[6] She left school and began work as a silver service waitress at 16, and led her first walkout at 17 in defence of the rights of casual workers.

[9] She was considered a potential candidate in the union's 2017 general secretary election, which had been prompted by Len McCluskey's early resignation to seek a new mandate.

[12][13] She said that the airline should be stripped of its privileges at Heathrow Airport due to the way it had treated its staff, and that if the behaviour went unchecked then more companies would act in a similar way.

[17] Her campaign was focused on redirecting attention towards workers' rights and workplaces instead of engaging with the internal politics of the Labour Party, of which Unite is an affiliated trade union.

[26][27][28] In September 2021, she wrote in The Guardian that Unite should focus more on fighting "for jobs, pay and conditions" rather than "hoping for the election of a Labour government to solve our members' problems".

[29] The same month, she warned Keir Starmer that he had "lost touch with reality" because of his intention to change the Labour Party leadership election rules.

[32] In 2023, Graham's confrontational approach to the Labour Party led to the New Statesman naming her as the eleventh most powerful Left Wing figure in the UK that year.