The President of PCS, Martin Cavanagh, working with the General Secretary, Fran Heathcote, and with the support of the LU NEC minority, has blocked everything the NEC majority has positively sought to do, hiding behind the most spurious and shameless interpretations of the NEC standing orders we sought to amend. Without the agreement of 2/3^rds of NEC members, Presidential rulings cannot be overturned, and the President has interpreted his own remit as the chair of NEC meetings to to allow himself to rule on literally anything, even where the very wording of the standing orders contradict his interpretations. This sounds both egregiously undemocratic and mind-bogglingly convoluted because it is, and we expect nothing different at the NEC meeting tomorrow, 15th Jan.

It would be more accurate to call Cavanagh and Heathcote the Left Unity President and Left Unity General Secretary as they have dropped all pretence of following the rules or working for the members; instead they are out-and-out working only for an LU victory at the next NEC elections.

Together they have prevented the NEC taking decisions on crucial issues, including on pay, jobs and other terms and conditions. They blocked us from implementing our long-advocated position of reviewing of the levy and so stopped it being reduced to a long-term sustainable level that balances the need to build and maintain a formidable fighting fund, with the burden of the current levy on members’ subs.

Attempts by the NEC and branches to break the logjam by calling for a Special Delegate Conference have been met with the same contemptuous obstruction. The end result of Cavanagh, Heathcote and LU’s sum efforts is they preside over continuing low pay and falling wages, job losses, and enforced office-working. They are the blockage that has to be cleared!

Thankfully that can be done at the next NEC elections, soon to be on us. We need to decisively defeat LU.