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Always Red
Len McCluskey is the standout trade unionist of his era. Head of the giant Unite union for more than a decade, he is a unique and powerful figure on the political stage. In this major autobiography, McCluskey throws back the curtains on life at the top of the Labour movement—with explosive revelations about his dealings with Keir Starmer, the behind-the-scenes battles of the Corbyn era, his secret Brexit negotiations with Theresa May’s government, the spectacular bust-up with his former friend Tom Watson, and his tortuous relationship with Ed Miliband. McCluskey is no run-of-the-mill trade union leader. Fiercely political, unflinchingly left wing, he is a true workers’ leader. His politics were formed in Liverpool at a time of dock strikes, the Beatles, and the May 1968 revolution in Paris. An eyewitness to the Hillsborough tragedy, he recounts in harrowing detail searching for his son. Witty and sharp, McCluskey delivers a powerful intervention, issuing a manifesto for the future of trade unionism and urging the left not to lose sight of class politics. A central player in a tumultuous period of British political history, McCluskey’s account is an essential—and entertaining—record of our times.
382 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2022
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91 people want to read
About the author
Len McCluskey
7 books5 followersLeonard David McCluskey (b. 1950) is a retired English trade unionist. He was general secretary of Unite the Union, the largest affiliate and a major donor to the Labour Party. As a young adult, he spent some years working in the Liverpool Docks for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company prior to becoming a full-time union official for the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&GWU) in 1979.
McCluskey was elected as the general secretary of Unite in 2010, and was re-elected to his post in 2013 and 2017, before announcing his retirement in 2021. A former member of the Labour Party, McCluskey was on the party's left. He was a key backer and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn during his time as Leader of the Labour Party.
McCluskey was elected as the general secretary of Unite in 2010, and was re-elected to his post in 2013 and 2017, before announcing his retirement in 2021. A former member of the Labour Party, McCluskey was on the party's left. He was a key backer and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn during his time as Leader of the Labour Party.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 27, 2021
This was a completely different sort of read from anything else I’ve read, because it is the story of man I have known, worked with and considered a friend for decades. Len started to work for TGWU nationally a short time after I first got elected on to its’ Executive Council, so almost everything detailed in the book, apart from the tales of his childhood and early days in the docks, I was aware of, and often party to. It is not surprising then that I have a different take on a few of the events recounted: the election of the first proper Chairman of Unite, ‘Occupy’ at Saint Paul’s, and the first Unite nomination of Jeremy Corbyn. But these are mere quibbles. I consider McClusky to be the best union General Secretary of my lifetime, and the reasons are all here in this book for anyone to find. He was a deep thinker, responsible (along with the present GS, Sharon Graham) for the success of the Organising Dept, Leverage, Unite Community, an immense strike fund. Upon him becoming GS, Unite went from repudiating scores of strikes to zero. He never once let workers down. Len also had an amazing ability to bring people from different factions together, and, in startling contrast to what went before, to accept not always getting his own way without looking for revenge later…
Len is a remarkable man, who achieved remarkable things, many detailed in this remarkable book.
Len is a remarkable man, who achieved remarkable things, many detailed in this remarkable book.
April 28, 2022
Really enjoyed this.
As a worker in the trade union movement I fully agreed with much of Len's assertions and evaluations on the state of the current British TU movement and also politics in general.
The book is really split into 3 parts. Firstly much of Len's early days as a child and how as he moved into his working life he became active in the union.
Secondly it then covers his time as a high profile Unite the Union leader, culminating in his election as General Secretary and his subsequent re-elections and the trials and tribulations that came with that.
Finally Len finishes by talking about the Corbyn era of Labour politics and the role he played in that. As someone who was also heavily involved at that time, I found Len's take on much of what was going on, very similar to mine although he had the knowledge of being right at the forefront of the antics of many of those involved.
So all in all a really enjoyable read, lots of detail behind some of the headlines you may have seen in the past few years and also as a fellow trade unionist it was encouraging to read not only a sober analysis of the difficulties trade unions have and will continue to have but more importantly some ideas of how to counter them and most importantly win in the years to come.
As a worker in the trade union movement I fully agreed with much of Len's assertions and evaluations on the state of the current British TU movement and also politics in general.
The book is really split into 3 parts. Firstly much of Len's early days as a child and how as he moved into his working life he became active in the union.
