An email from Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanagh has recently been circulated to all members in PCS branches where a motion calling for a Special Delegate Conference has been passed. The emails are an obvious attack on the elected majority of the National Executive Committee of PCS. This use of official PCS communications by the General Secretary and the President in the furtherance of their individual political agendas is a massive abuse of power and position.
Principle Rule 8 of the union’s constitution is very clear. “The management and control of the Union, and the handling of its whole affairs, shall be vested in the National Executive Committee (“NEC”). Cavanagh and Heathcote have no individual authority to use official communications to further their private political interests; the authority to use union communications is instead vested in the NEC majority.
This abuse of power amounts to misconduct and is a direct threat to the democracy of the union. Unable to win a majority of NEC seats in the 2024 national elections, Martin Cavanagh and Fran Heathcote are now resorting to the use of the union’s institutions to crush democracy in PCS. This makes the calling of a Special Delegate Conference absolutely vital, both to expose their behaviour and to rebuild the campaigns they have broken.
In addition to redoubling our efforts to trigger a Special Delegate Conference, the email by Heathcote and Cavanagh must also be answered in full. The sections below correspond to points made in the Heathcote/Cavanagh email.
Cavanagh’s veto has paralysed the national campaign
For those who have read the Heathcote/Cavanagh email to members in PCS branches which carried the motion calling for a Special Delegate Conference, the lack of detail offered is telling. The President does not, under rule, have a veto. Nevertheless, Cavanagh has been abusing his post by vetoing motions, ruling them out of order simply in order to prevent debate, impacting matters both large and small.
This has been ongoing from the very first NEC of the electoral year, in June. On that occasion, Cavanagh vetoed the left majority coalition proposals that would have led towards action during the 2024 General Election for the 20,000 members who won a mandate in the ballot from March to May 2024, to raise the profile of the union’s national demands.
Putting Labour under political pressure, just as the BMA did for Junior Doctors with their strike in late June, this move would have prepared the ground for re-ballots for the other 100,000 who fell short of the 50% turnout threshold. This was vetoed by Cavanagh. The “rule” he argued it contravened was that it disagreed with a recommendation put forward by the General Secretary. There is no such rule.
In the history of PCS – even back to constituent unions like CPSA – there have been anti-democratic elements at work in the union who think that they know better than branches and members. This includes the so-called Moderates, Marion Chambers and Barry Reamsbottom. These open right-wingers used the institutions of the union to block action – but never so brazenly as Cavanagh has done at every NEC this year.
This idea, that anything which contradicts the view of the General Secretary must be ruled out of order, is a nonsense. In addition to half a dozen times this has been used to interfere with proposals from the NEC majority on the national campaign, it has also – quite pathetically – been used to block proposals about matters as small as which NEC subcommittees to allocate Conference business motions to.
Allocation of motions passed by Conference to NEC subcommittees happens early in the electoral year. This year, Heathcote put forward a paper outlining where she thought these should sit. This is perfectly reasonable. BLN supporters put forward a paper with alternative ideas, again, perfectly reasonable. Cavanagh ruled these alternatives out of order, for the first time in PCS history.
This shows the lengths to which Heathcote and Cavanagh are willing to go, to block any attempt on the part of the elected majority of the NEC, made up of Broad Left Network supporters, Independent Left supporters and socialist independents, to effect the change which members voted for in May this year.
Heathcote’s attack on the Assistant General Secretary
Twice this year, Heathcote has interfered with finance papers put to the NEC by the Assistant General Secretary. This is particularly significant given that the Assistant General Secretary is the national treasurer of the union, under the rule book.
Heathcote and Cavanagh abuse their posts to email members complaining that their mandate is not being respected, yet John Moloney was elected Assistant General Secretary and national treasurer by members and by more votes than either got in their election as General Secretary or President. He is not being offered the opportunity to put his case before members in the same way, nor are the elected majority of the NEC who are directly referred to and attacked in the email.
On the first occasion of tampering by Heathcote, a finance paper put forward by the AGS was simply removed from the agenda and Heathcote refused to circulate it to the NEC. On the second, a paper that was agreed by the Finance Committee – the subcommittee of the NEC that is assigned responsibility – had an important section excised by Heathcote prior to publication.
Heathcote and Cavanagh, in their squalid and bitter email to members, suggest that Moloney’s contract requires him to be accountable to, and to cooperate with, the General Secretary. This is what the contract says, but it also says that John shall act strictly in accordance with the policies of the NEC – which is exactly what he was doing by producing papers asked for by the NEC’s Finance Chair, union Vice President Dave Semple, and by the NEC’s finance committee.
It is Heathcote who is in default of the policies of the NEC and who is thus in breach of her own contract, which states, “In performing his/her duties, the Officer will act strictly in accordance with the policies and instructions of the NEC. On all matters of Union business, the Officer shall accept the authority of the NEC…”.
At the end of their attempt to duck responsibility for undermining John Moloney’s mandate, Heathcote and Cavanagh suggest sexism, “there appears to be a refusal by some to accept the election of the first female General Secretary of PCS and its predecessor unions”. This is utter garbage.
