PCS Broad Left Network

Who runs PCS? A report on the NEC of 17-18 July

Since taking office in May 2024, the new PCS Left Coalition majority on the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has had several priorities. These priorities are directly linked to the basis on which they campaigned to be elected – and to the basis on which they won 19 seats on the 35 seat NEC compared to 13 out of 35 to defeated Left Unity (LU). 3 members of the Democrats were also defeated.

A strong national campaign. A political strategy that puts members’ needs first and which is not simply a publicity machine for the General Secretary. A union that is directly run by the elected NEC and by lay reps at all levels, instead of being run by the General Secretary’s machine in a spirit of total indifference to elected reps.

The third NEC of the electoral year met on July 17 and 18. For the third meeting in a row, the majority of business put forward by the elected Left Coalition was met with a veto by the President. This ranged from major items, such as motions covering the union’s national campaign, to less important items such as which Conference motions get assigned to which committees of the NEC. This means that motions could not be moved, debated or voted on.

Shortly after the NEC convened on 17 July, the approach of simply vetoing everything substantive was doubled down on by the President, in a published diktat to set “appropriate boundaries” for how NEC business was to be conducted. This complained of the amount of email correspondence from NEC members, as the newly elected Left Coalition tries to rein in the undemocratic behaviour of the General Secretary.

Every lay rep and member, over the next ten months, is going to face the question: who runs PCS and in whose interest? Presently, it is not the elected NEC, it is the union’s machine, under the direction of the General Secretary, propped up by the National President. They obstruct and challenge our right to progress our unions policies. It is not being run in the interests of any union members, regardless of LU rhetoric.

Bureaucratic obstruction threatens the national campaign

At every NEC meeting, Left Unity members have openly derided the vote of PCS Annual Delegate Conference to throw out the strategy of the ex-leadership, and to adopt a new approach. This NEC was no different, as the President and others attacked the new approach as a “two tier” campaign.

LU supporters justify this openly contemptuous attitude on the basis that BLN and Left Coalition NEC members are proposing that we should be ready and willing to call action amongst the 20,000 members with a mandate, as we lay the groundwork to re-ballot the 100,000 who missed a strike mandate in the ballot up to May 2024.

This re-ballot would be on the basis of the demands included in A315, meaning that we could connect it to issues facing members every day, such as hybrid working. Inflexible approaches by civil service departments are costing members potentially hundreds of pounds per month, on salaries already hard-hit by pay austerity.

Pay remit talks have now begun with the Cabinet Office, as of 19 July. The initial timetable suggests that these may be concluded by 25 July. Press reports indicate that pay review bodies are looking at 5.5%, against an available budget of 3%. The civil service at Grade 6 and below are not covered by such a body in any case.

By the end of this month, we will likely know where we are on the treasury pay remit, including whether any new money is on the table or if pay awards will need to be found from within existing, already tight, Departmental budgets. Additionally, the deadline we have set for a response from the Prime Minister will have expired.

The motion proposed by BLN and backed up by the Left Coalition proposed a detailed series of steps – including engagement with lay reps across the union to discuss strategy – to ready us for a special NEC on 13 August, with the intention being to firm up timetables and potentially to call the first strike action under the new mandate.

The previous motion, which was passed on 10 July, called for joint working with the other trade unions. The Labour government is rapidly going to be faced with demands on pay from teachers, local government, the NHS and others. Nationalisation of water, of Royal Mail, of Port Talbot steelworks are also posed.

We must be ready to pivot on the basis of demands across the public sector, and a mood of anger across the class, driven by the determination of a Starmer government to cling to the Tory spending plans that have so battered and blighted public services for 14 years. This requires firmness of purpose but flexibility in tactics.

This whole approach was simply vetoed and thrown off the agenda by the President, therefore not allowing discussion which members and reps expect.

The President and General Secretary have not been able to sweep away entirely the motion passed by the NEC on 10 July, proposed by BLN and supported by the Left Coalition. Consultation will proceed with lay reps, on a less widespread basis, and consideration of targets for selective, paid strike action will also proceed.

Bureaucratic obstruction threatens the financial security of the union

As noted in the previous report of NEC work, the General Secretary, without reference to the National Executive Committee or any elected body of the union, has put in place a new staffing structure. This includes promotions and pay rises for her two key lieutenants, despite both having been decisively rejected by members in elections.

As the NEC has not been consulted whatsoever, it is difficult to say with any certainty what has gone on – but some staff in the General Secretary’s office have left, and others have received promotions. The General Secretary has also been recruiting new staff externally – rumours suggest that this is on the basis of inflated pay above the minimum for the relevant pay band.

All of these things incur a cost in terms of staffing budgets within PCS, but they also come with pension liabilities, which is a vulnerability of the union.

BLN supporters take the union’s finances very seriously, as does the union’s national treasurer – the elected Assistant General Secretary, John Moloney – who donates tens of thousands of pounds  of his wages back to the union each year. After discussion with the finance committee chair, John attempted to put a paper to the NEC, raising concerns.

The General Secretary blocked the paper being issued to the NEC.

Further, the national president and general secretary each asserted that the elected AGS was obliged to clear all his papers via the general secretary’s office. It was alleged that this is a “contractual requirement”. The contracts of GS and AGS are both possessed by BLN supporters and this assertion is untrue.

The Assistant General Secretary is directly elected by PCS members. He is responsible to the directly elected NEC, as is the General Secretary. The AGS abides by this; the General Secretary has been doing everything in her power to escape this accountability, by keeping the NEC in the dark and by using the national president to veto any business she doesn’t like.

The General Secretary unilaterally creating whole new posts and filling them with her allies, with no reference to the elected NEC or the Policy and Resources Committee that under rule oversees such matters, is an abuse of members money. We also regard it as a financial threat to the union.

A lesser considered problem is that, with an escalating number of managers in the PCS full time structures, the basic work of the union is going to be missed, as too much work will fall on the shoulders of the diminished number of those that perform the crucial functions to help and support our lay reps.

Other business

The Left Coalition’s organising motion was discussed and agreed. An Organising and Education Committee meeting the previous week had set the tone. The OEC had agreed that, in light of the defeat of the previous leadership’s 2024 Organising strategy, a serious and wide-ranging discussion on organising was required.

The NEC agreed that this would be led by the OEC. Chaired by a BLN member, the way is now open to consider all those concerns voiced by reps about the blind spots of the previous strategy. This includes those areas fixated upon with little benefit in terms of union strength and about the lack of transparency in how decisions are made when allocating PCS staff to support organising objectives, or what the results are.

