By Andy Yorke

Jerry Hicks, is a rank and file candidate campaigning to become the next Unite General Secretary. A former Rolls Royce convenor, victimised in 2005 for leading unofficial action in defence of jobs, Hicks is only candidate who is not a full-time official in the union (the other three are all deputy General Secretaries!)

His campaign in last year’s General Secretary election struck a cord with workers by calling for a radical change of direction for Unite. Since 2007 Unite’s top-heavy bureaucracy has uncritically bankrolled Labour, while officials call the shots in disputes and undermine striking members. The Unite leadership in the past has refused to defend members such as Vestas or Corus workers from closure, repudiated illegal action such as the Lindsey wildcats, and dictated to workers when they can take action, recently undermining the action at BA. Jerry rejects this record – excellent.

Jerry wants to ban officials from interfering in strike strategy democratically decided by members – “members decide, the union provides” is his slogan – and says Unite should not repudiate action where workers are forced to break the anti-union laws. He is the only candidate calling for all officials to be elected and committing himself to taking an average Unite members’ wage instead of the Derek Simpson’s six-figure salary.

He claims that this is the most important union election for decades – with Labour’s dependence on its funding, and Unite’s 1.7 million members spread across 23 industrial sectors, it is almost “a TUC within the TUC”. If Jerry were to win it would send shockwaves through the union movement and boost the left.

Jerry got 39,000 votes in last year’s General Secretary election to the incumbent Derek Simpson’s 60,000 – a good result for someone as outspoken as Hicks, without a machine behind him and with Unite officialdom united against him. But he faces a tougher challenge this time, with Len McCluskey in the T&G wing of the union backed by the United Left grouping in the union and the current General Secretary Tony Woodley, and both talking left, making militant speeches around the BA strike, criticising Labour and (in McCluskey’s case) using rhetoric about “socialism”.

But McCluskey would not represent a break with the current direction of the Unite leadership. In fact, it was McCluskey who publicly announced, following their ballot, that the BA workers would not strike over Easter, giving away one of the strongest weapons they had at the time.

Jerry is the best candidate – but he needs to go further and organise a nationwide rank and file movement in Unite, committed to dissolving the bureaucracy altogether and organising action without, or even against the will of the official Unite leaders.

If he wins, there would still be a 10,000-plus strong bureaucracy in Unite. But Jerry’s campaign has the potential to ignite a rank and file movement that can replace the officialdom with a fighting alternative leadership.

If rank and file members of Unite can use Jerry’s campaign not just to win him the biggest possible vote for a militant union, but also to build up a nationwide unofficial network of activists committed to transforming Unite, then this could be the beginning of an earthquake in Britain’s biggest union.