Socialist Party members in PCS
Will there or won’t there be a national campaign by the Public and Commercial Services Union PCS against Labour government attacks? That’s a question of leadership.
The pressure on civil servants by Starmer’s Labour is mounting. Job cuts are gradually finding their way to every government department, and a programme of office closures, begun in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), is likely to expand to other government departments. Flexible working is under attack.
There could not be a more important time for genuine leadership at the top of PCS, but the recently elected National Executive Committee is, with honourable exceptions, incapable of providing it.
The NEC met on 2-3 September. General secretary Fran Heathcote submitted her latest paper on the national campaign, which contained a total of zero recommendations on how to achieve the aims set by PCS conference.
Heathcote’s approach does not give members the confidence needed to decisively fight and win. Unsurprisingly given that no strategy is proposed, there can be a low turnout to meetings. This low turnout is then used to ‘prove’ a lack of a mood.
Coordinate the struggles
As always, PCS Broad Left Network (BLN) supporters on the NEC – Marion Lloyd, Fiona Brittle, Bobby Young and Rob Ritchie – proposed a much-needed alternative, committing to a campaign to build up members’ confidence, linking up the disputes across government departments. It was vetoed by the president, Martin Cavanagh.
Across several areas where BLN supporters and allies hold senior union posts, disputes have begun or are about to begin. If the NEC is not prepared to give a lead, we must coordinate these struggles.
PCS members that are in dispute at the moment – from MyCSP to Ofgem, from MHCLG to Houses of Parliament – need to work together to unite these struggles, and to coordinate with battles that are emerging: in the Department for Education, in Scottish Government, and beyond.
Trans rights motion finally heard
At PCS conference in May this year, the leadership deleted motion A57 and blocked 25 emergency motions from the agenda on the basis of ‘legal advice’ following the Supreme Court ruling on trans rights. President Cavanagh blocked the attempt by a clear majority of delegates to get the motions back on the agenda. Motion A57 expressed strong support for trans members in the face of the Supreme Court judgment and the way it has been misused. Heathcote and Cavanagh made a statement, which was published on the union’s website on 17 May, that implied trans women should use male toilets and trans men use female toilets while at conference.
BLN supporters, working with members of PCS Proud (the union’s LGBTQ+ network), submitted a motion on this issue to the NEC in May, but it wasn’t taken for discussion until the September NEC! The motion criticised the leadership for the way ‘legal advice’ had been misused to shut down debate. It also sought to force the withdrawal of Heathcote’s statement. BLN supporters voiced concern about the intention of Heathcote to unilaterally review all previous PCS policy to make sure it is compliant with a particularly narrow reading of the Supreme Court judgment, without seeking a mandate from Conference to do so.
All four BLN supporters currently on the NEC voted for, as did the two Independent Left supporters, and the one independent socialist – but the motion was defeated by the NEC’s Left Unity/Democrat majority.
One positive was that the NEC agreed to condemn the Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action.
Leadership dodging political strategy
But once again, the motion on the vitally important issue of political representation was not taken. Socialist Party members Marion Lloyd and Fiona Brittle had put forward a motion to develop the union’s political strategy at the July NEC.
The motion urged the NEC to invite Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to discuss how PCS could be involved in building a new workers’ party, as well as to contact other unions exploring the same issue. For the second time, this motion was not discussed.
- A meeting of PCS members to plan how to campaign in the union for a new workers’ party was taking place as we went to press. A report will follow next week