A paper put by the Assistant General Secretary raising the profile of the threat of Artificial Intelligence to jobs in the civil service, was agreed. The NEC also agreed that the union will support the anti-racism demo in London on 27 July, where an attack by the far right on a trans rights demo looks likely.

Nominees were put forward to the STUC Black Workers Conference delegation, including Hector Wesley and Vijay Menezes-Jackson. The General Secretary was caught out on this; she had put out the call for nominations and, despite multiple queries, had failed to set out the specific criteria which must be reflected in any delegation to this conference.

As well as on the national campaign and on finance, other amendments and motions from the Left Coalition were vetoed by the President without debate:

• Reordering the agenda to delay national campaign discussion to after King’s Speech
• Proposal that all AGS and GS papers be cleared by the Senior Lay Officers, to stop the President vetoing everything where it disagrees with the GS.
• Allocation of Conference motions to NEC committees, to ensure appropriate committees in charge (e.g. equality committee when equality issues at stake).
• Machinery of Government changes affecting Scottish Sector, Scottish Government, DSIT, DESNZ, DBT and smaller related areas
• Record of decisions from NEC meeting 10 July 2024
• Legal services (allegedly only vetoed till the next NEC)
• Staffing structures in PCS (also only until the next NEC, allegedly)
• TUC LGBT+ Conference report, including a motion written with support from PCS Proud and a nomination for Saorsa Amatheia Tweedale to take up a post on TUC LGBT+ Committee.

Next steps – Join Us in Transforming PCS

It could not be clearer that the General Secretary and the President are attempting to intimidate the NEC out of even putting in motions and amendments. The articles published by PCS Left Unity (the faction to which both belong) could not be clearer; these people believe they are entitled to run the union, regardless of how members voted in the National Executive Committee elections of May 2024.

We absolutely reject this approach. We will continue to put pressure on the President and General Secretary. Whether the new GS likes it or not, the NEC coalition majority was elected on a clear programme to build a serious national campaign and to re-establish lay democracy and accountability to the lay leadership of PCS. We will carry this through.

It is equally clear, however, that these obstructive tactics are not going to stop. In these circumstances, the strength of the left is its connection to branches, reps and members across PCS. We will continue to report on events to the activist layer across the union – because every activist will have to make a choice. Either they want a union led by the elected leadership, and accountable not just to the General Secretary but accountable to branches, groups and the NEC, or they prefer the machine.

The same machine that is running the union into the ground and which has lost us thousands of workplace reps – the key activists and a cornerstone of the union – however much they try to hide this behind the number of advocates.

Broad Left Network is the largest socialist organisation in PCS, bringing together activists from many political traditions, but united in the belief that we need a fighting, democratic PCS with socialist policies. We urge every activist and lay rep in PCS to read our programme, and to join BLN to help us rebuild PCS and renew lay democracy.

Thousands of PCS members will have been celebrating as the Tories crashed out of office on 4th July.  But the mood about the new government is muted. And with good reason. Many of us remember the brutal attacks under the last Blair/Brown Labour government – on jobs, pay, office closures and more.

Speaking from the NATO summit on 11th July Keir Starmer has already confirmed that he would not be “giving unions what they want” on pay given the state of the public finances!

This is a signal that whilst we hope for the best, we cannot be complacent. We need to continue to put pressure on the new Government. The need for PCS to rebuild a national campaign on pay, jobs, pensions and conditions remains vital.

Branches backed the fighting strategy set out in motion A315 on the national campaign at PCS conference in May. This motion also called out both the mishandling and ditching of the national campaign last year and the national ballot by the previous LU leadership of the union.

The new Left Coalition majority on the NEC which includes Broad Left Network members stood on a platform for change and a programme capable of defeating the employers and government attacks on our members. We are working hard to try to progress conference policy and to seize the opportunity given to us by the election of a new government. But it is not straight forward.

Obstruction at every step

The newly elected NEC met on June 4th and the new Left Coalition tabled key motions to develop our strategy in the General Election period and take forward our national campaign. The President however unilaterally ruled that we could not discuss them.

His undemocratic act prevented a discussion, by the elected leadership of our union about how we build the pressure on a new Government to win on jobs, pay, pensions and conditions. This prevented discussion about how to utilise our strength during the election campaign.

The Left Coalition were keen to use the strike mandates won in the last ballot to send a very firm signal to the incoming Government from day one that PCS is determined to fight and win. 

To force a discussion on these crucial questions, the NEC Left Coalition had to demand a special meeting be called under the rules of our union. These rules which are designed to ensure that the President or General Secretary cannot avoid the democratic decisions of the NEC by simply failing to call a meeting.  Again, the President tried to obstruct and delay, finally calling the meeting for the 10th of July. 

The Left Coalition were clear about what we wanted to discuss. We prepared and submitted detailed motions on the national campaign, the victimisation of reps at Benton Park View, union organising and legal support for members. We also submitted a motion on the PCS staffing restructure announced by the General Secretary at huge cost to the union, using members money at a time when many of our members are seriously struggling to make ends meet – with no discussion with the NEC or any other democratically elected body.

The President and General Secretary failed to release the information about leverage that could be delivered in areas with a mandate to the National Disputes Committee or the NEC until after the General Election. This, despite the fact it was available in early June.

Push Labour, then escalate

At the July 10th NEC we expressed concern that letters written to Keir Starmer this year by the General Secretary had received no response. The motion tabled by the Left Coalition was eventually discussed and carried after we voted down a paper tabled by GS, Fran Heathcote. This motion made clear that the Government should be given a final chance to make a real difference for our members to:

• Withdraw the attack on Benton Park View reps and reinstate those PCS reps who have been dismissed at the site, as this is in consequence of their union activity.

• Withdraw the attack on Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) across the Civil Service, begun by the Tories with a hostile Cabinet Office paper in May 2024.

• Instruct Departments to immediately begin working with civil service trade unions to withdraw the myriad attacks on union rights carried out from 2010 to 2024.

If this is unanswered, or if the government aren’t willing to offer more than words about the issues which matter to civil servants across the UK government workforce, including the Treasury Pay Remit, then it is vital we build for action over the next period.

A BLN supporter Marion Lloyd made a supplementary proposal – which was agreed – that a full review of the £3/£5 monthly strike levy be undertaken, including options to raise the threshold for members to pay the higher £5 monthly rate. The numbers reported as leaving the union over the levy – designed to pay for strike action – are low, but BLN supporters are not convinced that the information presented by the General Secretary is accurate.

The union must build to win, setting out what needs to be done and how we do it, organising mass meetings of reps and members explaining our plan.