Secondly it then covers his time as a high profile Unite the Union leader, culminating in his election as General Secretary and his subsequent re-elections and the trials and tribulations that came with that.
Finally Len finishes by talking about the Corbyn era of Labour politics and the role he played in that. As someone who was also heavily involved at that time, I found Len's take on much of what was going on, very similar to mine although he had the knowledge of being right at the forefront of the antics of many of those involved.
So all in all a really enjoyable read, lots of detail behind some of the headlines you may have seen in the past few years and also as a fellow trade unionist it was encouraging to read not only a sober analysis of the difficulties trade unions have and will continue to have but more importantly some ideas of how to counter them and most importantly win in the years to come.
November 27, 2023
Len McCluskey’s autobiography is an excellent account of his life as a trade unionist and workers’ representative and the events and experiences that have shaped his views and political outlook. Speaking of politics, the book is especially interesting when describing the rise and fall of the Corbyn project and out to be read by every activist in the Labour movement. Always straightforward and ever honest, McCluskey has written a very readable account of his life and times that I can heartily recommend.
May 30, 2022
“Hope lies in organised labour.”
This was the most informative book on British politics I’ve ever read, picked up after watching his April 2022 interview with Novara’s Aaron Bastani. It’s a memoir but the comprehensive account and analysis of 50 years of Labour and trade union history is unparalleled.
The forensic anatomisation of Labour, the recent history of which I’d found to be a general swirling maze of confusion up until this point, with how exactly Corbyn fit into the Miliband revamped party following New Labour and then how it all fell so spectacularly apart, was especially interesting — what I hadn’t appreciated was just how crucial Brexit and how they responded to it in 2017 and 2019 was in sending lightning spearing through the engine, birthing both the Brexit party and Starmer’s centrist establishment-pandering coup, sowing chaos as MPs of certain hard Remain areas went rogue, and allowing Johnson to win on essentially just three words: get Brexit done.
He spoke so sorrowfully of Corbyn’s dithering over what tactic to take, with his closest advisers all giving contradicting views and him ending up reluctantly advocating for a soft Brexit deal but also saying he’d support Remain if there was another vote neatly shattering his credibility and efficacy as a leader, overly beholden to the party membership instead of the unions, the majority of whom aren’t Labour members but are Labour voters.
On the eve of Corbyn’s suspension he described a Zoom with a few dozen other titans of the left who were all clamouring to “declare war” in which they decided to give Starmer one last chance and prepared a statement for Corbyn, who also agreed to give it, but then Starmer proceeded with the suspension anyway. McCluskey hasn’t spoken to him since.
I’m not entirely convinced yet on his conviction that Corbyn should have strongly backed the soft deal and fiercely communicated that to all corners of the party and country, because the sheer ire, the absolute seething rage and devastation, of that vote… I don’t know how I would’ve reacted at the time to such a bleak capitulation to the fate so egregiously skewed by the racist old guard which 62% of Scotland soundly rejected… also the notion that compromise should at a certain point eclipse the radical call for change and transformation…
But his analysis makes stark sense and I feel if it had been frankly articulated thus I could’ve been coaxed onboard because ultimately as ever you cannot enact the change if you cannot win, which is also his resonating critique of what he calls “ultra-leftism” — as big of an obstacle to socialism and progress as the far right in his view because short of an actual dismantlement of the imperial system, you have to compromise to win to change things…
It’s an intrinsic function of negotiation and leadership, no matter how fundamentally at odds it feels with the anarchic leanings of the fervour for upheaval — it also puts me in mind of Ash Sarkar’s comment in her 2018 Guardian interview with Owen Jones: “I’m not one of those vulgar Marxists that says that you’ve got to have the red flag flying high and a picture of Lenin across your chest in order for a political project to be worthwhile. I think that if you, as a leftist, say, ‘well, it’s all or nothing’, you’ve made your peace with nothing. And when you look at things like excess deaths under austerity, when you look at reliance on food banks, when you look at the fact that half of young mums have to skip meals to feed their kids, I find the idea of nothing out of ideological purity completely unconscionable. So I think that if your communism leads you to a politics of despair or disengagement, you are failing the legacy of Marx”. And of course Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s: “They didn’t need their oppression to be ‘celebrated’, ‘centred’, or narrated in the newest academic parlance. They didn’t need someone to understand what it felt like to be poisoned. What they needed was the lead out of their water.”
