On Thursday 14 December, the results in the PCS General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary elections were published. Candidate of the bureaucracy Fran Heathcote scraped a win as General Secretary with 10,340 (5.94% of total voters or 51.5% of votes cast compared to 9,557 for Marion Lloyd, the Broad Left Network’s candidate for General Secretary.
In very welcome news, left Assistant General Secretary, incumbent John Moloney, decisively defeated unelected union full time officer Paul O’Connor, 11,705 votes to 8,152. John is one of the leaders of PCS Independent Left, who campaigned hard alongside PCS Broad Left Network to secure a leadership that will reinvigorate the union’s national campaigns and lay democracy.
Hundreds of left activists and reps across the union mobilised to secure branch nominations, with Marion and John securing 80 and 87 branch nominations, accounting for more than 55,000 members, about 5,000 more than Heathcote. Work then began on leafleting, desk dropping, emailing and speaking face to face with tens of thousands of members across PCS.
Despite a very narrow loss in the General Secretary race, this work has firmly laid a basis for the growth of the left in PCS.
As we move into the year of a UK General Election year, a wave of attacks on pay, jobs and terms and conditions is all but inevitable, with Labour prioritising credibility in front of financial markets and the bosses, to securing gains for workers, especially in the public sector. Resisting these attacks requires a capable, combative leadership with a strategy that can win.
Our work in the last few years, in strike ballot after strike ballot, on pickets and now in union elections is bringing it home to members that Broad Left Network activists can be that leadership.
This will be a tough hill to climb, given how many of our members are very angry with the union; 4,000 fewer of whom voted in these elections than in 2019 because they are losing faith that things can change, and thousands of whom are leaving PCS thanks to incompetent national leadership. Nevertheless, as the last four years have demonstrated, we are in this to win.
What a difference four years makes
Four years ago in 2019, the picture looked different. Previous General Secretary Mark Serwotka had acted with a cabal inside a united group inside PCS Left Unity to undermine and oust elected left Assistant General Secretary Chris Baugh. Serwotka then won the battle for branch nominations and went on to win re-election against two other candidates, including Marion.
In the space of four years, the Broad Left Network has been founded and grown dramatically, securing seats on the union’s National Executive every year since, as well as seats on multiple group executive committees. Hundreds have joined BLN to fight for union democracy and for campaigns that will defeat the attacks raining down on us from the bosses.
Four years ago, IL stood against Chris Baugh for AGS and against Marion Lloyd for General Secretary. This year, on the basis of a principled alliance in the elections that put forward a united programme of union democracy and renewal of our union’s national campaign, IL and BLN were able to come together behind John and Marion for AGS and GS, and a united slate in 2023 NEC elections.
This bodes well for a realignment of the left in PCS.
Ruling “Left Unity” group is a hollow shell
Events during the GS and AGS election demonstrate the extent to which PCS Left Unity, once a powerful organising tool for socialists in the union, has become merely a vehicle for elections, propped up by the union’s machinery to promote candidates who won’t disrupt the increasing power of unelected full time officers who think they know best and who eschew accountability to members.
In Revenue and Customs group, the second largest employer-based bargaining unit in PCS, scores of Left Unity members have now resigned in protest at the lack of support for their group, and at the complacent and ineffective ways that Left Unity operates. More can be read elsewhere on this website and in the statement these reps published, which many BLN supporters also signed.
Others in HMRC, not themselves part of the initial tranche of reps resigning from PCS Left Unity, have also made very public their break with the ruling faction. Amongst these were Tracy Hylton and Hector Wesley, among the longest serving and most recognisable Black activists in the union, the latter being deputy president of the Revenue and Customs group and National Executive
During the 2023 GS and AGS elections, the Socialist Workers Party also split from the ruling Left Unity faction, after five years of their most high profile supporters giving loyal and uncritical support to the ruling faction.
There are many reasons for the recent splits and resignations from LU but undoubtedly the most prominent is the pitiful leadership of the 2022/23 PCS strike wave, which took over a month to launch after the strike mandate was won in November 2022, and then promptly called off after the government offered a one-time, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment of £1,500 to civil servants instead of a proper pay offer.
As Left Unity increasingly becomes a vehicle for their supporters (and friends of the ruling cabal) to get jobs in PCS, separating themselves from the ordinary members of the union, so does its actual capacity to run an effective union diminish. Letting the Tories off the hook over our pay, pensions, and jobs in 2023 has been the clearest example of that yet – and inevitably more will follow.
Rebuild the Left in PCS – BLN Conference meets on 20 January 2024
BLN supporters are not letting grass grow under our feet. The elected steering committee has taken early decisions about contacting all groups opposed to Left Unity to discuss a united programme – of reasserting union democracy and rebuilding our national campaign – that could form the basis for a united slate in forthcoming April 2024 national and group elections in PCS.
This will be further discussed and voted upon at the BLN Conference on 20 January. This Conference will discuss and vote on the full programme in the form of motions on key topics like pay, pensions, jobs, office closures, terms and conditions like hybrid working and matters of international importance to the labour movement such as the Gaza invasion.
BLN supporters will then take this programme to their PCS branch Annual General Meetings in February and March to seek endorsement from members for these motions to be put forward to Group Conferences for each employer (DWP, HMRC, Home Office, Commercial sector etc) and to the union’s Annual Delegate Conference.
A fighting, democratic union with socialist policies is and remains the lodestone of the Broad Left Network, and we urge you to get involved by joining (which you can do online!), to attend the BLN conference, adding your voice to ours as we fight to build a union that is willing and able to protect our members in the workplace and which can win decisively on pay, pensions, jobs and rights.
PCS Broad Left Network 