Involving activists in discussions and campaigning activity, utilising the vast knowledge and ideas from lay reps right across the union must be part of building the necessary campaign to win. This includes utilising our current mandate, but as part of a broader campaign including for meaningful, targeted strike action. This must go hand in hand with building membership confidence to fight and prepare for what is likely to be, the need for fresh ballots for strike action.

All this activity brings pressure to bear and helps build our campaign. To hear more invite us to your members meetings, your BEC, your GEC, your Regional Meetings and work with us to build the necessary response to the employer.

Benton Park View – defend PCS reps under attack

Branches fully backed our reps under attack at Benton Park View at our recent conference. To sack union activists for undertaking their elected role is a disgrace and we must act to protect the individuals, our union and send a strong message to the employer not to mess with our reps and members.

Hector Wesley, PCS National Vice President, HMRC Group President and supporter of the Majority Left coalition on the NEC, has been working closely with the branch, as have other NEC members, to ensure full support for all those who are victimised, but, importantly, also work to build the major campaign necessary to reverse all of the attacks. Such a campaign must include mobilising members at BPV to prepare for strike action.

Disgracefully the National President threw the motion proposed by Broad Left Network off the agenda.  A motion setting out a robust strategy to defend our reps and which had been agreed by both the Benton Park View branch officers and reps from the HMRC Group Executive Committee.

The President only allowed a weaker paper from the General Secretary to be put to the NEC on these attacks, carried only because the alternative better strategy had been ruled off the agenda. We continue to work with the reps in the branch in the best traditions of the labour movement and it is important that branches send messages of support to the branch and the activists concerned.

Help us build up the national campaign

The NEC majority is serious about building an effective campaign working with and consulting those areas who have a live mandate and with the whole membership to prepare the ground to win a re-ballot for strike action. We must increase the power of our union to respond to the Treasury remit and any other plans which will be put forward by the new Government which has already announced its intent to keep to the previous Government spending rules.

We need your help to defeat the bureaucratic obstruction of LU led by the President and the General Secretary who are just interested either in blocking any progress or implementation of conference policies by the left NEC majority. Or over-riding democracy to install their candidate on the TUC General Council, by ruling out our alternative nomination, John Moloney the recently re-elected Asst General Secretary or restructure the union staff to favour and reward their supporters at our expense.

Want to fight with us to rebuild a fighting, democratic union?

Come to our Zoom public meeting at 7pm on Wednesday 24th July https://fb.me/e/1Mh4wbYno

And we urge all reps across all areas – UK or devolved civil service, privatised or arms-length body, large employer or small – join the Broad Left Network and get involved now!

For years PCS delegates have faced pressure to abstain and/or equivocate at the behest of the Left Unity leadership on motions supporting Trans rights and decrying transphobia (or face reprisal). For the first time in a long time, thanks to members throwing out the old guard and electing a new National Executive Committee majority, no PCS speaker embarrassed our union by throwing dog-whistle support behind gender critical ideology. All PCS votes cast were in line with our own union policy to protect trans and non-binary workers.

This included supporting an Emergency Motion (EM1), which decried the Cass Report for the dangerous pseudoscience that it is. EM1 called on the TUC LGBT+ Committee to work with trans-led organisations to resist the Report’s recommendations and to pressure UK governments for an affirming approach to trans healthcare.

The Report has already had devastating impact in precipitating a ban on gender affirming healthcare for under 25s in England and the closing of youth trans health services in Scotland.

PCS has policy, carried by conference 2024, that rightly criticises the academic rigour of the Cass Review and resulting Report, neither of which are peer reviewed. Longstanding union policy has supported access to trans healthcare, and the PCS Proud National Committee (PNC, leadership of the self-organised group for LGBT+ PCS members) has spoken and published against the Report. PCS policy is clear, and Annual Delegate Conference has repeatedly censured the former NEC for anti-trans conduct.

Unfortunately, once again, securing the correct supportive vote for trans rights was not plain sailing. Four delegates selected by the PNC (including ordinary and NEC BLN members) made up two thirds of the delegation. The other two delegates, the single Democracy Alliance (Left Unity and PCS Democrats) Vice President and a Left Unity former NEC member, attempted to intimidate the Proud delegates into adopting LU’s position of  abstaining on EM1. They consulted the unelected Head of Organising, who told them that abstaining was “the PCS position” as we “don’t have policy on it”. It is unclear what democratic source she drew that opinion from. Majority delegates were told by the VP that if we voted for EM1, they would be doing so knowingly against mandate.

This was reminiscent of TUC LGBT+ Conference 2022 when PCS delegate and BLN member Saorsa Tweedale was instructed by a full time officer to abstain on a motion highlighting the links between gender critical organisations and the far-right, against the union’s position. Like Saorsa, majority delegates ignored this undemocratic directive and voted in support of PCS policy. 

Outrageously, rather than visibly abstain or abide by the majority position and support, the VP and LU member both left the room during the debate on EM1 and were absent for the vote. More evidence (if any were still needed) that the remaining Democracy Alliance members in positions of authority must be voted out as soon as possible.  

Turning to the conference itself, it was filled with moving and vitally important speeches about the lived experiences of LGBT+ people and the need for change – featuring horror stories of assault, victimisation, discrimination against and fear on the part of LGBT+ people as recently as en route to conference that morning.

It is important and healing for LGBT+ people to hear unanimous support from within the community, and for the most part the spotlight was rightly on our trans and non-binary siblings who have been subject to vicious abuse and discrimination by employers, the UK government and the far-right. Conference also included Moments of Joy this year, to recognise and celebrate the beauty of LGBT+ lives whilst we fight like hell in their defence.

Crucially though, what’s needed to bring about positive steps for LGBT+ workers and all workers is political and industrial response. We gathered specifically as LGBT+ trade unionists – how are we going to use our strength and leverage to realise change as quickly and as forcefully as we can?

Proud and BLN members on the delegation encouraged Conference to consider the industrial, class-based elements behind various motions. They spoke on the need to fight against privatisation in the NHS with industrial action where needed, as the only way to provide the full and fast access to trans healthcare that we unanimously support, and the importance of international trade union solidarity to represent LGBT+ workers everywhere, such as Uganda and Gaza.

One strong theme and gentle tension at conference this year was the role that the TUC LGBT+ Committee and wider TUC should play in lobbying the Labour Party. Numerous unions, PCS included, spoke on the vital need to hold the Labour Party to account as they very likely take government after the General Election.

PCS told Conference that we must hold Labour to a higher standard than the Tories, as the next government and because they claim to be the party of workers. Conference rejected the TUC LGBT+ Committee’s recommendation to oppose a motion calling on them to lobby the Labour party to insist they support the trans community. The recommendation came on the basis that the TUC is politically neutral – Conference voted to tell them that they aren’t and mustn’t be.