Liverpool played a prominent role throughout the book, from his trade union origins on the docks as a teenager to the double entendre of the title applicable to both politics and football, the latter featuring in his personal account of Hillsborough, especially with regards to the conduct of The Sun, the worst of the “scum media”, and the further distancing of the North from Westminster.
“We’re not English; we’re Scouse.”
Miliband was also put under the microscope, with his craven shift to an austerity-lite message pandering to the financial sector after a genuinely inspiring start rejecting New Labour. Ed Balls was the one who followed through with the cuts and compromises as they pivoted to stressing that if they were in power the cuts would not have been *as* bad… “some rallying cry”. He concluded that the critical mistake of Miliband’s leadership was this sudden embrace of austerity, dragging the party back into “the swamp of orthodoxy”. Miliband started to “drift”, surrounding himself with all the wrong people, becoming “a petulant prince”, totally out of touch, which was always “his greatest weakness”, so ultimately they were all “just a bunch of right-wingers” who never understood trade unions or the original labour movement — as familiar to him as “an alien planet”.
McCluskey recalls instances where he “turned” a room, a hall, a conference with one speech due to years of building trust and respect not just rhetorical proficiency, especially his momentous decision not to advocate for Unite’s disaffiliation with Labour, to instead push for reform from within rather than leave behind such a vast established voter base to found a new party, even after 13 years of a Labour government that refused to loosen the shackles on trade unions and millions living below the poverty line, the gap between rich and poor wider, and a million manufacturing jobs lost. The strategy was to galvanise support for working-class candidates not just candidates with working-class values, to move Labour emphatically to the Left. This coalitional movement was ultimately devastated by the Falkirk scandal and Miliband’s betrayal.
It was really interesting to hear his analysis of the Scottish referendum — how Scottish Labour made a grave error in aligning themselves with the Tories and Better Together, which further alienated their Scottish base instead of fighting for devo max on the ballot, and how they paid for that in 2015 by being utterly wiped out by the SNP. He said he would’ve voted Yes if he was Scottish…
Not until Corbyn did he feel hope again for socialism to take realistic root in Westminster, whose rise in the leadership race was “astonishing and hope-inspiring on a hitherto utterly unforeseen level”, a storm petrel of what would happen with Sanders across the pond, and Unite was essential to Corbyn’s victory (another interesting crumb of insider machinations came with how he approached Owen Jones and a few other leading left journalists to be Corbyn’s comms director — Jones’s refusal was the only one he respected, believing he could do more good as a vocal broadsheet supporter). Were it not for the Brexit referendum, everything would’ve been different.
The overall arc of his argument re the failure of Corbyn despite that generation-defining hope inspired by the fact that his leadership win and dizzying proximity to No. 10 validated the almost decimated belief post-Thatcher that a radical progressive left government is actually possible puts me in mind of barrister and activist Jane Heybroek’s response to a viral tweet questioning Corbyn’s character assassination and asking literally what was substantively and empirically wrong with him:
“He was a threat to the establishment. He mobilised young people and demonstrated that there was an alternative to Thatcherism. He threatened the banks, the media and the war industry, all three of whom run the country. Deposing him was not enough — the earth had to be salted.”
Once more unto the breach.
This was the most informative book on British politics I’ve ever read, picked up after watching his April 2022 interview with Novara’s Aaron Bastani. It’s a memoir but the comprehensive account and analysis of 50 years of Labour and trade union history is unparalleled.
The forensic anatomisation of Labour, the recent history of which I’d found to be a general swirling maze of confusion up until this point, with how exactly Corbyn fit into the Miliband revamped party following New Labour and then how it all fell so spectacularly apart, was especially interesting — what I hadn’t appreciated was just how crucial Brexit and how they responded to it in 2017 and 2019 was in sending lightning spearing through the engine, birthing both the Brexit party and Starmer’s centrist establishment-pandering coup, sowing chaos as MPs of certain hard Remain areas went rogue, and allowing Johnson to win on essentially just three words: get Brexit done.
He spoke so sorrowfully of Corbyn’s dithering over what tactic to take, with his closest advisers all giving contradicting views and him ending up reluctantly advocating for a soft Brexit deal but also saying he’d support Remain if there was another vote neatly shattering his credibility and efficacy as a leader, overly beholden to the party membership instead of the unions, the majority of whom aren’t Labour members but are Labour voters.
