Left Unity consider themselves to be the natural rulers of PCS. Don’t take our word for it, you have it from the horse’s mouth: on 25 January, LU published their NEC nomination recommendations on their website, encouraging support for their Democracy Alliance.

In this post, LU made their position on how they think the union should operate clear:

‘Our role must continue to be, to build the confidence and aspirations of our members and to be at the vanguard’.

Vanguardism, Vladimir Lenin’s name for telling workers that they weren’t advanced to run their own revolution, isn’t really in vogue in Britain nowadays, but is apparently alive and well in LU. Members are all well and good, but it is for Left Unity to set strategy and to lead. 

False narratives?

Last year, PCS members received one of the worst pay rises in the public sector, despite an unprecedented wave of industrial action and campaigning. The Left Unity majority NEC conceded despite a live strike ballot, spinning a pay cut, and the same fruitless talks about low pay we’ve had for years into a victory.

Unsurprisingly, those talks have once again led to nothing, and lay activists are left scrambling to energize a confused membership to vote for another mandate in a new dispute.

But, LU tells us, we have always been at dispute, it was only paused, and anything that has gone wrong is their opponents fault for pushing, ‘false narratives’.

In an article on their website, ‘PCS National Campaign – Left Unity leadership keeps its word’ (29 February), LU make a number of spurious claims that are worth unpicking.

Speaking about the terrible deal they ‘paused’ for, Left Unity accuse IL and the Broad Left Network (BLN), of ‘set[ting] about deliberately misleading our membership and making false claims that the campaign had been abandoned’, as well as going round telling our members that, “nothing had been won”.

Let’s be frank here – in real terms, nothing was won – despite a slight increase in the remit, members were still worse off in this financial year than they were the last one.

What we said at the time remains true – the £1,500 unconsolidated payment was unconditional and discretionary for departments, the 4.5% with 0.5% to address the lowest paid was risible and a long way from the realistic 10% we demanded. At the very least, the leadership should have demanded these offers be funded by the Treasury, as other public sector unions had done. But they couldn’t even manage that. The Cabinet Office must have been rubbing their hands. 

They trumpet their consultative ballot ‘victory’ to, having worded its question so that whether you voted yes or no, the NEC would still abandon the dispute.

We said at the time that a ‘Yes’ vote in the ballot would in effect mean that nothing was done until the 2024/25 pay remit was looming. And we were proven right. 

The problem with IL, according to the leadership, is that we are too pessimistic. We risk ‘demoralising’ the membership.

We are accused of going into ‘overdrive to dismiss the decision to consult members’. Bear in mind here that the NEC decided to ‘pause’ campaigning immediately after obtaining the ultimate consultative result from members for the 10% pay demand, a strike mandate with which nothing was done.

‘Leaking’

Dr Mark William’s report is sobering, but would not come as a surprise to any of our members – low pay is endemic in the civil service, salaries have been eroded in such a way that they are, in real terms, where they were two decades ago, massive increases are needed to restore them, and inequality remains a problem. IL have drawn LU’s ire once again though, by having the temerity to share its damning findings with members and the public.

This is despite the fact that the report was distributed to activists across the union by a manager’s action brief (MAB), billed as  ‘extremely useful … for use in general campaigning and for agitational purposes.’

Now, LU accuse us of undermining the union’s negotiating strategy by making the data available to the government, and ‘demoralising’ members. Our members aren’t stupid – they, and the public already know civil servants are being screwed. Their subs paid for it, we’re currently asking them to vote to go on strike, why wouldn’t we share it with them?

Again, we suspect it’s because we distributed it to inform and empower lay reps, whereas LU was cautioning activists to only tell their ‘constituencies’ (members to you and I) once they’d been told what the strategy was by the NEC.

It’s LU’s union, we just pay for it.

An un-democratic alliance?

LU has been in control of PCS for 23 years now, and they have failed on their own terms again and again. They believe the PCS is their personal fief. The real reason they dislike IL so much is that we dare to question them, and have the temerity to stand in elections against them.

Incredibly, LU’s own website seemingly claims that other factions standing against them (so, contested elections) are a problem. While, they concede, ‘there is nothing wrong’ with ‘in principle … offering members a legitimate choice in the direction they want their union to take’, apparently in our case the ‘nature’ of our opposition to them renders our democratic participation an unprincipled game.

Not content with sabotaging consultative ballots, LU now believe they have the right to stand unopposed if their opponents are critical of their grand strategy.

A coalition for change

IL members are working flat out in their workplaces to win the current strike ballot. We must succeed. However, loyalty should not come at the expense of recognising the need for drastic change in the leadership of PCS.

IL is putting forward candidates for NEC as part of a coalition for change with other groups and independents.

We have a radical program for a NEC that will adopt new policies and practices, show greater energy, creativity, and engagement with members. We will put pay restoration, and an end to low pay, at the heart of our campaign, with clearly expressed pay increase demands, and a rational and democratically agreed plan of national and selective strike action and action short of a strike. 

You can read our programme here, and see the candidates we endorse here.

Vote for change.