Unions react angrily to sacking of Labour shadow minister Sam Tarry

Media caption,

Watch: Sam Tarry responds to being sacked by Starmer

Unions have reacted angrily to the decision by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to sack a junior shadow transport minister who joined striking rail workers on a picket line.

Ilford South MP Sam Tarry attended the protest at London’s Euston station despite Sir Keir telling his frontbench MPs to stay away.

Labour said the reason he was fired was for unauthorised media appearances.

Mr Tarry said he had been standing “in solidarity with striking workers”.

In a statement, Labour said it would “always stand up for working people fighting for better pay, terms and conditions at work”.

“This isn’t about appearing on a picket line. Members of the front bench sign up to collective responsibility. That includes media appearances being approved and speaking to agreed frontbench positions.

“As a government in waiting, any breach of collective responsibility is taken extremely seriously and for these reasons Sam Tarry has been removed from the front bench.”

But the leaders of a number of unions have criticised the party for the decision.

Sharon Graham, leader of Unite the Union, which has more than a million members, said Labour was “becoming more and more irrelevant to ordinary working people”.

The TSSA Transport Union, of which Mr Tarry is a former member, said Labour was “deluded” if it thought it could win the next election “while pushing away seven million trade union members”.

Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB Union, tweeted that it was a “huge own goal” for Labour to “turn a Tory Transport crisis into a Labour story”.

He added that the next election would be fought on the “back of the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation” and that the “mood of the country is with us”.

Labour maintains that Sam Tarry was sacked not for appearing on a picket line – something that would have earned a reprimand – but for making unauthorised media appearances in which he talked about policy areas which went beyond his brief.

To maintain party discipline Sir Keir Starmer clearly felt he had to act.

But there has been a political cost.

Mr Tarry, who is close to the party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner, is a former official of the TSSA rail union.

And that union has now questioned whether Sir Keir is fit to lead the Labour Party.

There may be a financial cost too – Unite is the party’s biggest union funder and its leader has accused Sir Keir of insulting trade union members.

Labour sources have pointed out that Mr Tarry is facing a reselection battle in his constituency,

And have speculated that his very public stance may have been aimed at rallying left wing support.

But Mr Tarry has insisted he was speaking up for hard-pressed workers and will continue to do so as a backbencher.

Several Labour MPs, including Diane Abbott John McDonnell, Rachel Maskell, Mick Whitley, and Kim Johnson, have also suggested Mr Tarry should not have lost his job.

Ms Abbott told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the public wanted to see Labour “stand with the RMT and ordinary people”.

Speaking while at the protest on Wednesday morning, Mr Tarry told the BBC he was there “as a shadow transport minister backing transport workers who are on strike” and “backing the travelling public”.

Asked if he should be on the picket line. he said “any Labour MP, any Labour member, will have absolute solidarity with striking workers.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier this week, Sir Keir said that “a government doesn’t go on picket lines, a government tries to resolve disputes”.

Responding to his dismissal, Mr Tarry – a supporter of the former leader Jeremy Corbyn – thanked Sir Keir for “the last two and a half years” on the front bench, but said it was “a real shame” he had been removed for “joining a picket line”.

He said he wanted to be “part of a Labour Party that stands in solidarity with workers in their disputes, wherever that may be in this country”.

Train services were disrupted throughout Wednesday after 40,000 rail workers walked out in protest at pay, pensions, and working conditions.

Negotiations between the RMT union – which is not affiliated to Labour – the TSSA and Network Rail have failed to find a solution to the dispute.

Labour has not officially supported the industrial action, but has criticised the government, which it says should get involved in negotiations.