Jack Dromey

Jack Dromey (born 21 September 1948) is a British trade unionist, Deputy General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union and Treasurer of the Labour Party. He was for some time the Secretary of the Brent Trades Council, including when it organised the Grunwick Dispute in 1977. He is married to the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman.

Dromey was elected Deputy General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, having lost the 2003 election for General Secretary to Tony Woodley by a wide margin. Dromey is active in the Labour Party, serving on its National Executive Committee (NEC).

Dromey first came to public prominence for his involvement in the strike at the Grunwick film processing laboratory in the mid-1970s. The mostly female Asian workforce at Grunwick went on strike to demand that company boss George Ward recognise their union; instead, Ward dismissed the strikers, leading to a year long confrontation involving mass picketing and some violence. The strike was unsuccessful and ended without any concession at all from Grunwick.

Cash for Peerages scandal

On 15 March 2006, in the Cash for Peerages scandal, Dromey spoke of not being aware, despite being party treasurer, of £3.5 million worth of loans made to the Labour Party in 2005 by three individuals who were subsequently nominated for life peerages (Chai Patel, Sir David Garrard and Barry Townsley). Loans made on commercial terms, as was the case here, are not subject to reporting requirements to the Electoral Commission.

Dromey stated publicly that neither he nor Labour's elected NEC chairman Sir Jeremy Beecham had knowledge of or involvement in the loans and had only become aware when he read about it in the newspapers. Dromey stated that he was regularly consulted about conventional bank loans. As well as announcing his own investigation he called on the Electoral Commission to investigate the issue of political parties taking out loans from non-commercial sources. His resulting report was discussed by the NEC on 21 March 2006 ( [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4829308.stm] ).

Donorgate

His wife (Deputy Labour Party Leader, Harriet Harman) has been caught up in the Donorgate affair, as she accepted a £5,000 pound donation that was revealed to have been from David Abrahams. Abrahams illegally donated more than £630,000 to the Labour Party.

In the media

Dromey was interviewed about the Grunwick dispute and the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series "Tory! Tory! Tory!".

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4812462.stm BBC News: Politics: Profile: Labour treasurer Jack Dromey]