On November 5 2004, the PCS called a one-day national strike against government plans by for 80,000 job cuts in the civil service.
Although support was solid, the union's leaders failed to build on the action. They settled this dispute on the understanding that there would be no compulsory redundancies.
This allowed New Labour to slashcivil service numbers through natural wastage, privatisation, voluntary redundancies and increased sackings. Now some Government Departments (DEFRA and DTI) have announced compulsory redundancies. The PCS IS once again considering extensive strike action.
PCS members in some Departments wanted to continue the tight against job cuts two years ago. But without the strength of the whole union behind their departmental struggles, they have been unable to defeat governLICuL Dlalls
In the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), PCS members were in dispute for over a year, but failed to prevent 20,000 job losses. Yet this is not to say We need to 90,000 PCS members in the DWP make Blair fighting alone
and his could not have inflicted a defeat on ministers the Government. PCS leaders in Compulsorily the DWP (mainly redundant! Socialist Party (SP) members) ran the longest dispute in PCS history with the fewest strike days. After holding token strike days, union leaders disappeared into secret negotiations with Hallarclichl for months leaving members in the dark over what was going on.
When these leaders eventually concluded a miserable deal with management to end the dispute, most members thought it was already over. It is now! Members voted for the deal through demoralisation.
Correctly, activists in the Socialist Caucus group have
with the Socialist broken Party leadership over this debacle and will stand against them in internal elections next year.
The outcome of the DWP dispute has encouraged the government to make compulsory redundancies.
Obviously as PCS members in the DWP have just voted to end a staffing dispute, they may be reluctant to vote for a new dispute.
Activists will have to work hard to win a ballot for such a struggle. The union will need to make the demands of a civil service wide strike relevant to as manv PCs members as possible.
It is not enough to fight over compulsory redundancies as this ignores the fact that huge job cuts have taken place and are continuing in civil service departments (e.g DWP and ONS) without any compulsory reduncancies Union leaders should stop helping the Blairites run down the civil service - no job cuts should be a bottom line.
We need more civil servants not less. For example, pensioners, lone parents, children, incapacity benefit claimants and the ployed all lose out when jobs are cut in the DWP.
Civil servants need a fighting leadership! We need national action now to defend jobs and services! We need more November 5ths! We need to make Blair and his
compulsorily milllslers redundant! Another day of slaughter and torture in occupied Iraq: a policeman stanas over d victim shot by a gulllllall Piers Mostyn Bad news from Baghdad is doing serious damage to Labour's attempts to revamp its tarnished image and manage its fraught leadership transition.
Ex-cabinet minister Blunkett's recently published self-serving diaries painted a picture of himself and other senior ministers as secretly anti-war in the run up to March 2003. He claims to have questioned Blair's war drive, criticised the warmongers in Washington, and warned of inadequate preparation for occupation.
He and others, aided by media sympathisers, are trying to construct a house of cards in which conscience-stricken ministers are presenicu as obliged to stay on in government despite their concerns over the war. This is in order "to support Tony" who in turn had to join the war to ensure Britain retained the ability "to influence Washington".
Gordon Brown stands heroically at the centre of this scenario, reluctantly backing the war at the eleventh hour in order to avoid the prospect of being kicked out of government.
These falsehoods have been brutally exposed by recent events. It was British army bosses and the US Baker commission that led the way in the new critical debate on war aims. Blair and his minions have been frozen like rabbits caught in the headlights.
Then Labour's unwillingness to engage in any kind of open discussion on why things have gone so disastrously wrong in Iraq was shown by its defeat of the SNP/Plaid Cymru parliamentary motion for an inquiry. Shamefully only 12 Labour MPs voted for the inquiry. The remainder preferred to nol out tor a joo in tre incoming Brown administration rather than back a search for the truth about why half a million Iraqis had to die.
This weak revolt will cause difficulties for the leadership bid by socialist MP John McDonnell. The majority of the 44 MPs needed to launch his campaign will have to come from the ranks of those voting against or abstaining.
Scandalously this has been the first Commons debate on the war in over three years -despite overwhelming public opposition and a bill for military expenditure alone that is well over £4 billion.
Finally the US mid-term elections have destroyed any hopes Labour may have entertained of claiming a coherent Iraq strategy.
There may be little serious change of course in the US under Democratic Party influence. But with the triumphant new House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi describing Iraq as a "catastrophe", British ministers attempting to deny this will look increasingly pathetic.
Labour is desperate to avoid the consequences of its disastrous military adventurism. The government has suddenly discovered that its military efforts have been so "successful" that a withdrawal from Iraq can be achieved -during precisely the same timetable that Blair will be handing over to Brown.
The hope is that the new king's coronation can be presented as untainted by the grisly war crimes of the past. By sleight of hand the regime's transition will see it magically absolved of historical responsibility.
Doubletalk after the Commons vote about a possible inquiry when Blair goes (suggested by a minister but officially denied) suggests a mendacious make-over once brown takes une reins.
On the one hand Labour has to pretend that the new PM can put the trauma of Iraq behind him and make a fresh start. On the other it has to avoid doing this in any way that looks like rank hypocrisy or makes Blair appear the villain of the piece.
no douot suca probiems weighed heavily on the minds of Blair, Brown and the assembled 60 ministers in the November 7 crisis summit to deal with damage from internal division and plummeting public support.
But voters aren't that stupid. The government is currently trailing at 29 per cent in the polls, 10 points behind the revived Tories. And the desire of die-hard Blairites to preserve their reputation at all costs may stymie Brown's phoney sales job.
Blunkett urges that "the main task for all of us it to make sure that in years to come Iraq is not seen as [Blair's] legacy". But this is precisely the legacy of Blair, Brown, Blunkett, the entire rotten leadership and their apologists.
The anti-war left needs to make sure that it, rather than the Tories or Liberal Democrats, makes the Labour warmongers pay a heavy price.