Banned and Airbrushed

The editor of this site David Beaumont has been secretly banned from the  'United Left' email group.  We say secretly because even he wasn't told let alone the other members and no reasons were given. In addition six of his posts have been airbrushed from the group's archives.

The United Left  group is supposedly an amalgamation of the TGWU left and the Amicus left, of which David has been a member for over 15 years.  In reality though the Amicus Left split and the TGWU Left was always a tiny but powerful General Secretary's supporters club.  The group purports to be the Left in the union but its list currently has only 193 members.  Many of these are paid union officials (some even using their official '@unitetheunion.com' email address) and some members maintain duplicate addresses.

To put the 193 figure in context, dearunite.com's mailout list has just under 3,000 email addresses and the Union has 1.2 to 1.7 million members.  So you can see there is something wrong with the lay democracy of the union when the paranoid controllers, many of them paid, of a list of 193 people claim to represent the entire
Left in Unite.

The reasons for the ban can only be surmised from the posts that have been airbrushed out.  They are about the role of Woodley's supporters club in donating to the now openly Blairite John Cruddas, and about the machinations to get McCluskey elected as General Secretary.  Plus the occasional mention of the real Left candidate Jerry Hicks. The group's controllers seem to be paranoid that the union machine might fail to mobilise votes behind an increasingly uninspiring but still slick McCluskey. Here's one of the airbrushed posts. A few of the list controllers are partial to abusing members "e.g. you really are a disgrace" "you really are scum", "scum and liars"... you get the drift). 

The list owner is technically Pete Gillard, a member of the Socialist Workers Party (though the SWP may be liable to split and change at any time!).  In reality though the list was always controlled by Woodley's supporters club and is in the process of transition to a McCluskey supporters club.  Ironically the SWP's official policy is to oppose Len McCluskey for the General Secretary position.


David Beaumont's posts had been vetted in the past, last one being 30/7/10 when one of his posts on the Labour Leadship was delayed 1/2 hour without reason or informing him:

You will not find the list unless you are personally invited but the direct web location is groups.google.com/group/UnitedLeft?hl=en