LABOUR are working in the Chinese national interest – not the UK or Scotland’s – by failing to step in and save jobs at Grangemouth, a top trade unionist has said.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite trade union – which has some 1.1 million members, joined protesters outside the Scottish Labour conference as it kicked off on Friday.
Organised by the Unite union, dozens of activists called for action from both the UK and Scottish Governments on the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery. They brought 400 hard hats to symbolise the roughly 400 jobs being cut.
Elected Labour representatives including MSP and peer Katy Clark, former Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard, and Grangemouth area MP Brian Leishman joined the demonstration which saw chants of: “Keep Grangemouth working”.
NEW: Protesters are outside the Scottish Labour conference and are set to lay out 400 hard hats to symbolise the amount of jobs lost at Grangemouth pic.twitter.com/Ro1h5jlSTz
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Unite has proposed converting the site to a manufacturer of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which it has the capacity to be and would align with Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s policies. She has previously called SAF a “game changer”.
Asked why she was joining protesters, Graham told The National: “Look, what we're trying to do is to make the UK and the Scottish Governments listen, and to say to them that they must save these jobs at Grangemouth.
“This site can be a green aviation fuel site. There's going to be a huge market of green aviation fuel.
“If we're not getting it from Britain, then where are we getting it from? They need to do the right thing.”
Asked why she believed the UK Government had not taken the SAF proposals for Grangemouth forward, Graham said: “Well, I think they're listening too much to what the companies say.
“The company PetroIneos is half-owned by China. So China wants to import green aviation fuel into Britain and make Grangemouth an import terminal. They're not going to act in the national interest of Britain.
“What the government needs to do, both governments, is they need to act in the interest of Britain and Scotland.
“They need to say that we're going to make this a green aviation fuel site.
“If they don’t do that, it's not going to be forgotten, and it certainly won’t be forgiven – and I think there will be consequences.”
PetroIneos, which runs Grangemouth, is a joint venture between the Chinese state-owned PetroChina and billonaire Jim Radcliffe's Ineos.
Elsewhere at the protest, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s pledge that a Labour-run UK Government would step in with “hundreds of millions” in support was brought up – and Unite’s Scottish secretary Derek Thomson said he had had “zero contact” from the MSP on Grangemouth.
Roz Foyer, the general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), told The National: “I've come down today to support the Unite trade union and the workers at Grangemouth, who are pointing out to the Labour Party that they need to start keeping their promises.
“Everybody saw Anas Sarwar promise to intervene and save the jobs in Grangemouth, and there is a legitimate and verifiable plan to do that brought forward by the Unite trade union, and we want to see the UK Labour government give that serious consideration.
“And we want to see Anas Sarwar doing everything in his power as Scottish Labour leader to make sure that happens.”
