Biography
Education and journalism
Murray was born in 1958 to Peter Drummond-Murray of Mastrick,a stockbroker and banker who was Slains Pursuivant from 1981 to 2009,and The Honourable Barbara Mary Hope,daughter of former Conservative MP and governor of the Madras Presidency in British India from 1940 to 1946 Lord Rankeillour. [7] He was educated at Worth School,a Benedictine independent boarding school in Sussex. Murray left school at 16 with 4 'O' levels.
After working as a messenger at Reader's Digest and a copy boy for the International Herald Tribune ,he undertook journalism training at the Sussex Express. [8] Murray was appointed as a parliamentary lobby correspondent at the age of 19. [9] In this post,he "[marched] with a million Leningraders to mark the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1977" [10] and was reportedly the first journalist at the scene when Airey Neave was assassinated in 1979 by the Irish National Liberation Army. [8] He was also a Morning Star journalist,a publication to which he still contributes,and worked for the Soviet RIA Novosti news agency. [11] Until 2013,he was an occasional contributor to The Guardian . [12]
Trade union roles
At the Transport and General Workers Union,an organisation for which Murray worked from 1987 to 1998 and again from 2003, [13] he was heavily involved in the conduct of the British Airways cabin crew strike of 1997,and in the successful general secretary election campaigns of Bill Morris (1991 and 1995) and Tony Woodley (2003) and,after the formation of Unite as a merger of the T&G and Amicus,of Len McCluskey in 2010. Murray was appointed as chief of staff for Unite in 2011 following Len McCluskey's election as general secretary late the previous year. [14] Responsible for most of the union's central departments and for its ten regions,he was elected to the TUC General Council in April 2011. Ahead of the public sector pension strike,he was named by Education Secretary Michael Gove in November 2011 as being,along with McCluskey and Mark Serwotka,one of three union "militants" who were "itching for a fight".
He has also worked as an official for the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF).
Murray defended Arthur Scargill in a review of Marching to the Fault Line by Francis Beckett and David Hencke,which criticises the NUM leader's role in the miners' strike,advising Morning Star readers not to buy the book as doing so would only "feed the jackals". [15]
Political activity
Murray joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1976,aged 18,and became associated with its Straight Left faction. At this time,Murray became a close friend of Seumas Milne,who was also active in Straight Left. [8] [14] [11] Murray's allies during the period have been described by Francis Beckett as "more extreme than most of the Stalinists I knew. The Stalinists were known as tankies,but Murray’s lot were super-tankies". [14] Following the dissolution of the CPGB in 1991 he was a leader of the Communist Liaison group,which itself dissolved in 1995 with Murray and its other members joining the Communist Party of Britain. [16] Murray served on the Communist Party of Britain's executive committee from 2000 to 2004,and was an advocate of the party supporting the Respect Coalition in the European and municipal elections that year. He served once more on the party's executive from 2008 until 2011. He told John Harris in 2015:"Communism still represents,in my view,a society worth working towards –albeit not by the methods of the 20th century,which failed". [16]
As chair of Stop the War,Murray presided at the concluding rally against the Iraq War in 2003,a rally which is claimed as the largest political demonstration in British history. He announced his intention to stand down as Stop the War chair in June 2011 and was succeeded by the Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn in September 2011. Murray was elected by the Coalition's Steering Committee to the new post of Deputy President,but returned to the position of chair in September 2015,following Corbyn's election as Leader of the Labour Party.
In 2014,he co-founded Solidarity with the Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine,which organised protests outside London's Ukrainian embassy against the new government in Ukraine. [17] [18]
Labour Party roles
By November 2016,Murray had joined the Labour Party [3] [4] and,in May 2017 he was seconded from Unite to Labour headquarters during the 2017 general election. [19] The appointment was contentious because of Murray's previous leadership role within the Communist Party of Britain,and was described by one Labour Party source to The Huffington Post as "Corbyn's Labour has gone full Trump. Andrew Murray is the hard-left's Steve Bannon". [20] [21] Asked by journalists about the appointment,Corbyn said Murray "is a person of enormous abilities and professionalism" who possesses "special skills". [22] Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell defended the decision saying "He has left the Communist Party,and joined Labour. We are converting people to democratic socialism." [23] The Daily Mirror 's Associate Editor Kevin Maguire described him as "smart,shrewd,pragmatic and witty". [24]
Murray was quoted in The Guardian on the day after the election about the unexpected exit poll announced just after the polling stations had closed. "There was a tremendous moment of elation when the exit poll was announced because it became apparent that the campaign had achieved the most stunning turnaround in public opinion in seven weeks" which saw Labour rise "from mid 20s in the polls at the start of the campaign to denying the Tories a majority. It was a moment of shared achievement". [25] In a December 2017 interview with the Morning Star ,Murray called for the readmission of George Galloway to the Labour Party. [26]
In late February 2018,The Guardian reported that Murray was working 1½days a week as a consultant to the Labour Party. [27]
In 2018 The Times reported that the Ukrainian government said it had banned Murray from entering Ukraine for the following three years,and was accused by the regime of organising pro-Russian activities,including support for Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. Murray blamed the ban on collusion between the UK “deep state”and the Ukrainian security service to discredit him and undermine the Labour Party,but that he had never tried to go to Ukraine nor obtain a visa to do so and that nor was he "planning a political visit to a country where the parliamentary speaker is a Hitler admirer and pogromists and Nazi collaborators are national heroes”. He also said that he had no role in any real or imaginary pro-Russian activity,and characterised the Russian regime as "authoritarian conservative nationalism". Murray observed that the impetus for the ostensible ban was a speech he gave protesting the takeover of the Ukrainian government by ultra-nationalists. [28] [29] [17] [30]
Angela Smith and Mike Gapes,former Labour MPs who left to found the centrist Independent Group of MPs,said that Murray's involvement in the Labour Party were factors in their leaving. [10]
In late February 2020,the Financial Times reported that Murray had resigned from his role as an adviser to the Labour Party and returned to his role within Unite on a full-time basis. [31]
