually. We shape the future of work and we need to be confident in that. We need to have a workers transition to a greener economy and that means new jobs, but millions of new jobs. It means a million new jobs in our local government services, our NHS, a new national care service. All of these failures that we've seen in the past 10 years, we have to address and only a Labour government is going to do that. A Tory government is not going to do that. You know, a delusion or if we think there's an alternative to labouring conservatism, that's not the case. So we have to elect a Labour government to make those radical changes. I want to see that. I want to see us fighting for those, a transition of our industrial heartlands, a re-emergence of our manufacturing base. We need that change in our economy from a service sector, finance capital driven economy to one where manufacturing is once again centre stage so that we can resource the funding of our public services through foreign taxation and the way in which we export into a wider global economy. So there's lots and lots of things that we need to do. It's not about where we've been in the last 10 years, it's about how the world of work is changing and changing rapidly and if we're going to maintain our position in that environment, we have to change as quickly. So I'm really excited about the future. I'm launching my green print next week, which is about those millions of new green jobs, about how we transition our economy, our industries, how we generate the hydrogen that we need in order to take fossil fuels out of our homes, how we build a million new council houses, how we retrofit millions of others, but how we also manufacture the products to do that here in the UK. So the heat pumps and the heat exchanges, you know the double glazing, the wind turbines to generate electricity using natural resources, we have the largest single wind farms in Europe off the coast of the east coast in the North Sea and in the Irish Sea in the Northwest and yet we don't manufacture a single wind turbine here in the UK. Not a single one, we import more. These are the jobs of the future, apprenticeships for our kids. Let's give people hope that we can be better and we can win that better fairer society and I think we can do that. I'm confident that we can do that, but I can't do that alone. We have to build a movement to do that and that's a bigger movement than just trade union movement and that's why the point earlier about, you know, we have a responsibility and a duty to build a wider social movement for change is really important in this election. It's about how we continue to fund those bodies outside of our own union that do give us hope. I mean the People's Assembly, I'm very proud to be the chair of the People's Assembly, but it was that movement in the last nine years that fought against ideological austerity, the economics of austerity that positioned ourselves in order to get Jeremy elected in 2015. It kept the anti-austerity argument alive for a movement and for a generation and that wouldn't necessarily have been the case. Had we not built that social movement outside of our official trade unions. So, you know, I am excited. I think there's real opportunities, huge challenges, of course there is, but there's real opportunities out there to make a difference and I can see that transformative society. I want to see full employment. Now, where do we lose the ambition for full employment? But what does a job look like? What does a job in 10 years look like? Will it be the 38, 40 hour week? Will it be a 20 hour week? Will it be shared work? I want to talk about shared work, but I also want to talk about our fair share of the wealth that we create. You know, we create the common wealth of our nations. So, let's make sure that we benefit from that. So, I'm not talking about short working time with reduced pay. I'm talking about sharing the work out that we've got and God forbid in 10 years time, maybe human beings will be able to fulfill their true potential as human beings and not just simply go to work, come home, be so tired, sit down, have a bit of dinner, go to bed, get up and go to work. Maybe we'll actually have the ability to participate in our communities and in the wider politics of society because we've won that. We've won it. I always say that we look back and we say we stand on the shoulders of giants and I'm a great believer in that because we inherited. My dad died last year and he was 94. 94, absolutely. I found his NUS card, National Union of Siemens card and it was signed for 1944 and it was the day he joined the merchant navy to defeat fascism as a young 17 year old and he joined his union on the day that he did that. But when he came back, he said we didn't fight and win that battle in order to come back to the poverty and desperation of the 1920s and the 1930s. They came back with a vision to build a better place and they built millions of council houses. They built the welfare state. They built the national health service. They gave free education to all. They built our shop stewards movement. They won decent rates of pay. They won rights for trade unionism. They won collective bargaining provisions. They won pensions, occupational pensions. You know, they won all of that and we inherit that. We inherit it and I want in 10 years time, in 20 years time, I want those sitting down writing history books then to look back at us as those same giants. I think we've got an opportunity to be them giants that they look back on and can be proud of because we stood up to the challenges of today, which are very different from the challenges of the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s, but there's still real challenges that will transform our economy in our way of life.