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Candour and insight play second fiddle to a romanticised history of the left in the former Unite leader’s memoir

Len McCluskey is a chess enthusiast. During his 11-year tenure as the general secretary of the 1.4 million-member “super union” Unite, he kept several sets of pieces in his office, and once sat for a portrait behind a chessboard, camply holding up a king in the manner of a Bond villain. The pose reflected not just his status as a big player in the Labour party, but something too often missed: the delicate negotiations with employers that he reckons took up 90% of his working time, and his reputation as a very capable deal-maker.

Most company CEOs, he writes in this 300-page memoir, are “charming and professional”. In a fascinating section left until the book’s final pages, he explains some of the nitty-gritty of representing a huge range of workers, and tactics he terms “leverage” (“working out where an employer is weak and applying pressure using unconventional methods”). In doing so, he shines light on why and how he rose from early union activism on Liverpool’s docks in the late 1960s – and, indeed, why some of the invective hurled at him has always symbolised how a huge chunk of the British establishment simply loathes trade unions, not least when they deliver for their members.

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