Looking ahead to next year, BLN member Yemisi Ilesanmi was elected to the TUC LGBT+ Committee, and a demand has been submitted to the PCS National President to nominate BLN member Saorsa Tweedale for co-option to the same committee.

As the lie that PCS has put equality at the heart of all we’ve done under the former leadership is exposed more and more, it is vital that BLN work in our capacity as part of the new NEC majority to properly resource the Equality department, and continue to re-establish the trust between Proud and the NEC. We can and must put forward a strong class-based position on LGBT+ liberation, within our own union and beyond.

Another week in PCS, another litany of obstructions under the President and General Secretary of the union, Martin Cavanagh and Fran Heathcote and their faction PCS Left Unity (LU).

LU Cost Privatised Members Three Days of Strike Action in DWP G4S

The left-led Senior Officers Committee, with a voting majority comprised of Hector Wesley, Bev Laidlaw and Dave Semple from the PCS majority left, voted in favour of strike action on the DWP G4S contract, so that members could join GMB members striking on the same contract beginning on 17 June and continuing intermittently for weeks yet to come.

A PCS Left Unity member responsible for issuing the correct notice to the employer failed to do so, meaning that strike action had to be pulled from 1-3 July, and only because majority left reps intervened to put pressure on the General Secretary and on the national President, was strike action saved for 4-7 July.

Although this was put down to “human error” by Left Unity supporters in the higher echelons of the union’s senior management, it is indicative of the continuing and massive failure over years on the part of once-dominant faction PCS Left Unity to exercise democratic oversight over the operations of the union. Notices of strike action, for example, are not copied to the elected senior officers of PCS.

Every attempt to wield democratic oversight, as in recent instances where dispute settlements have been reported to the National Disputes Committee, has been met with argument, delay and refusal to reply to correspondence.

The union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) is led by the majority left,
comprised of Broad Left Network, Independent Left and independent socialists, 19 seats compared to Left Unity’s 16 seats, key offices are still held by Left Unity
supporters, including DWP Group President, PCS National President and General Secretary. The latter posts also sit on key committees such as the Senior Officers Committee and the National Disputes Committee.

These top posts are being used to block at every turn the ordinary democratic
operations of the union and the exercise of democratic oversight.

LU Blocks Any National Campaign Action

The majority left have tried at every turn to get the national campaign on to the
agenda of the NEC and its related bodies. Collectively, we demanded of the national president that this feature on the first NEC after conference, held on 4 June. This was denied.

National Vice President Dave Semple wrote to the General Secretary and National President to demand that the leverage information that they were gathering – without reference to or discussion with the NEC or the National Disputes Committee – be shared. This email has not even received a reply from either.

A submission from Dave Lunn, on behalf of the PCS Land Registry Group, which
broke the 50% participation threshold in the strike ballot that took place until May 2024, has also gone unanswered.

National Vice President Hector Wesley has written to the General Secretary to
convene a Campaigns and Comms committee meeting. This has been blocked by
the General Secretary, further frustrating any attempt to mobilise the union for action.

On virtually every matter, similar barriers are being thrown up. The implication is that the President, the General Secretary and their unelected supporters in the union’s most senior management layers believe they can simply prevent the left from exercising power by ignoring requests until it is too late – a perception reinforced by the decision by the National President to radically reduce the number of NEC meetings.

Misuse of Members’ Money to Organise a Cabal of the Right?

Reps across PCS who have any connection to the paid full-time structures of PCS have long been hearing rumours of major changes to the staffing structure of the union, including promotions undertaken without any advertisement internally or externally within PCS. None of these have been brought to the NEC.

A further recent round of this seems to have taken place. Three NEC members have written to the General Secretary demanding an explanation of what has been undertaken, including the creation, without NEC approval, of a new band of staff, 6A. This sits at the top of the union, earns tens of thousands of pounds more per year than average PCS members earn, and has been filled by two unelected individuals that supported Fran Heathcote’s campaign for General Secretary in 2023.

No explanation of this has been offered by the General Secretary, and no reason has been given why the elected committees of the union were not consulted, given that under the union’s rules, FTOs are appointed by the NEC, and on the basis of procedures that require approval by the NEC (see Supplementary Rules 8.1 and 8.3).

Full Time Officers are employed directly by PCS to do a difficult job and they deserve respect. More than one Full Time Officer, with no connection to any faction in PCS, has openly decried the way in which the union’s senior management is utterly unaccountable to any elected body and the favouritism and factionalism they believe is displayed when promotions inside the union’s full-time apparatus become available.

This must be investigated.

The NEC left majority has also heard rumours of a massive overspend on staffing in PCS, contrary to PCS Conference instructions that the cost of staffing should be capped at one third of the union’s income. Our intention is to investigate this and to report the truth back to branches and reps across PCS.

LU Backbiting Never Stops

As many reps across the union will know, from the revelations published by Hector Wesley and Tracey Hylton, then both members of PCS Left Unity, and amongst the most senior black union reps in PCS, the bullying culture within Left Unity is rife – and can spill over to equality matters.

LU have published a scurrilous article attempting to take issue with the NEC
appointments to the union’s delegation to TUC Conference, due to meet in Brighton this coming September.

The delegation consists of six members elected by Annual Delegate Conference, six members appointed by the NEC and the President and General Secretary. The six appointed by the NEC included Hector Wesley, Fiona Brittle, Marion Lloyd, Bev Laidlaw, John Moloney and Ellie Clarke.

This appointed group of socialist union reps includes black, LGBT+ and disabled
members of the NEC, it includes a DWP representative, and it is a majority-women delegation.

LU’s scurrilous attack is on the basis that Angela Grant, DWP Group President, was not included, nor was Jackie Green, a national Vice President and LGBT+ member. Angela Grant was the person at the centre of complaints made by black reps, and by her own admission made the infamous “we don’t do black for black’s sake” comment to Hector Wesley and Tracey Hylton, both black reps.

Angela Grant and Jackie Green have both repeatedly been on the wrong side of
Conference policy when debating LGBT+ issues. Both have been censured as part of the NEC majority of past years, for what Conference has obviously considered their poor approach to LGBT+ rights. Why would they be given the opportunity to take these views, manifestly opposed by PCS Conference, to the TUC?

The leadership of LU does not respect the union’s Annual Delegate Conference – as evidenced by Fran Heathcote’s performance in the chair of Conference in 2023, when she deliberately conspired to invite unnecessary speakers into a debate, in order to filibuster (i.e. talk so long that the next debate falls due to time) a motion on LGBT+ TUC matters.

The new majority left leadership is different.

