“Trade unions should always be embedded in our communities because we remain a vital part of society. As long as bosses can make more money by paying their employees less, or by sacking easily and then hiring cheaply, or by cutting corners on safety, then trade unions will need to exist. No one has come up with a better method of levelling the playing field at work. The obstacles facing us today may seem formidable, but they are far less imposing than those overcome by the first workers to band together more than two centuries ago. Our forerunners had to fight and sometimes die for the right to form unions. They did so because no one is going to protect workers but workers themselves. I believe the ‘fighting back’ culture of Unite is true to that history, and I hope it will stand as an example for the trade unionism of the future.”

“In Labour, the left is taking a battering from a vengeful right. But we have recent evidence that things can be very, very different. Always Red is a salutary reminder of that — a fascinating, funny, moving read, but above all an authoritative argument for the capacity of the labour movement to change the world.”

“Always Red is a good story about the way that trade unionism can drastically change people’s lives. [Len] McCluskey was brought up in the Kirkdale area of Liverpool in a house with an outside toilet, by a mother and father who had lost a child to tuberculosis. He slept in his parents’ bedroom until he was 10, and left education at 18 to work on Liverpool’s docks as a planman, drawing up all-important diagrams of ships and their cargo. The book’s best section evokes the dazzling world in which he found himself, and the constant sense that without the unions’ collective vigilance, many of the pillars of working-class life would come crashing down – something that began in earnest with the arrival in power of Margaret Thatcher.”

“Former Unite leader and fervent critic of Starmer, Len McCluskey, claims that the leader ‘reneged’ on his commitment to restore the whip to his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. Furthermore, in a visceral excerpt from his new book Always Red, McCluskey comments on how Starmer could ‘finish Labour’ due to his unrelenting crackdown on the left.”

“Corbynism has ‘changed British politics forever’ and Unite’s role in the movement is one of his proudest achievements, Len McCluskey told a packed launch for his autobiography Always Red on Wednesday night.

The former Unite general secretary’s book traces his life from growing up in Liverpool and becoming a shop steward when workers’ industrial power in this country was at its height in the 1970s to becoming general secretary and helping shift Labour to the left from 2010, culminating in the ‘extraordinary journey’ of the Jeremy Corbyn movement’s challenge to British capitalism.”

“Keir Starmer agreed a backroom deal to lift Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from Labour but then rowed back on it following a backlash, Len McCluskey has claimed.

The former Unite chief warned the Labour leader ‘risks becoming fixed in the public’s mind as someone who can’t be trusted’ – citing both the episode and Sir Keir’s decision to abandon some leadership election pledges.”

“Jeremy Corbyn ally and former Unite Union leader Len McCluskey has launched a blistering attack on Sir Keir Starmer, revealing details of private conversations that risk splitting Labour down the middle.

In his autobiography, due to be released later this month, the hard-left union baron accuses Sir Keir of being ‘dishonourable’ and ‘wrongheaded’. And in a dire warning to the party, the life-long Labour affiliate warns the party’s leader faces the damning possibility of being seen as deceitful in the eyes of the public.”