Andrea Egan, the left-wing Time for Real Change’s (TFRC) candidate in Unison’s general secretary elections, has won a decisive victory against the incumbent right-wing candidate and sitting general secretary, Christina McAnea.
Egan’s victory in itself constitutes a potential resounding transformation of Britain’s industrial landscape. After all, Unison is the biggest union in the country, with over 1.3 million members, almost a quarter of the organised working class – compared to 5.5 million trade union members in the country.
This is the first time in the union’s thirty-two year history that a left-winger has been elected as general secretary.
Up until now, the union has been controlled by a right-wing cabal, resting on six-figure salaries; with a vast bureaucratic apparatus at their disposal, serving to police the local branches and prevent industrial militancy; which is directly linked to the right-wing of the Labour Party, especially through the notorious Unison Labour Link. Unison’s right-wing has been the long-standing bulwark of the right-wing in the Labour Party.
This monolith was used, back in 2011, to reach a rotten deal with the Tory-Lib Dem coalition on the pensions reform – and thereby put a lid on the brewing public-sector general strike, which would have seen the first massive wave of industrial struggle in response to the crisis of 2008.
They then did everything to undermine Corbyn and were used to push through rule changes which guaranteed Starmer’s control over the Labour Party.
Anger across the board
Egan’s victory has served to upset the apple cart. This could not have come at a better time.
Unison brands itself as ‘the public service union’; and its members are angry after sixteen years of pay stagnation, worsening conditions, job cuts, council bankruptcies, and the thousand-and-one other attacks that successive Tory and Labour governments have made on the working class. This explains Egan’s victory.
The figures speak for themselves. Egan won with 59.82 percent of the vote share, as opposed to McAnea’s 40.18 percent – and with an almost 20,000 gap in the number of votes.
🚨 BREAKING | Left-winger Andrea Egan has WON the election be UNISON’s General Secretary.
🔴 Andrea Egan: 59.82%
🔵 Christina McAnea: 40.18%Right-wing incumbent Christina McAnea was defeated.
(Source: Politics Home) pic.twitter.com/kkoES0YJ9d
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) December 17, 2025
Clearly, this mood against the old guard has been brewing for some time. The combined vote of the left constituted an absolute majority in the 2021 Unison elections, and TFRC’s candidate Paul Holmes could have won if it weren’t for sectarians splitting the vote for prestige reasons.
The support for industrial militancy is evidently going up, not least due to the unpopularity of Starmer’s government, which itself is spurred on by his subserviency to the bond markets and their demand for cuts to public services.
This victory mirrors the victory of Sharon Graham in Unite, who also won by promising change. A potential closer alignment between Unite and Unison could lead to a more militant stance on public sector pay, with Unison having hundreds of thousands of low-paid members in the NHS, as well as local government and social care. Alarm bells are ringing for the establishment.
Now that McAnea is gone, the mouthpieces of the capitalist establishment are already getting jittery at the further instability that left-wing leadership of the unions will cause for Starmer. Egan herself was expelled from Labour for sharing two articles from The Communist’s predecessor, Socialist Appeal.
Andrea Egan (@andreaegan5), President of Unison, Britain’s biggest union, expelled from Labour Party!
Her offence? Allegedly sharing articles by Socialist Appeal – a Marxist organisation of which I’m a member – which was scandalously proscribed by Keir Starmer’s leadership. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/L8jInogjk6
— Joseph Attard (@josephattard02) November 18, 2022
As the Financial Times noted, “Egan’s victory means two of the three biggest unions are now run by openly hostile leftwingers critical of Starmer’s administration.”
But therefore, whilst this result represents a massive blow against the bureaucracy, the war is far from over. The union bureaucracy will not take this result lying down and will use everything to undermine and circumvent the new general secretary.
Unison possesses a well-oiled bureaucratic machine that will stop at nothing to thwart her in her tracks. When Paul Holmes was president of the union after TFRC won the NEC, they used every dirty trick in the book, including collusion with his bosses, to get him out of the picture.
Egan will be up against assistant general secretaries, unelected union officials, a right-wing NEC, and the members of the so-called ‘Communist Party’ of Britain who colluded with McAnea to thwart Egan’s election.
Meanwhile, Egan herself has promised “a comprehensive review of our relationship with Labour to ensure we get our value for money”.
A battle is being prepared, which poses a great challenge for the left in the union.
No backsliding: mobilise the ranks!
Unfortunately, the left lost their majority on the NEC at the last election, which shows the limits of their left leadership. They failed to take the fight against the bureaucracy to the ranks, and preferred to maneuver at the top of the union. They have also bent towards identity politics. How they shape up in the future will be decisive – otherwise this victory, which has great potential, can be squandered. Crucially, a lot depends on how it translates into support for the branches and changes on the ground.
TFRC must therefore set out to transform the entire union into a real weapon for the class struggle in Britain. This means clearing out all the bureaucrats: placing all elected officials on the average workers’ wage; electing all officials that work for the union on slates; vetting their expenses; and subjecting them to the immediate right of recall.
Egan’s only weapon to carry this through is to mobilise the ranks of the union, who have clearly demanded real change. The struggle to shake up the union therefore goes hand-in-hand with a programme for industrial militancy on behalf of the low-paid members.
The battle-lines are being drawn. The left needs to put itself on a war-footing. It will be put to the test. It is certainly a time for real change.