Broad Left Network will continue to fight for the voice of reps, branches, groups and Conference itself to be at the heart of PCS. We will continue to push against the bureaucratic barriers being erected against the democratically elected leadership of the union – and we urge all reps across PCS to join us, to build this fight into a tidal wave that neither the right-wing rump nor the next government can withstand.

On 4 June, the union’s newly elected National Executive Committee (NEC) met for the first time. Following the May 2024 elections, the union has a changed political composition; a new left majority has been established, with 19 out of 35 seats won by PCS Broad Left Network (BLN). PCS Independent Left (IL) and left independents.

At Tuesday’s NEC meeting, the defeated group that has been leading the union, and which still retains the post of General Secretary and President, showed exactly what it intends to do to undemocratically keep hold of power in the union.

Even before the meeting, the Left Unity minority was hard at work to block any kind of change. They refused to put the union’s national campaign, or the battle to defend recently sacked union reps, on to the agenda in the first place, and refused to produce a written paper on either one. This would have immediately given effect to motions A315 and A323, passed by the union’s Annual Delegate Conference, which met in Brighton from 21 to 23 May and arguably the issues that concern members the most.

Once the meeting convened, the General Secretary bent to pressure and pledged to give a verbal report on the rep sackings – although thanks to manoeuvres by the President and a refusal to reorder a heavy agenda, this was never delivered. At the time of writing, the NEC still has not received a report on the sacked reps from the General Secretary.

President attempts to keep power through bureaucracy

The first item of business addressed by the union’s new President, Martin Cavanagh, was the proposal by him to continue with a set of “Standing Orders” (the rules governing how the NEC functions) which were put in place by the outgoing Left Unity leadership. These proposals were intended to protect the already substantial power of the National President and designed to make it as hard as possible for the new left majority to progress the issues that most concerned reps and members.

The newly elected left majority had submitted substantial amendments to these proposals to ensure the new NEC could govern effectively and take forward the programme it was elected to progress.

Cavanagh’s proposals were voted down and the amended proposals were agreed. However, the new President ruled that these were not passed because they required a two-thirds majority. The President immediately suspended the meeting and attempted to dismiss the NEC on the grounds that it did not have any standing orders.

This kind of Presidential obstruction of the work of the majority has not been seen since the right-wing led our predecessor union in CPSA and so many of us worked so hard to defeat – culminating with the election of Mark Serwotka in the Year 2000.

Broad Left Network supporters proposed that, instead of suspending the meeting, the meeting be adjourned for one hour. When the meeting re-convened just after midday, the left majority deliberately but unwillingly voted for Cavanagh’s undemocratic standing orders in order to prevent the indefinite suspension of the NEC that the President had threatened and in order to progress the key issues for members.

Important business was on the agenda, including the union’s political strategy and the belatedly-promised verbal report on the sacked PCS reps, and while Cavanagh and Left Unity are willing to play games with the business and needs of our members, BLN and our allies are not.

Left counterproposals defeated attempts by the President to assign a majority in all important sub-committees to Left Unity members, who no longer form part of the elected working majority. This included the Policy and Resources Committee, Organising and Education Committee, the Finance Committee, the Campaign Committee and the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee, despite his slate of candidates having suffered defeat in the national elections. This was one high point of a difficult meeting that, thanks to Left Unity obstructionist tactics, yielded little that will benefit union members. The subcommittees now reflect the democratic mandate given by the membership. We must now make sure they meet quickly.

Some steps forward on political strategy

The PCS intervention in the General Election is vital and as such the political strategy was dealt with at the tail end of the meeting. The President immediately decided to use a President’s ruling to throw the two most substantive motions on political strategy off the agenda without debate or vote.

One of these motions was proposed by Broad Left Network supporters and is reproduced below. It sought to use the General Election as a springboard to re-launch the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights at work.

High-profile demands on Labour, as part of a conscious strategy of mobilising members would be coupled with consultation with senior lay reps in PCS and with the 64 areas which won a strike mandate in May about taking industrial action during the general election to make our members’ needs into an issue in the campaign.

As part of wide-scale mobilisation, branches would be permitted to hold all-members’ meetings to discuss whether they wished to endorse anti-austerity parliamentary candidates – such as Jeremy Corbyn, long standing ally of our union’s members – in their constituencies.

With the motion thrown off the agenda by the President, this could not even be debated. Once the President as chair of the meeting makes a ruling, it requires a two thirds majority to overturn it – evidently, these should be used sparingly and only in the most serious of situations, not for deciding that motions from NEC members can’t be heard because they disagree with the paper put forward by the General Secretary.

Instead, the General Secretary read out her NEC paper on political strategy, which did not amount to much more than a “Make Your Vote Count” approach, used by the union prior to 2017. The third motion left remaining motion on the agenda was passed, and this succeeded in demanding that the General Secretary must write to the Labour leadership to firmly place on record the demands recorded in Motion A12, passed by Conference 2024, which mostly relate to the union’s national campaign in the civil service.

It is clear that Left Unity, despite losing the national elections, feels comfortable attempting to block the majority from accomplishing the programme that they published to members, even if in the process they flagrantly disregard PCS Conference policy.

Our answer must be the building of a massive united left across PCS, to build a fighting, democratic union, with a genuinely socialist leadership that abandons the defensiveness and obfuscation of PCS Left Unity and gets out among members and reps to mobilise for a serious national campaign. If you agree with this, we urge you to join PCS Broad Left Network, and to write to us at pcsblnetwork@gmail.com to invite BLN supporters from the union’s National Executive Committee to speak at your branch.

Below was the motion BLN attempted to propose to and discuss with the union’s NEC and which the President unilaterally threw off the agenda.

Motion on General Election Strategy for NEC 6 June 2024

The NEC recalls the motions passed by Annual Delegate Conference in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, as well as the motion proposed by the previous NEC, 2023-2024, to ADC 2024, which was not debated. Under the authority granted by motions A304 and A305 in 2017, the NEC agreed to proposals from branches to back 91 Labour candidates in the June 2017 General Election.

Conference 2019 authorised the NEC to “prepare guidance for branches and members in line with existing policy should a general election be called before May 2020”. Under this instruction, the NEC took a decision in September 2019 that they supported the Labour Party in England and Wales, would urge a vote to “Get the Tories out” in Scotland and would adopt a “Make Your Vote Count” approach in Northern Ireland. In both the 2017 and the 2019 elections, Jeremy Corbyn led Labour on a transformative manifesto.

Since 2019, Conference has not repudiated either the ability of branches to apply to the NEC in order to support candidates for election in particular constituencies, or the ability of the National Executive Committee to take a decision on political strategy affecting the whole of the UK. A motion was proposed by the 2023/24 NEC to Conference 2024 to do just this, to eliminate the ability of branches to seek support for individual candidates, but it was not debated.

