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The whole movement should reject this cynical attack on Unison's Roger McKenzie
The flimsy attempt to portray one of Britain's leading black trade unionists as a racist is a transparent bid by the Labour right to interfere in a union election, says BEN CHACKO
Unison assistant general secretary Roger McKenzie
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LABOUR movement activists may have thought they had entered the Twilight Zone on Friday evening on hearing that Roger McKenzie, one of British trade unionism’s leading figures, is being accused of anti-semitism.
McKenzie is running for the leadership of Unison — one of the two biggest unions in the country — and the existence of a “lengthy dossier” that has been submitted to the Labour Party about him has conveniently been leaked just as ballots are landing on doormats.
It might seem rather brazen to level accusations of racism against one of the trade union movement’s best known black leaders in the year that Black Lives Matter swept the world. Especially given McKenzie’s long history of anti-racist campaigning and the passion with which he has always challenged racism — a passion informed by personal experience of racist abuse directed at him and his family from childhood onwards.
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