Moloney, Semple and all of the NEC majority supported a woman candidate in the recent General Secretary election – NEC member and BEIS Group President Marion Lloyd. The attempt to impute sexism is very carefully worded – so Heathcote and Cavanagh know what they are doing, when flinging this filth around in PCS.
Heathcote and Cavanagh have abused their posts to create a monarchy in PCS – with whom one may not disagree, and who dictates what happens in the union not through discussion with, vote of and agreement by the NEC – which is what should happen under rule – but by dictatorial fiat. This is especially the case in respect of staffing and the full-time structures of PCS, as we will now explore.
Finance I: Heathcote and Cavanagh use members’ money to build a cabal
After PCS was formed, in 1998, the existing leadership of Marion Chambers and Barry Reamsbottom worked very hard to exert a dictatorial control of the union. They were indifferent to the policies passed by PCS Conference and, to the greatest extent possible, wanted to reduce “activists” to a rubber stamp of decisions made on high.
As part of overcoming this, when the left won control of PCS in 2003, significant changes began in the full-time structures of PCS. This radically reduced the number of very senior, extraordinarily well-paid senior managers working for PCS. The power they held – most often the enormous power of sitting still and frustrating the demands of members and reps – was dissolved, empowering the elected bodies of PCS.
Heathcote, since her election, has been working to reverse this, drastically increasing the number of senior managers in PCS and even creating a new pay band, above all of the other full-time officers. This new pay band, Band 6a, has two posts, and these posts have been given to her closest allies, Paul O’Connor and Lynn Henderson.
Henderson and O’Connor have sought to increase their power in PCS for some time. Henderson ran for Assistant General Secretary in 2019 and finished bottom of a three-way race. O’Connor ran in 2023 and was thumpingly defeated by John Moloney. Members rejected Henderson and O’Connor. Heathcote has now dispensed patronage, promoting them both, with each getting a pay rise.
None of this – not the additional recruitment, not the increase in senior management posts, not the promotion of her two top lieutenants to be “chiefs of staff”, standing above all of the other FTOs – has been discussed with the union’s National Executive Committee. Heathcote has openly argued that she can do all of this without reference to the National Executive Committee.
Such information as we have gleaned suggests that Heathcote has deliberately broken the rules of the union. Supplementary Rule 7.11 states that the NEC has the power to “engage and discharge full-time officers, determine their pay and conditions of employment, and enter into any agreement with them it considers appropriate”. Heathcote has been making commitments to the union’s Full Time Officers that she does not have the power to make, this power being reserved to the NEC by the rules.
Rather than discuss all of this frankly, and despite written objections expressed by 19 members of the 35-member NEC, Heathcote and Cavanagh delayed the calling of a Policy and Resources Committee (PRC) until after their plans had been accomplished. When the PRC plainly rejected every word out of Heathcote’s mouth, Cavanagh refused to put the matter to a vote and simply ended the meeting, closing the Zoom call. If Cavanagh worked half as hard for members as he does at obstruction, we might actually get somewhere on the union’s national campaign.
Finance II: Heathcote and Cavanagh miss the point and mislead members
Heathcote/Cavanagh attempt to hide their actions behind a moderately positive auditor’s report, written before the key events outlined above. This is pure sleight of hand. We remain concerned about the massive cost to PCS of these moves and the comment that “our finances are now in a better state than they have been for over a decade”, this misses the point and is wildly misleading.
First, the decision about how to allocate resources remains one for the NEC. BLN’s view is that this money would have been better spent on our campaigns, potentially on lower grade PCS staff to ensure maximum direct support for complex bargaining areas – Culture, the Commercial Sector, Public Sector group, instead of on a glut of very senior managers.
Second, “a better state than [finances] have been for over a decade” covers all manner of sins. The union experienced a dramatic fall in membership from 2014 to 2022, even though the overall size of the civil service was rising from 2016 until the emergency recruitment of the pandemic began to lapse. This put enormous pressure on finances – so it’s not much to say that finances are better than they have been for a decade.
Anti-racist, anti-austerity strategy
Heathcote and Cavanagh, in their email to members, offer a paltry defence of their anti-racist, anti-austerity strategy, which they say is “sufficiently robust and which made a major contribution to the Tories’ downfall” by “defeating their flagship racist policies” of pushing back small boats and Rwanda deportations.
Instead of taking curtain calls, however, Heathcote and Cavanagh might want to consider how weak and short-term their approach of a legal challenge has been, and how it does not compensate for their failure to build a strategy that ties together massive industrial and political opposition to racism and austerity, to mobilise the “sleeping superpower”, the working class.
They celebrate the fall of the Tories – an attempt to bask in workers’ satisfaction at the fall of a hated government – and pass over in silence the interest of Prime Minister Starmer in the Italian approach of deportations to Albania that might yet see the whole fiasco resumed. What is their answer to this? Succinctly put, they do not have one.
Labour are in power and are guaranteed to disappoint workers across the UK, not the smallest group of which are 480,000 civil servants. Starmer’s Labour, whatever small crumbs they may be forced to yield, are not pro-worker, as should be made absolutely clear by their retreat on banning zero-hour contracts and banning fire-and-rehire.
