The Socialist 6 November 2019

Whose side are you on? Tories out - Corbyn in with anti-austerity and socialist policies

Whose side are you on? Tories out - Corbyn in with anti-austerity and socialist policies

Tony Blair launches manifesto to sabotage a Corbyn government

Grenfell fire inquiry spin deflects blame from establishment

General election 2019 round-up

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall: How a mass revolutionary movement for genuine socialism was diverted

Elections, strikes and revolutions: Socialism 2019 - daring to fight

PCS: "Under the right leadership workers are prepared to fight"

Royal Mail strike: "This is going to be the biggest battle we've seen in Britain for a number of years"

McDonald's: 'I'm fighting for £15 an hour now because I have to work from 7am to midnight'

Northern Ireland: Uniting the working class to transcend division

Preparing to shape events internationally

End repression in Chile - freedom for soldier David Veloso

PCS: Pay, jobs, pensions... Vote for a fighting general secretary

UCU votes for pay and pension strikes

Incompetent bosses use tech to bully us

£1 million cuts plan: Peabody housing workers announce strike ballot

Forbo Flooring Derbyshire strike

West Midlands Trains guards to strike

Double-dealing Hackney council bosses face renewed strike action

Minimum wage debate: what should we be demanding?

TV: Crime and Punishment - this brutal watch is a damning indictment of cuts and capitalism

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PCS: Pay, jobs, pensions... Vote for a fighting general secretary

Cleaners organised by PCS on strike at BEIS, 8.4.19, photo London Socialist Party (Click to enlarge)

On Thursday 7 November, ballot papers go out to 180,000 PCS members in the election for general secretary. The ballot closes on 12 December.

Socialist Party member Marion Lloyd is standing in the election against two other candidates.

Marion told the Socialist, "The support that we've had is overwhelming. We came into the race late. 39 nominations in the space of a month! 62 for the incumbent Mark Serwotka, who has been preparing for this election for months, and 17 for Bev Laidlaw.

This election comes at a crucial time for PCS members and the working class. We have lived through years of austerity. Seeing our standards of living absolutely devastated.

And now, at last, after weeks of dithering, we've got a general election, and the possibility of electing a Corbyn-led government on an anti-austerity programme.

That will be a great breakthrough. But it is in this context that it is crucial to have a general secretary that understands the political situation under which we live, and the role of the trade union in that context.

We must cut through the growing bureaucracy that exists inside PCS. We must reclaim the union, and make it democratic and accountable. A union that recognises and uses its collective powers.

We must rebuild the left on the basis of a political strategy, an industrial strategy, and one that at the heart of it is democracy, and respects discussion and debate.

I will not take the general secretary's wage. I have been active in this union for more than 40 years, and I am not in it for my own personal gain. I have confidence in the preparedness of our members to fight and win."

We call upon activists to unite behind Marion's candidacy for a union democratically controlled through its elected lay structures, and a leadership which will actively coordinate across the union the fight on pay, jobs, pensions and office closures.