The NEC asserts that the calling of a UK General Election, to take place on 4 July, raises fundamental questions about our industrial and political strategy in the next few months.

A Labour government is the most likely outcome of the pending General Election – but this is not an excuse to demobilise the union’s campaign. It is grounds to step up these campaigns. We must put emphatic support behind those Parliamentary candidates who support our members and their legitimate demands and needs. The NEC must take steps to mobilise members, to demonstrate clearly our intention to fight, and must place clear demands on the likely incoming Starmer-led Labour government, as per motion A12, passed by ADC 2024.

This NEC decides as follows:

• Noting his decades of support for workers’ rights, for pay justice and national bargaining in the civil service, for the full funding of public services, for an end to the scourge of privatisation, for the nationalisation of energy, railways and the post office and for his opposition to racism and oppression domestically and internationally, from South Africa to Palestine, the Public and Commercial Services union endorses Jeremy Corbyn as the candidate for parliament in Islington North. The General Secretary will notify Mr Corbyn’s campaign and will work to identify ways in which the campaign can by supported by PCS nationally as well as by any groups, branches, reps and members who wish to participate, within the bounds of any constraints imposed by law. These will be subject to approval by the Senior Officers Committee.

• Instructs the General Secretary to write to the Rt Hon. Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party to seek urgent discussion and public commitments around the clear political demands raised in motion A12 of ADC 2024 and on the following points additionally, which are all consistent with the policies passed by PCS Conference since austerity began:
  • The need for an urgent pay rise of 10% in the civil service, and for a minimum wage in the public sector and amongst privatised staff on government contracts of £15 per hour, with appropriate additions for London, to address the pay crisis facing civil servants, workers in associated bodies and privatised workers on national government contracts across the UK, and to finally end once and for all the ridiculous situation where our skilled AA and AO grade staff are reduced to earning the National Minimum Wage each year.
  • Pay and pensions justice and reversal of the massive attack on our rights – including through the 2016 and 2023 anti-trade union laws – implemented by Con-Dem and Tory governments over more than a decade that has seen pay fall in real terms, has seen cuts to sick leave, to annual leave, to union rights, to job protections and attempted cuts to redundancy terms. As part of a fair settlement, we reiterate our campaign demand for a reduction in the working week without loss of pay, already being achieved in Scotland, to be extended to UK and other devolved civil servants, to government workers in associated bodies and to commercial sector workers on government contracts.
  • Repudiation of the Tory plan to cut 72,000 civil service jobs, and for politicians to make a public commitment to 100,000 new civil service jobs, including as part of the creation of a National Climate Service, in line with longstanding PCS policy, entailing genuine negotiation with the civil service trade unions covering workload protections, uses of AI, maximising flexibility for civil servants in respect of hybrid working and defence of and investment in our office estate.
     

• That the NEC appoints a team to meet with the Labour leadership, should the Labour leadership seek a face-to-face meeting, with appropriate non-voting support from amongst the FTO cadre as identified by the General Secretary.

• Instructs the General Secretary to communicate the above demands to the Labour leadership by the end of the day on 7 June 2024. The deadline for a response from the Labour leadership is set as 20 June 2024. The response – or lack of response – will be published to members. The message to members must be agreed by the delegation appointed to meet the Labour leadership.

• Reaffirms the right of branches to propose support for candidates in any parliamentary constituency in their geographical footprint to a branch EGM, where those candidates are positively identified as publicly supporting the minimum demands outlined above, where they are not in breach of PCS policy on equality including support for Trans rights, and where they have an established record of campaigning on these issues. Such proposals should be forwarded to the NEC via the General Secretary for final approval.

• The General Secretary will prepare and publish guidance by 10 June to explain how branches can apply to the NEC for permission to support candidates, to ensure civil servants do not fall foul of the pre-election period impartiality rules, to ensure civil servants do not use any facilities granted by the various employers to convene these meetings and to make all reps and members aware of what activities they can legitimately undertake in order to support union-backed candidates in the General Election. The NEC delegates the Senior Officers Committee to agree the final list of candidates endorsed by PCS.

• Asserts that industrial strategy and political strategy must go hand in hand in this period. Even whilst we take steps on our political strategy, we must also ready ourselves to renew our industrial campaign should a pro-austerity government, committed to following through planned Tory cuts in the civil service and related areas be elected. A Senior Lay Reps Forum is summoned for w/c 10 June to lay out the NEC’s political strategy, the major pressure being placed on Labour, the likely approach should Labour attempt to implement Tory cuts, and to take views from each area on the mood, organisational readiness and likely needs of each area regarding a potential pivot to action and/or a re-ballot, as appropriate.

• Instructs the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee to oversee meetings with those areas that won a mandate in May 2024, to discuss their views and members’ views on the potential for invoking that mandate, especially on days where other unions are likely to be taking strike action, such as the BMA Junior Doctors.

Annual Delegate Conference (ADC) met in Brighton from the afternoon of Tuesday 21 May until 1pm on Thursday 23 May.

Conference met a mere six days after the union’s national strike ballot results were declared and eleven days after results were declared in one of the most important National Executive Committee (NEC) elections in the union’s history. In the 2024 elections, the 20+ year tenure of PCS Left Unity as the majority on the NEC was ended by a coalition of left forces including the Broad Left Network, the Independent Left and independents in Revenue and Customs Group.

One hand tied behind our back: the PCS national campaign under Left Unity

Controversy has raged within PCS since November 2022, when the union won a strike mandate covering 100,000 civil servants on questions of pay, pensions, a jobs guarantee, and the terms of the civil service compensation scheme. This ballot success came after years of ballots falling short of the 50% participation threshold since 2018.

Given the unprecedented circumstances, including a cost-of-living crisis in which inflation had exceeded 10% and a major upsurge in strike action, decisive action was called to unite all PCS members with a mandate, and to plant firmly in members’ minds that their union had a serious strategy to fight a decade of pay cuts.

The leadership of the union, particularly then-President Fran Heathcote and then-Deputy President Martin Cavanagh, failed to do this. They dithered for six weeks before calling any kind of strike action, and for three months before calling national strike action, wasting more than half of the six month mandate won in the ballot.

This dithering led directly to narrow misses in the May 2023 re-ballot; Tory anti-union laws require 50% participation to make any ballot valid, and under the anti-union laws, each mandate expires after six months. A layer of members was not convinced by the lacklustre approach of the PCS leadership under Heathcote and Cavanagh.