On the eve of Corbyn’s suspension he described a Zoom with a few dozen other titans of the left who were all clamouring to “declare war” in which they decided to give Starmer one last chance and prepared a statement for Corbyn, who also agreed to give it, but then Starmer proceeded with the suspension anyway. McCluskey hasn’t spoken to him since.
I’m not entirely convinced yet on his conviction that Corbyn should have strongly backed the soft deal and fiercely communicated that to all corners of the party and country, because the sheer ire, the absolute seething rage and devastation, of that vote… I don’t know how I would’ve reacted at the time to such a bleak capitulation to the fate so egregiously skewed by the racist old guard which 62% of Scotland soundly rejected… also the notion that compromise should at a certain point eclipse the radical call for change and transformation…
But his analysis makes stark sense and I feel if it had been frankly articulated thus I could’ve been coaxed onboard because ultimately as ever you cannot enact the change if you cannot win, which is also his resonating critique of what he calls “ultra-leftism” — as big of an obstacle to socialism and progress as the far right in his view because short of an actual dismantlement of the imperial system, you have to compromise to win to change things…
It’s an intrinsic function of negotiation and leadership, no matter how fundamentally at odds it feels with the anarchic leanings of the fervour for upheaval — it also puts me in mind of Ash Sarkar’s comment in her 2018 Guardian interview with Owen Jones: “I’m not one of those vulgar Marxists that says that you’ve got to have the red flag flying high and a picture of Lenin across your chest in order for a political project to be worthwhile. I think that if you, as a leftist, say, ‘well, it’s all or nothing’, you’ve made your peace with nothing. And when you look at things like excess deaths under austerity, when you look at reliance on food banks, when you look at the fact that half of young mums have to skip meals to feed their kids, I find the idea of nothing out of ideological purity completely unconscionable. So I think that if your communism leads you to a politics of despair or disengagement, you are failing the legacy of Marx”. And of course Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s: “They didn’t need their oppression to be ‘celebrated’, ‘centred’, or narrated in the newest academic parlance. They didn’t need someone to understand what it felt like to be poisoned. What they needed was the lead out of their water.”
Liverpool played a prominent role throughout the book, from his trade union origins on the docks as a teenager to the double entendre of the title applicable to both politics and football, the latter featuring in his personal account of Hillsborough, especially with regards to the conduct of The Sun, the worst of the “scum media”, and the further distancing of the North from Westminster.
“We’re not English; we’re Scouse.”
Miliband was also put under the microscope, with his craven shift to an austerity-lite message pandering to the financial sector after a genuinely inspiring start rejecting New Labour. Ed Balls was the one who followed through with the cuts and compromises as they pivoted to stressing that if they were in power the cuts would not have been *as* bad… “some rallying cry”. He concluded that the critical mistake of Miliband’s leadership was this sudden embrace of austerity, dragging the party back into “the swamp of orthodoxy”. Miliband started to “drift”, surrounding himself with all the wrong people, becoming “a petulant prince”, totally out of touch, which was always “his greatest weakness”, so ultimately they were all “just a bunch of right-wingers” who never understood trade unions or the original labour movement — as familiar to him as “an alien planet”.
McCluskey recalls instances where he “turned” a room, a hall, a conference with one speech due to years of building trust and respect not just rhetorical proficiency, especially his momentous decision not to advocate for Unite’s disaffiliation with Labour, to instead push for reform from within rather than leave behind such a vast established voter base to found a new party, even after 13 years of a Labour government that refused to loosen the shackles on trade unions and millions living below the poverty line, the gap between rich and poor wider, and a million manufacturing jobs lost. The strategy was to galvanise support for working-class candidates not just candidates with working-class values, to move Labour emphatically to the Left. This coalitional movement was ultimately devastated by the Falkirk scandal and Miliband’s betrayal.
