Come to the Broad Left Network conference

Fiona Brittle, PCS NEC member, personal capacity

The UK civil service is faced with thousands of redundancies and office closures.

Plans by Keir Starmer’s Labour government to reorganise the NHS involve a bonfire of jobs, which could cost as much as £1 billion across NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Eight months on from the announcement that NHS England would be dissolved into the DHSC, the sole concrete accomplishment seems to have been the creation of more ‘executive leadership’ posts on salaries of up to £210,000!

So far, PCS (the union of government employees in the civil service and outsourced contracts) has limited its public comments to the need for consultation with the union.

Contrary to the view of the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) under the leadership of general secretary Fran Heathcote and president Martin Cavanagh, the Broad Left Network in PCS has repeatedly argued that Starmer’s Labour government is no friend of workers. Its plans are not aimed at fixing public services: it serves big business.

Our approach must be to ready the union’s members for battle across the UK civil service, devolved areas and the private sector.

PCS’s role against austerity

A decade ago, under the 2010-15 Tory-Lib Dem coalition government and its swingeing cuts, PCS was at the forefront of fighting austerity, when there were massive coordinated demonstrations and public sector strike action. We involved tens of thousands of members in a political debate to create the ‘PCS Alternative’, on everything from benefit sanctions to decarbonisation.

In contrast, Starmer’s Labour government, after 18 months in power, is getting off very lightly.

The illusion must be broken that we must suck up whatever Labour dishes out to us, or we wake up with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. The truth is quite the reverse.

If the trade unions do not act as a pole of attraction, we will see a backlash against Labour, including votes for Reform.

A new ‘PCS Alternative’, this time to Labour’s austerity, and a serious political strategy that focuses on preparing the union to stand and support candidates in elections who will stand up for our members and for our public services, are crucial weapons in the fight with a vicious Labour government. The current PCS leadership is letting us sleepwalk into that fight.

A revamped political strategy, that begins from how to fight to defend our members’ jobs and the services they deliver, would be a huge step.

It would help give the lie to the argument made repeatedly by Cavanagh and Heathcote that there is no mood to fight – most recently seen in the demobilisation of the union’s national campaign on pay, jobs and hybrid working.

We simply do not believe that there is no mood to fight.

There is confusion. Members are deeply worried. There has been no leadership from the NEC for years, especially since they shut down the strike wave in June 2023. It was this betrayal which brought a left-majority NEC to office in May 2024 – but the president, Cavanagh, vetoed any steps to build a campaign, and the left didn’t have the two-thirds majority needed to override him.

It is the responsibility of trade union leaders to lead. If we understand that a fight is the only way to stop the flood of job cuts, office closures and – we anticipate – yet more real-terms pay cuts, then it is our responsibility to prepare for that fight, and to give members confidence.

Lead a fight

We need to relearn the techniques of years gone by, including:

  • Briefings of reps laying out the steps to a significant strike campaign, including demands that will resonate with members
  • A strategy to coordinate disputes that are already live – and there are plenty 
  • A strategy to be able to ballot for and call strike action, and to pay strike pay for targeted action
  • Well-written materials that put forward the arguments – whereas this leadership has not produced a single leaflet this year to start readying members

There is scope to change all this: all it takes is an NEC decision. Yet once again, at the NEC on Wednesday 19 November, the ‘campaign’ paper from the general secretary proposed nothing.

Socialist Party members call on all those who want a fighting, democratic union to come to BLN conference in December, and help us build the fightback against Labour austerity and prepare for next spring’s NEC elections.