A full report on ADC 2023 can be read on the BLN website; the assembled delegates representing the heart of PCS democracy ordered that the campaign continue and proceed to a re-ballot in those areas that missed in Spring 2023. These instructions could not have been clearer – yet the NEC blatantly disregarded them, reflecting the degeneration of Left Unity, once a broad organisation that brought together the vast majority of the left across the union, now sadly declined.

When the government wrote to PCS on 2June 2023 to offer a one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment of £1,500, with no requirement that the union halt the campaign, the union’s leadership under Heathcote, Cavanagh and the Left Unity majority on the National Executive Committee decided to terminate the campaign.

They cancelled the outstanding strike action in those areas which still had a mandate, they cancelled the re-ballots ordered by Conference 2023 and they cancelled the strike levy – after all the effort reps had spent ahead of its implementation in February 2023 trying to reassure members that an extra £3/£5 monthly charge was needed.

Instead of escalating and re-doubling our efforts when the government blinked, the leadership of the union surrendered – and then compounding the error by doing absolutely nothing for ten months under the delusion that a handful of meetings with the Cabinet Office once our mandate had safely lapsed would lead to any meaningful progress on absolutely anything union members care about.

Spring 2024: the re-ballot

From June 2023 until March 2024, the national leadership did very little except campaign for Fran Heathcote to be elected as General Secretary, which she duly was – with overwhelming support from the union’s institutional machinery – by a narrow 800-vote majority over united left candidate Marion Lloyd.

As April 2024 and the union’s NEC elections drew closer, the Left Unity leadership opted for a strategy they have used before, of launching a strike ballot to coincide with national elections, again hoping to use the machine of the union to name check Martin Cavanagh, who stood to take Heathcote’s now-vacated post as National President.

So poorly prepared for this pivot back to a ballot, after ten months of doing nothing, that in the first week of the ballot in March 2024, reps didn’t even have leaflets to give to members. No serious strategy was put forward except to argue for more targeted action without being able to show how this had had an impact in 2023.

National strike action was expressly ruled out for anything except propaganda purposes. NEC members from the Left Unity cabal have openly argued that members cannot afford national action and wouldn’t support it. This contradicts the views on which Left Unity was founded that for a national campaign united national action was and is essential to victory.

Reps mobilised the union. Days on days were spent out leafleting workplaces, holding meetings, drafting member-facing emails, doing everything possible to get out the vote. Every BLN and IL leaflet handed out said “Vote for Marion Lloyd” and right beside it, “Vote YES” for strike action. No such approach was adopted by Cavanagh et al.

Around 20,000 members secured mandates for action – including in Culture Sector areas, which did very well. More than 120,000 members did not secure a mandate because they fell below the 50% participation threshold. Conference met at the right moment to decide what to do next.

A314 v A315: Left Unity dishonesty defeated by a fighting strategy

Further miscalculations followed, on the part of the Heathcote/Cavanagh-led Left Unity leadership. The ballot closed at noon on Monday 13 May, yet the General Secretary, the President, and the Vice Presidents – all LU supporters – chose to delay the publication of the results until Wednesday afternoon.

This cynical and undemocratic move restricted the ability of branches to move emergency motions. However, once the ballot result was published, we were able to get some emergency motions through in supportive branches calling for a massive campaign and laying out key next steps.

Fundamental to the new approach is the widening of the campaign. All of the issues previously included should remain included – something a Civil Service World article on the conference did not quite grasp, in its fawning coverage of Heathcote’s contributions in the rancorous debate – including pay, pensions, jobs, the civil service compensation scheme and terms and conditions.

To these the NEC can now add additional demands: implement genuine hybrid working, a halt to office closures unless agreed with the unions, recruit 100,000 new civil servants including for a new National Climate Service, and “reversal of the anti-union attacks since 2010”, including attacks on facility time, on the Civil Service Jobs Protocols and the implementation of Civil Service Reform terms which cut sick leave.

Now that an election has been announced for 4th July we need to determine how our political and industrial strategies should be linked . We need to discuss how to use the existing strike mandates won for 20,000 members. We need to agree when and on what basis we re-ballot the 100,000 members who we don’t at present have a strike mandate for. We must employ political pressure, especially in this election period – including putting  our campaign demands to the Labour leadership, All are now on the table. We also have the option of a dispute over the attack on civil service equality networks.

We will work with our left allies on the NEC to identify a serious and practicable way to develop the national campaign that LU have so mismanaged in their time in charge.

Equality – major defeat for LU

One of the centrepieces of PCS conference every year is the moving of the Organising Strategy. This document symbolised the defeat of the old Reamsbottom-era right wing leadership of PCS, as it moved the union away from a “servicing” model of offering cheaper car and holiday insurance to members and towards an “organising” model based on giving power to the reps and members in every workplace.

Reps and members do not feel powerful. They have been subjected to dismal and dispiriting pom-pom waving by the leadership of the union instead of reasoned, serious debate. When ballots have not achieved the 50% threshold, they have been roundly blamed by that same condescending LU leadership. They are routinely misled about the state of the union by a leadership that bleats about overall “activist numbers” rising when the number that matters is rep numbers, and this has been falling.

Reps know very well that the civil service has rapidly increased in size since 2016, while the union has not, meaning overall density has fallen, and they have been waiting since 2018 for a slightly less triumphalist, slightly more serious approach from what has until now been the dominant faction within PCS, Left Unity.

The card vote that defeated – for the first time ever – the Left Unity NEC’s Organising Strategy at Conference this year proves that a significant number have absolutely had enough and want the union to abandon gimmicky approaches and do the basics: back reps – within training, with legal advice, with bargaining support and with the confidence of the leadership of the union – to win things that make the union worth joining, and ask people to join it. We agree.

Leadership Defeated on Equality Rights

The Left Unity leadership could only muster one speaker on the conference floor to promote their divisive gender critical views – a speaker who had been given full remit to promote her views in an official PCS blog reducing female identity solely related to our reproductive organs and totally undermining and attacking trans and non-binary rights. This view jars with women who have been fighting for decades against being reduced solely to our bodily parts rather than being treated as individuals.  Conference allowed these divisive views to be put in democratic debate and dealt with them by overwhelmingly voting for motions A317 and A52

After a raft of conference defeats Left Unity hastily changed the NEC attitude on A317 from remit/oppose to support with statement -although the NEC speaker continued to deliver the same old gender critical opposition and presenting equality as competing rights. ADC delegates rightly recognised that we need to fight to defend equality rights of all our members however many or few they are. An injury to one is an injury to all and BLN will continue to stand up to defend all members facing oppression, discrimination, or attack.

Left Unity NEC censured again.

