Prompted by huge attacks on civil servants, the national conference of the Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS) has voted to set up a political fund - but stopped short of allowing any political party affiliation.
In a boost for its left leadership, the national conference of the Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS) has also endorsed further strike action by its civil servant members over pay.
The national and group conferences of the PCS in Brighton 7-11 June took place against a background of bitter pay disputes and of Government threats to slash staffing levels in the civil service. On the back of recent pay strikes, union membership has dramatically increased to over 300,000 and has risen in the troubled Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) by 14,000.
The re-election, in the run-up to conference week, of a left leadership of the national and DWP executives signaled the continuing support of union members for industrial action over pay. And conference resolutions were passed that are likely to lead to more strike action on this issue across the whole of the civil service in coming months.
DWP delegates agreed further strike action for July over a 2003 pay claim. National conference supported motions calling for a London pay addition of at least 4000 and opposing current Government plans to relocate/cut staff.
A successful pay motion proposed by the union's Socialist Caucus noted that "a major block to gaining acceptable pay offers through negotiation in many bargaining units in the 2003 pay round were the limits placed on pay remits by the Treasury".
Effectively the Government has been imposing a pay freeze on civil servants through capping the money it gives to Departments. The motion called on the PCS to explore whether a there were grounds for a possible legal challenge to the Government's remit policy.
Although the left of the union emerged strengthened from the national and group conferences many Socialist Caucus supporters were sharply critical that under the terms of the union's political fund union branches would be unable to affiliate to RESPECT or the Scottish Socialist Party.
In the mayoral election Lindsey German won 17,585 first preference votes and 11,296 second preference votes coming third after Labour and the Tories. This suggests that in some wards she probably ran neck and neck with Livingstone. It is strong evidence too that the Respect votes were not just for a Bangladeshi candidate but were for the Respect programme.
The vote should have been even higher. The unusually complicated voting system resulted in large numbers of spoilt ballot papers and there is no doubt that many of these were from Respect supporters.
One of the things that was done very successfully in East London was targeting major events in the run up to the election campaign. Our main visual aid was 30,000 copies of a well produced newspaper profiling Respect locally and nationally
The founding core of Respect was comprised of the Socialist Alliance branch and anti-war activists but it very quickly widened out. Lots of people new to organised politics got involved through picking up leaflets at festivals and markets in their area or outside
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