Labour abandoned the Tory target of 72,000 job cuts – but ask the staff in the Department for Education (1,000 job cuts proceeding) or Department for Transport (redundancies commencing) how they feel about that. These are the first, not the last, tranche of cuts – we will see the full extent of this first wave later this month when the budget exposes likely further cuts to all departments, to local government, to health, to education and the rest.
Vast working-class anger is being stored up. If no voice is given to this inchoate rage by socialists and by the largest working-class organisations in the country – the trade unions – then far right thugs like Tommy Robinson will be allowed by the capitalist media to claim it for themselves, with righteous-sounding rhetoric about “out of touch elites” allowed to obscure their vicious racism and Islamophobia.
PCS has a seat on the Trade Union Congress (TUC) General Council. Yet there have been no PCS calls for a National Day of Action following the brutal bombing of civilians in Gaza, or to unite the opposition to racist disorder following events in Southport. Where there have been steps taken in opposition to austerity – as with Heathcote’s much trumpeted (by her) speech to the TUC on the withdrawal by Starmer of the winter fuel allowance – this is the result of BLN, IL and independent proposals on the union’s Senior Officers Committee. Nice words are then rarely followed up by action.
It was not always like this. On many questions – not least the anti-claimant regimes introduced in DWP – PCS used to be a leader. These campaigns are long since dead, resurrected only when Heathcote, Cavanagh or one of their favoured cabal needs a boost to their public profile. We stand by our assertion, therefore, that more needs to be done to build a genuine mass strategy against racism and against the capitalist austerity on which it thrives, to end the zero-sum battle for scraps that serves to divide working class people.
Democracy in PCS: Heathcote, Cavanagh and George Orwell’s ghost
Cavanagh and Heathcote, in their email, assert that Heathcote had attempted to ballot members on a “forward strategy” (excuse the management-sounding language, this is how they talk). They argue that this attempt, which was voted down by the NEC, was out of keenness to ensure that members retain direct democratic control.
This is utter garbage.
Heathcote’s paper to the NEC of 12 August, which is what she is referring to, should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand her approach to democracy.
This paper seeks to “welcome” the 5% Civil Service Pay remit (recommendation 1), indefinitely pauses any plans for national action (recommendation 2), pauses the levy, which Heathcote and Cavanagh implemented (recommendation 3), authorised immediate delegated pay talks without any effort to secure additional funding (recommendation 4) and authorises unspecified, undated discussions nationally about longer term bargaining objectives (recommendation 5).
Recommendation 6 – which is what Heathcote is citing as proof of her commitment to democracy – is that the NEC should seek membership endorsement of all of the above, which amount to nothing less than the cancellation of any campaign in 2024/25. Heathcote’s view of democracy is that she takes all of the decisions, and then asks members to rubber stamp what she has already decided.
This is EXACTLY what Heathcote and Cavanagh did in June 2023. They got an offer from the government – of £1,500, one-time, non-consolidated, pro-rata – and immediately cancelled the campaign, cancelled the strike action, cancelled the re-ballots and cancelled the strike levy. They dishonestly asked members to “Vote Yes to continue the campaign” and then did nothing until March 2024.
Heathcote, reverting to dishonesty, alleges in the email that the rejection of her planned rubber stamp ballot has “left you, as members with no direct say [sic]”. Quite the opposite. In scores of PCS branches, BLN members and allies have convened all-members meetings (in many cases more than one meeting) to directly discuss matters of pay, of our wider demands, and how we build the campaign that can win them.
It is precisely from these discussions with members that the call for a Special Delegate Conference has emerged. Members have a voice, and Broad Left Network supporters across PCS are amongst the most conscientious anywhere in the union in trying to involve members directly in our campaigns. What we won’t do is lie to them and serve up a facsimile of democracy, as Heathcote tries to do.
Heathcote and Cavanagh know that the denouement is coming. They know that once the activists of PCS assemble to hear first hand accounts of their obstruction, and just how petty it has become, that activists will be absolutely furious. Their misuse of the official communications channels of PCS are an attempt to avoid their final defeat.
Broad Left Network calls on all PCS reps and members to unite against this bureaucratic attack on the union’s democracy.
We make no apology for being socialists – of many different traditions, some in political parties, some not – and for seeking to build a fighting, democratic union that can win for members. Whether anyone agrees with our views or not, everyone should be appalled at the misuse of official union communications to make a reckless, divisive attack on the elected majority of the union’s National Executive Committee.
Heathcote and Cavanagh have dug themselves in as obstacles to the NEC discharging virtually any of the functions it is elected to perform. They resent that it seeks to be more than a rubber stamp. Broad Left Network supporter know why PCS members have elected them to the NEC and will not stop working to build the national campaign that we need to decisively move the dial on pay, pensions, redundancy rights, on jobs, on office closures and on the chokehold Employee Relations regimes that pertain in most government departments.
Forward to a Special Delegate Conference, defend democracy in PCS!
PCS Broad Left Network 