The nadir of the once-dominant Left Unity leadership, now deprived of their majority on the National Executive Committee by the 2024 elections, was reduced to supporting a censure motion against itself, moved by Scottish Government branches.

The NEC, ignoring Fiona Brittle, a Broad Left Network supporter and the only member of Scottish Government PCS on the union’s 2023-24 National Executive Committee, agreed to a Heathcote proposal to dissolve PCS Scottish Government’s elected Group Executive Committee without any kind of consultation with reps or members. When challenged, the NEC leadership claimed that emails had gone out asking for views…although during Scottish school holidays of course! 

The anti-democratic side of Left Unity was further on display during the conference however, particularly over the question of political strategy. An NEC motion, that essentially abolished the union’s political strategy in the middle of a General Election, was to be moved on Tuesday afternoon. This was overtaken by the massive debate on pay and the national campaign.

The Standing Orders Committee (LU-led but usually with a certain grumpy kind of common sense), no doubt after consultation with the President, as required under rule, decided to propose moving the political strategy motion to the guillotine section and abandoning a guillotine section entirely.

It will not have escaped notice of Conference veterans that the guillotine section in 2023 was where Heathcote’s dishonest attempt to filibuster a pro-trans rights conference motion was exposed and where the Conference delivered a stinging rebuke to the 2022-23 NEC by overturning their attack on a lone trans rep who had voted her conscience at TUC Conference and against Heathcote et al.

Some delegates were a tad wary about that decision – but political strategy was considered sufficiently important. In the end even this delayed debate on political strategy was dodged by Martin Cavanagh in his role as chair of Conference on the final Thursday.

The General Election had been called on the Wednesday, Chris Stephens MP, chair of the PCS Parliamentary Group had just that Thursday morning given his report to the conference on the work he has done for members over the last year…and the NEC reply was going to an NEC motion abolishing  the unions political strategy and barred PCS from supporting any political candidate regardless of how supportive they had been of our pay claim, our members’ jobs and so on?

Cavanagh’s relaxed chairing saw the entire section talked out, avoiding the absolute pasting the Left Unity majority on the outgoing 2023-24 NEC had set itself up for.

Support for Sacked HMRC Reps

Unanimous support and a standing ovation from conference was given to our victimised HMRC Benton Park View union reps, sacked for union activities. By carrying motion A355 conference supported the call for “a union-wide campaign to secure the reinstatement of the victimised reps.” This will be a priority for the incoming Executive.

Lay democracy 1, Left Unity 0.

Conference 2024 was a resounding victory for lay democracy in PCS. The patience of reps, which had stretched at Conference 2023 to endorsing an attempt by the Heathcote/Cavanagh-led NEC to water down the principle of all-member annual elections, finally snapped – and not before time.

The pledge of the Broad Left Network supporters elected to the National Executive Committee for 2024-25 is that we will work hard to build a serious campaign, we will work hard to re-open the union to lay control, we will work hard to ensure the full weight of the union is put behind members and reps.

We want you to be part of that fight. If you stand for a socialist-led, fighting, democratic PCS, then we want you to join the PCS Broad Left Network.

As noted on the PCS website, the National Museums Liverpool (NML) strike has been suspended from 28 May until 2 June, at the request of the Branch Executive Committee, while union members vote on an improved offer from the employer in respect of the one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata £1,500 that the government authorised employers to pay in June 2023, and which NML refused to pay.

Determined and brave action by PCS NML members has forced further concessions from their employer. After 8 weeks of all-out strike action in spring 2024, National Museums Liverpool offered £750. Strikers remained determined and further strike action, together with plans for further escalation, have eventually wrangled an offer which includes £1,200, two days’ extra leave a year and other small gains.

Newly elected left Deputy and Vice Presidents of PCS, Bev Laidlaw, Dave Semple and Hector Wesley now form a voting majority alongside left Assistant General Secretary John Moloney on the union’s National Disputes Committee, which was asked by the PCS NML branch late on Friday afternoon for authority to suspend the strike action.

The new left majority on the National Disputes Committee was in constant touch with the PCS NML branch on Friday and did not agree to the suspension lightly, but a further letter to the NDC late on Friday night put forward very strongly the views of the NML branch committee members that the suspension was necessary.

Given the poor quality of the briefing received by the National Disputes Committee from internally within the national union and despite consistent support locally, from both full time and lay reps there are still questions to be asked about how effectively the national union has supported the local branch, in the period prior to the new left National Executive Committee taking office on 23 May. Under the new leadership, each and every dispute will be given the support and resources required to put members in the best place to win.

There are also questions to be asked about the extent to which the National Disputes Committee has been reduced to a rubber stamp over the last six years by General Secretary Fran Heathcote and President Martin Cavanagh. Their faction, PCS Left Unity, lost the May 2024 PCS elections and then went on to lose massively at Annual Delegate Conference in 2024, both in terms of watching their key motions defeated by angry delegates and in the elections held at Conference by branch block vote each year.

Supporters of the PCS Broad Left Network in Liverpool and beyond have been in regular attendance at NML picket lines and strike meetings.

BLN supporters Dave Semple and Fiona Brittle, respectively newly elected PCS Vice President and re-elected PCS NEC member, joined newly elected Deputy President Bev Laidlaw at Saturday’s NML strike rally at the Ship and Mitre in Liverpool. They pledged that, whatever the decision of PCS members at NML in respect of the revised offer from the employer, the new left majority on the union’s National Executive Committee would continue to support them,whether in continuing the fight for £1,500 or as part of the union’s reinvigorated national campaign for an immediate minimum wage of £15 per hour and for rectification of many other injustices suffered by civil servants and workers in privatised and associated bodies.

“Thank you to all those who campaigned and voted for the candidates standing for change in the PCS National Elections. The result demonstrates the desire for change, the desire for a serious fight on the issues that matter most to our members right across our union. This is reflected right across the results including those standing for change who have been elected but also those who so narrowly missed out. This team of serious fighters now have a majority on our NEC.

We have had a tremendous campaign, and members have voted for the industrial and political programme that is needed to win for our members, as we near the end of this brutal Tory Government and prepare for Starmer’s Blairite New Labour. This is a vote to change the direction of our union – to return to the fighting culture and history that must be recaptured in PCS. I am proud to have stood to be your National President and I’m delighted to be elected back on to the NEC.

We will continue to represent members and fight for their rights and interests. Our election material headlined with the need for members to vote yes in the industrial action vote and we hope that when those ballot results are announced next Tuesday, they give a mandate for action. We will then argue in our union’s conference in 10 days’ time for the militant strike strategy that can win. Please get your votes in for our candidates in the group elections and join the Broad Left Network.” #ActionNotWords

Marion Lloyd