Len McCluskey

Leonard David McCluskey (born 23 July 1950) is a retired British 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.

Leonard David McCluskey was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, on 23 July 1950, the son of Leonard, a painter-decorator, and Peggy (née Margaret Fulton), a housewife who reportedly politically inspired her son. He failed the 11-plus, but passed the 13-plus, intended for late developers. A Catholic, he attended Cardinal Godfrey Technical High School in Anfield. Leaving school with three A-levels, in history, economics and general studies, he began his working life on the Canada Dock, part of the Port of Liverpool.

Employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company from 1972) as a ship’s planner, he drew maps indicating the location of cargo in the hold so it could be retrieved at the unloading port. He worked for the company for 11 years.

McCluskey joined the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&GWU) in 1968, and became a shop steward for the union the following year. He was involved in unionising the white collar staff in the Liverpool docks among whom previously there had been an absence of trade union organisation. After joining the Labour Party in 1970, he became an officer of the T&GWU in Merseyside in 1979 and was its campaign organiser throughout the 1980s.

During the 1980s he became a close friend of Tony Mulhearn and Derek Hatton, then deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, and supported the Militant tendency. "I would never, ever deny that", he told the Liverpool Echo in 2009 "but I never became a member". He added: "In the end I decided that Militant was too sectarian from a political standpoint to be effective. But I believe that on the chief issues they were right".

McCluskey was elected as the National Secretary of the T&GWU General Workers group in 1990, and moved to London to work in the union's national headquarters.

In 2004, he became the T&GWU's national organiser for the service industries. In 2007, he was appointed as the assistant general secretary for industrial strategy of the Unite the Union, a merger of the T&GWU and Amicus.