In April 2020, Scottish GMB leader at the time, Gary Smith, joined with private care home owner Robert Kilgour to try to shift the blame for care home Covid infections and subsequent deaths onto the SNP Government.

Today, we read:

Lebanese teachers’ union head Fateh al-Sharif has been murdered, along with his wife and his two children, by an Israeli missile strike targeted at their home in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon. The attack almost certainly used weapons made in, or using components made in, the UK – either fighter jets or Elbit Systems attack drones. 

GMB boss Gary Smith has said that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ‘must go’, but also spoken against protests at weapons factories. In 2022, he wrote a letter to the Tolpuddle workers’ festival demanding that Palestinian-British rapper Lowkey, a vocal anti-racist activist and opponent of Israel’s genocide, be removed from the list of artists performing at the festival. Lowkey responded by pointing out that the GMB’s members – like the memberships of Unite, Unison and other unions – have consistently voted unanimously or heavily for a full boycott of Israel while it continues to oppress Palestinians.

Union leaders who have enabled Israel’s murderousness by opposing protest and supporting the ardently pro-Israel Keir Starmer should hang their heads in shame. The blood of Israel’s victims stains their hands too. _{https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#inbox/FMfcgzQXJQSTkQFzsZXXHBWdKxxvVRxH}