It was really interesting to hear his analysis of the Scottish referendum — how Scottish Labour made a grave error in aligning themselves with the Tories and Better Together, which further alienated their Scottish base instead of fighting for devo max on the ballot, and how they paid for that in 2015 by being utterly wiped out by the SNP. He said he would’ve voted Yes if he was Scottish…
Not until Corbyn did he feel hope again for socialism to take realistic root in Westminster, whose rise in the leadership race was “astonishing and hope-inspiring on a hitherto utterly unforeseen level”, a storm petrel of what would happen with Sanders across the pond, and Unite was essential to Corbyn’s victory (another interesting crumb of insider machinations came with how he approached Owen Jones and a few other leading left journalists to be Corbyn’s comms director — Jones’s refusal was the only one he respected, believing he could do more good as a vocal broadsheet supporter). Were it not for the Brexit referendum, everything would’ve been different.
The overall arc of his argument re the failure of Corbyn despite that generation-defining hope inspired by the fact that his leadership win and dizzying proximity to No. 10 validated the almost decimated belief post-Thatcher that a radical progressive left government is actually possible puts me in mind of barrister and activist Jane Heybroek’s response to a viral tweet questioning Corbyn’s character assassination and asking literally what was substantively and empirically wrong with him:
“He was a threat to the establishment. He mobilised young people and demonstrated that there was an alternative to Thatcherism. He threatened the banks, the media and the war industry, all three of whom run the country. Deposing him was not enough — the earth had to be salted.”
Once more unto the breach.
March 9, 2022
Interesting. The insights into the workings of the Labour Party during a turbulent period were particularly worth reading.
October 28, 2021
As a Unite Representative delegate I received a free copy of this book when Len McCluskey gave his farewell address to the Unite Conference.
I had not been a particular admirer of the general secretary of my union but having read this book I have a greater appreciation of his achievements on behalf of the workers.
While some of the contents might be exaggerated in their importance to history he has certainly been at the centre of political events.
It was interesting to read about the structure of the Unite Union and the tactics in use on members' behalves.
In all an enjoyable read but perhaps not one I'd spend my own money on!
I had not been a particular admirer of the general secretary of my union but having read this book I have a greater appreciation of his achievements on behalf of the workers.
While some of the contents might be exaggerated in their importance to history he has certainly been at the centre of political events.
It was interesting to read about the structure of the Unite Union and the tactics in use on members' behalves.
In all an enjoyable read but perhaps not one I'd spend my own money on!
February 13, 2022
A good, breezy read
Decent focus on McCluskey's childhood and early life as well as his and Unite's role in Corbyn's rise and demise, which transitions to Starmer's leadership and McCluskey's unwise and unfortunate backing of Starmer
I thought there could have been a greater focus on McCluskey's work with Unite and the role of trade unions in the UK in general beyond what was written in the last chapter
Decent focus on McCluskey's childhood and early life as well as his and Unite's role in Corbyn's rise and demise, which transitions to Starmer's leadership and McCluskey's unwise and unfortunate backing of Starmer
I thought there could have been a greater focus on McCluskey's work with Unite and the role of trade unions in the UK in general beyond what was written in the last chapter
August 25, 2023
A fantastic book that is honest down to its roots. Read this book whilst Starmer and the Right are still in power with Labour as it’ll reveal everything that the left are warning us about.
A great example of how to do an autobiography right, full of emotion and packed full of class struggle. What a Book
A great example of how to do an autobiography right, full of emotion and packed full of class struggle. What a Book
October 9, 2021
Interesting. A bit of insight into this key figure in the politics of the many.
Absolutely devastating revelations about his character and competence for Starmer.
Fascinating commentary on a key time in the politics of the left.
Absolutely devastating revelations about his character and competence for Starmer.
Fascinating commentary on a key time in the politics of the left.
May 16, 2023
This is a great memoir of a life spent in the labour movement, and a great insight into the inner workings and infighting of the Labour Party. The Times called it "enjoyably bitchy", and while that makes it sound like a gossipy celeb memoir, they've got a point. Really enjoyed it.
August 13, 2025
I'd not heard of Len McCluskey but saw it recommended after reading other Labour party books. I really enjoyed it.
A good read if you're interested in the party and the interactions with the Unions and some of the dirty tactics that are been employed over the years.
A good read if you're interested in the party and the interactions with the Unions and some of the dirty tactics that are been employed over the years.
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March 5, 2022Reviewed in the February 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blog...
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blog...
March 26, 2022
This book was a really great insight into the trade union movement and the recent history of the UK Labour Party.
June 4, 2022
The story of an odious mobster. All legal. All white washed. All for your future good, and his clan's present enrichment.
June 8, 2022
Join a trade union <3
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews