Under Mark Serwotka, the union markedly became less dynamic and in a real sense, less democratic. Mr Serwotka was the arch spinner claiming things that weren’t true. Not only in 2023 but in the past as well. He did nothing to address fundamental issues such as falling union density. By any objective standards, he was a terrible General Secretary, but things have actually gotten worse with Fran Heathcote.     

President Blocks Democracy

Left Unity (LU) lost the NEC elections and hence is a minority on that committee along with their erstwhile allies the Democrats (in the past we would have described them as Labour leaning but now they are just a friendship club).

They did win the President’s position though, and through him any attempt by the majority to actually try and put in place the programme it was elected on has been smothered.

The President, Martin Cavanaugh, grossly disregarding the rules he is meant to uphold, rules the bulk of motions from the NEC majority out of order. When challenged, the majority cannot get two thirds of the NEC votes needed, to overturn his ruling and this cycle of rule out of order, challenge, not get two thirds, occurs again and again at each NEC.

Building A Wall

Of course LU realise (as there is no democracy or life in LU, Left Unity is just a label for Fran Heathcote, Paul O’Connor – more of him later and Martin Cavanaugh) that with yearly elections they can lose the presidential position so they are building up the bureaucracy of the union to ensure future NECs and conferences can be ignored.

Therefore the General Secretary, without informing the NEC and certainly not seeking its permission, has created a new extra top heavy layer of Full Time Officials (FTOs) to surround herself.

For most of its existence the union has had seven pay bands, with pay band 1 the lowest and pay band 7 (GS and Assistant General Secretary (AGS) are in this band) the highest.

Fran Heathcoat has created two 6A posts, whose pay range straddles those of PB 6 and 7.

She has ensured that Paul O’Connor, her key full time official ally has been given one of those posts and Lynn Henderson the other 6A job.

Lynn Henderson was beaten in the 2019 AGS election by John Moloney, and Paul O’Connor lost the 2023 AGS election, when he was a running mate to Fran Heathcote, again to John Moloney. So the two failed AGS candidates, both rejected by the members have the most senior FTO posts under the GS, whilst John Moloney, the person who decisively beat Paul O’Connor has in effect been made supernumerary in the new structure.

Fran Heathcote has also created eight new band 6 posts as well and is busily filling other posts at band 5.

Your Money being Used

After great delay in producing the figures, the GS now admits that the new structure will cost members at least £169K a year.

This is an underestimate. She is seeking to fill more posts, so costs will rise and the £169K figure does not include the guaranteed progression that FTOs are entitled to, nor does it take into account future pay rises. So we believe that in a few years the cost will be closer to £200K a year. This figure does not include union pension costs either.

Motion A9

Motion A9 passed at ADC 2021, mandated that staff costs be kept at 33% of members subscriptions – which of course is your money.

The GS bloated new structure directly breaches A9.

You will have all heard of the adage of repairing the roof when the sun is shining. What Fran Heathcoate has done is punch holes in a serviceable roof and she hopes, if she thought about the future at all, that bad weather will not come our way. Yet dark clouds are on the horizon.

Cuts Are On Their Way

The Chancellor to partly fund the average 5% pay award for the UK civil service (UKCS) has cut administrative budgets by 2%. The admin budgets include a number of items, but staffing makes up the biggest part of this budget. The government has made clear it will continue to squeeze admin budgets in the future and this must lead to a squeeze on jobs.

Everyone knows that the spending review underway will recommend further cuts in departmental budgets (at least in real terms) and this will also mean staff cuts.

Last, and certainly no means least, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has written to cabinet ministers ordering them to find reforms and deploy technology that can save cash.

‘Deploy technology’ not only includes the increasing use of AI but also pushing digital transformation, that is getting the public to increasingly use web based services. This will lead to more job losses.

Ignoring The Past

UKCS headcount stands at about 542,000 at the moment. In 2019, it was 445,000, so in five years, numbers have increased by just under 100,000, yet our membership has not kept pace. Over those five years our union density has actually decreased.

If staff numbers decrease then the union’s membership will, taking every other staff rundown as a guide, also decrease. Yet the GS is forcing bureaucracy costs up, just when we could see a down turn in membership. This will mean us moving further from the 33% ratio that we are supposed to stick to.

The whole point of the 33% ratio is to keep staff costs manageable. The union at 2021 ADC had learnt the lessons of the continuing financial crises the union had weathered since 2010 – don’t allow staff costs to get out of sync with membership levels. Fran Heathcoat has ignored that hard won wisdom because all she can see out of the holes in the roof is the sun still shining.

Act First, Count Later

This financial irresponsibility has been compounded by the GS implementing the new structure and then costing it, rather than the rational process of designing the new structure and then costing it before making any decisions as to implementation.

Now, as we actually believe in a member’s lead union, the NEC should have been the body to make any decisions as to implementation of the new structure, whether we really needed 6A posts etc. After all PCS’s constitution says:

PR 8. The management and control of the Union, and the handling of its whole affairs, shall be vested in the National Executive Committee (“NEC”). The NEC shall conduct its affairs in accordance with: (a) the Rules of the Union; and (b) the policies determined by Delegate Conference or by membership ballot.

The Imperial General Secretary

The GS’s response is to create a new theory of the relationship between her and the NEC and of course by extension between her and conference and members.

She states that she is in sole control of staffing and staff costs and that the NEC has no say on these vital matters. The NEC’s role is to set polices and then she will solely determine how FTO staff are deployed to achieve the polices.

No Evidence, Just Assertion

So how does Fran Heathcote reach that conclusion despite rule PR8. Well she just asserts it. She claims that Mark Serwotka proved this was the case and all she is doing is following in his saintly steps. The GS doesn’t quote any of the rules in the constitution or show how her contract allows her this control. It just is.

The GS buttresses this stance by claiming she has legal advice that shows the separation of powers is, as she asserts them to be.

Will she show this advice to the NEC, no. Nor the advice she apparently has in relation to motion A9 that says she can freely ignore the 33% ratio.

How does she get away with this. Enter Martin Cavanaugh. He has made another of his rulings, this time to say that Fran Heathcote’s position is correct despite no proof it is. Again he challenges the NEC to overturn that decision. He also backs her position that she won’t actually show the NEC the legal advice.

So the GS uses union money to get the advice, she then uses that advice to deny the NEC any say over staffing and then says I won’t show you that advice!!

Democrats Refuse To Play Their Part

The Democrats used to have a bit part on NECs where they would say ‘remember it’s the member’s money and we can’t waste it’. This time they have not played their assigned role and are keeping silent on the £169K to nearly £200K a year being squandered. Apparently it isn’t the members money when Fran Heathcote uses it to reward her acolytes.

More Than Anger, Action

We are angry at this blatant misuse of your money and the undemocratic way that Martin Cavanagh is shielding the GS from scrutiny or control. Anger is good but only if it motivates us to take action to defend the union’s democracy and member’s money.

Firstly we must tell as many branches and activists as possible what is happening to our union.

Using union machinery, Fran Heathcote has issued a branch bulletin and an email to members setting out LU’s version of what happened at the NEC meeting of 12 August.

The majority did put an alternative to the GS’ paper. Now her paper, to paraphrase, said, everything we achieved last year (£1,500 prorated lump sum) was wonderful and this year we should take the money and then sometime in the future decide what to do next. It said nothing of substance on staffing cuts, on pay bargaining structures, on unequal pay, DDAT pay or progression.

The majority’s position (we think you know the drill by now) was ruled out of order. So the majority had no choice but to vote the GS’ paper down.

We must now start a branch based campaign to fight Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanaugh. They have to be put under pressure.

Special Delegate Conference

Part of that pressure must be a serious consideration of holding a special delegates conference. The rules say:

A Special Delegate Conference may be called by the NEC, or on receipt by the General Secretary of a written application by Branches together representing one quarter or more of the membership.

We would need branches representing 47,000 members to write in. That can be done. Of course such a conference must cover more than union democracy and safeguarding your money but also the 2024 pay round and our anti-racist, anti-fascist (ARAF) work.

We Must Win The 2025 Election

This work amongst the branches will serve us well for the 2025 NEC election which we have to win, in particular win the President’s position. Without Martin Cavanaugh to shield her, the GS will only have the bureaucratic wall she has built, the army of Pay Band 6s and her 6As, to protect her.

She will no doubt take the position of an early President of the USA, Andrew Jackson, who supposedly on hearing an adverse decision of the Supreme Court supposedly said “John Marshall (the Chief Justice of the court) has made his decision; now let him enforce it’.

Fran Heathcote will say of NEC and ADC decisions “They have made their decision; now let them enforce it, but they won’t be using my FTOs’.

Members Must Control The Union

So we have to win more than the election, we have to ensure that the GS actually obeys and complies with democratic decisions. That means changes in the union’s constitution and passing legally cast iron motions at ADC 2025.

Structures Fit For Bad, As Well As Good Times

Because we know that there are rainy and indeed stormy days, we have to reduce our staffing costs to bring them into line with our current membership. ADC passed A9, we have to obey it.

Mark Serwotka Prepared The Ground

In many ways, this crisis has been coming a long time. It was hidden under Mark Serwotka’s reign as for decades he had LU run NECs, who were content to allow him to be an Imperial GS. Further conferences, on the whole, went his way. So he had the same views as Fran Heathcote, but he never had to reveal his hand or power.

As LU have lost the NEC, and ADC 2024, what was hidden has now been forced into the open. The Imperial GS has had to reveal itself.

Our Union Or Fran Heathcote’s     

We are facing a fundamental crisis in the union. 

Down one path lies complete domination by senior Full Time Officials, where we have a managed democracy, where there are the outward trappings of democracy, that is votes, conference etc, but all that counts in the end is the will of the GS. 

Down the other path, where we elect NEC and they are free to implement the programmes they were elected on and conference really does determine the fundamental policies of the union. 

We though want to go further down that path and have a genuine member lead union.

Will you join us?   

Members will have likely seen an email today from the General Secretary and President informing members that the NEC majority decided to vote against balloting the membership over the 5% offer, taking strike action and abolishing the Levy. This account of what happened is completely and utterly dishonest.

As any pretence of civility from the LU minority on the NEC is now clearly over and done with. We will start by saying this – It has become increasingly clear over the past few months that LU are more than happy to completely trash our pay dispute and throw PCS members under the bus in order to secure electoral gains for their faction and ensure they are the only voice in the room. They are a bureaucracy out of control.

The truth of the matter is, we didn’t vote against taking action. The NEC majority was faced with a paper from the General Secretary which was a complete and utter capitulation to the employer and would have our members ‘welcome’ an increasingly less tantalising pay rise alongside a promise of job cuts.

To mitigate this, the NEC majority attempted to move an alternative strategy (both in writing and verbally) that would:

• Reject the 5%, and demand the re-opening of negotiations over the remit which included the following demands alongside pay:
  • Moved us towards National Pay Bargaining.
  • Removed the threat of “efficiencies” or job losses enshrined in the remit guidance.
  • Ensured the remit was fully-funded and that departments wouldn’t need to use their own money to service the next increase in the minimum wage to raise the salaries of the – already disgracefully paid – AA and AO grades.
  • Agreed the reintroduction of pay-progression through salary bands which was removed as an option under the coalition and subsequent Tory administrations.
  • Laid down an agreement on the implementation of AI where the benefits of its implmentation was shared with staff through, for example, a reduction in the working week.
  • Included a timetable for the resolution of our long-standing pensions over-payment claim.
• Temporarily pause delegated talks while pursuing further national talks
• Reduce the levy and immediately review it in consultation with members
• Ensure we are bargaining nationally on all the national pay frameworks including Digital, Data and Technology (DDAT) which – bizarrely – former NEC’s have refused to engage with.
• Build towards balloting members

In negotiations with the Cabinet Office, your General Secretary and President failed to raise a single one of these demands. They are asking you to accept a position without even putting your demands to the employer.

The motion raising these positions was ruled out of order (ineligible for debate and/or vote) by the National President because it disagreed with the General Secretary’s paper. This has happened to the vast, vast, vast majority of motions submit by NEC majority members since June; because according to the president’s interpretation of the rules, apparently, disagreeing with the General Secretary is against the NEC standing orders.

There are no two ways around this. The President and General Secretary are refusing to abide by the decisions of the highest body of the union.

We are of course incredibly angry about where we find ourselves when it comes to the pay dispute but we are apoplectic about the way parts of our leadership will nakedly use bureaucratic manoeuvring to undermine the will of the members they are supposed to serve. In that spirit we ask all members to carefully consider what they want their union to look like? Who exactly is supposed to be in charge of a democratic union? And what behaviour you are willing accept from your elected representatives? Because right now our union feels a lot like merely the plaything of the General Secretary.

Civil Service World reports that the FDA and Prospect ‘are working up plans for an independent pay review body for rank-and-file officials to plug a gap in the current system.’ Responding in Civil Service World, PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote has set out her arguments for why civil servants do not need a Pay Review Body (PRB).

The PCS General Secretary spinning her failure on members’ pay

Although the PCS Independent Left (IL) is itself opposed to a Pay Review Board (PRB), and we explain why below, Heathcote supports her argument with misleading statements about the outcomes of the 2022/23 pay dispute, covering up the failure of the then Left Unity (LU) led NEC, to which Heathcote was central, to reverse the years of pay decline despite members striking and paying a levy into the Fighting Fund.

According to Heathcote, “Through our campaign of industrial action, last year our members managed to secure a pay deal that more than doubled last year’s pay remit, with a £1,500 one-off lump sum, and secured the abandonment of proposed cuts to the civil service compensation scheme.”

The facts are:

• The strike action that we members were balloted for in 2022, and the action that we took in 2023, was in support of our demand for a 10% consolidated pay award for 2022/23 pay year, underpinned by our claim for a national minimum pay of £15 per hour. Yet the “scoresheet” shows that not one penny, consolidated or otherwise, was added to our 2022/23 salaries and that no other pay demand was won.
• Heathcote and her Left Unity (LU) faction shipwrecked the 2022/23 strike campaign despite them failing to deliver our 2022/23 pay demands. Their mis-leadership of our 2022/23 pay campaign was overwhelmingly and roundly rejected by PCS delegates at the 2024 conference.
• Heathcote glosses over the 2022/23 pay outcome by referring to the following year’s (2023/24) civil service pay remit, which we were not striking over and for which she and her LU allies did not submit a national pay claim.
• Even then Heathcote fails to note that the 2023/24 civil service pay remit delivered the lowest pay award in the public sector to non-senior civil servants and once again condemned most PCS members to below inflation pay rises.
• There is no evidence to show that our strikes over 2022 pay, and certainly not Heathcote’s/LU’s leadership, doubled the 2023/24 pay remit. No other, lower, pay remit for 2023/24 was ever put to PCS.
• In fact Mark Serwotka, the then £103,000 pa General Secretary when Heathcote was national PCS President, originally condemned the 2023/24 pay remit because it guaranteed another year of below inflation awards for PCS members. Serwotka/Heathcote/LU only changed their tune when they decided to call off the industrial action over 2022/23 pay and abandon our pay demands.
• Whilst the PCS IL believes that the then Tory Government decided to provide for a higher 2023/24 remit than it would otherwise have done because we were in dispute over the previous year’s pay award, the fact that that inflation was continuing to soar and that other unions were still in dispute and were about to be offered more money (and more than PCS), were also critical factors. Indeed, let us note that the senior civil service got a higher pay remit than we did and did not take a second of strike action.

Contrary to Heathcote’s statement, members didn’t get a £1,500 one-off lump sum, they got a non-pensionable, one off, pro-rated lump sum that was subjected to highly restrictive application rules. There is a big difference between the two. Despite the one-off payment supposedly being a flat payment compensation for high inflation, especially for the low paid, part time members, overwhelmingly female and concentrated in the lower grades, received lower (pro-rated) payment than full time staff. In a failure of their equality duties, Heathcote and her allies accepted this discriminatory pay decision

Heathcote further states in Civil Service World, “Last year, the government allowed for a remit of 4.5 to 5%. Our Home Office members, for example, in administrative grades won pay rises of more than double that level, and our executive officer members received 7.2% to 9.3%.”

This is so misleading it is outrageous. The outcome of the delegated pay talks for 2023/24 was that the vast majority of PCS members once again received below inflation pay awards, as the historic, unprecedented, 15 year decline of civil service salaries inevitably continued. Pay offers based on the 2023/24 pay remit that Heathcote is so proud off were rejected by PCS representatives in DWP, HMRC and elsewhere. When rejecting management’s 2023/24 pay offer, the then PCS HMRC Executive said that management’s pay offer fell significantly below its demands for a 10% increase to address the cost-of-living crisis, failed to secure consolidated and pensionable rises of a minimum of 4.5% for all staff, did not address issues of “endemic poverty pay”, and was “in effect a pay cut” because it was below inflation.

Heathcote focusses on the Home Office outlier (where members had been crucial to the selective strike action strategy) and ignores the brutal outcomes experienced by most members at a time of soaring inflation.

Interestingly if you read “Fixing the foundations: Public spending audit 2024-25”, which was published at the same time as Rachel Reeves made her announcement about public sector pay, you will see, at section “5.1 Costs from industrial action”, that the cost of the teachers and NHS strikes are calculated and used as a justification to accept the PRB reports, but PCS strikes are not even mentioned (and before you say it, the rail strikes were in the private sector).

So we ask the General Secretary, if the weak strike action and bargaining strategy you and your allies presided over was as effective as you claim it to be, why aren’t our strikes mentioned and costed in the document; why do tens of thousands of civil servants still languish f on or near the minimum wage; why did you and your allies fail to add a penny to 2022/23 salaries; and why did you preside over the poorest public sector settlement in 2023/24, leading to civil service wide PCS rejection of delegated pay offers?

Why we also oppose PRB
We oppose them because:

• Such bodies are not independent as their terms of reference are set by the government of the day.
• The workings of a PRB are opaque with unions not knowing how decisions are reached.
• A PRB won’t resolve the fundamental demands we have as to harmonising pay, terms and conditions across the civil service.
• Its recommendations can be rejected by the government of the day.
• Few unions subject to a PRB actually support such a body. That’s why the NEU General Secretary said regarding the latest PRB recommendation, “The so-called independent pay review body is a failed process that has resulted in pay cuts over the last 14 years, contributing to a deepening recruitment and retention crisis.”
• Unions act as supplicants to PRBs, making representations but not negotiating with the body.
• In the end, a PRB is a distraction from the key task of PCS which is to build the union and persuade members to take the necessary action so that our demands are met.
• A PRB stands in the way of our key strategic aim, which is to achieve national bargaining on pay, terms and conditions across the UK civil service.

In the next week, we will write further about the sheer importance of fighting for national bargaining. But in the here and now, we say no to Pay Review Bodies

IL supporters and the Coalition for Change majority put a motion outlining the above to the emergency NEC on the 12th of August. Unfortunately, just like the majority’s alternative strategy on the pay remit, the motion was undemocratically ruled out of order by the President against the will of the NEC majority.

Left Unity have once again prevented the members priorities being pursued by their union.

Members and activists from across the labour movement will have been shocked by the violent responses to the terrible murders in Southport this month, including street violence in many communities where our members live and work.

The response to these far-right mobs in collectively organising cleaning and rebuilding work, and importantly solidarity protests to confront future violent mobilisations has been inspiring, but their are lessons to learnt too.

The labour and trade union movement has a unique role to play in combatting the far-right both ideologically and physically.

Ideologically, unions including PCS by their nature are both rooted in communities and workplaces and are are expressions of the unity – working-class unity – that the ideologues of the far-right like Tommy Robinson wish to divide on arbitrary lines. Lines of race, religion, gender etc.

Equally, trade unions are able to express and give voice to the interests and concerns of disillusioned workers who have faced the biggest collapse in living standards in centuries, having to cope with a low-pay economy where secure jobs and prospects are rapidly decreasing. Where the NHS is crumbling and where the cost of housing is skyrocketing and the supply of good quality housing is plummeting.

These are the conditions in which fascist and racist ideologies grow. A political alternative is required to combat them.

Unions need to be unwavering in their solidarity with those being persecuted. These attacks initially were against refugees and immigrants. Not an inch to this rhetoric: PCS is for freedom of movement. Refugees are welcome here and are not the cause of poverty, unemployment and austerity.

The mobs then went after our Muslim brothers and sisters. We will defend each and every mosque and home from these thugs. Muslims are not to blame either.

Many of the mob are also engaged in the ‘culture war’ against trans people. Again, no ground should be given to this pernicious attempt to divide working-class communities: Trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary folks are non-binary.

Physically, the far right have been driven off the streets by mobilisations of much larger counter-protests. Trade Unions are again in the unique position as the largest membership bodies in the country, rooted in local workplaces and communities to mobilise at pace counter-protests to defend homes, workplaces and places of worship from far-right thugs.

Unfortunately, recent events have demonstrated that the trade unions in this country are not performing these roles as well as they need to. This week has shown we can’t simply farm-out our antiracist responsibilities to outside organisations, some of which don’t have the desire or will to articulate the social and economic demands which are required.

Many PCS activists and members, including IL supporters, have been active in mobilising our members over the last weeks, but PCS and the wider movement needs to act fast to ensure it’s organised for the future. On that basis IL supporters proposed the following motion to the unions emergency NEC on the 12th of August which was passed.

We hope it is enacted and in the meantime we hope branches are busy building their own antiracist/antifascist strategies.

NEC ARAF Motion August 2024

The NEC is gravely concerned about the mass mobilisations of the far right seen across the UK since Saturday 27th July.

Whilst most of these riots are being ostensibly presented as a response to misinformation surrounding the horrific murders of three little girls in Southport on Monday 29th July, it’s key to understand the far right have been on the ascent for years across the UK. Audiences for their racist, anti-immigration rhetoric have undoubtedly grown due economic crisis, crumbling public services and the collapse of living standards following austerity, Brexit and the economic impact of the covid pandemic.

However, we should also not fool ourselves into believing that this problem is purely one of economic disenfranchisement. Fascism and racism are ideologies which a growing cross section of the country are being (at least in part) convinced of. These ideas are also being further fuelled by the normalisation of anti-immigrant sentiment in the media and from prominent political figures.

Successive governments unwilling to provide positive alternatives to the brutality of Neoliberal economic policy have instead focused on attacking immigrants and refugees. This has all led to a situation where a rabidly right-wing, anti-immigration party is able to take the 3rd largest percentage of the vote share in the UK, Tommy Robinson is able to mobilise thousands on the streets of London and cities across England have seen over a week of racist rioting, including the attempted burnings of inhabited refugee hotels and mosques.

Keir Starmer’s ‘law and order/tough on crime’ response to these racist riots is wholly incapable of actually dealing with the spread of fascist ideas in our communities. The left cannot rely on the Labour Party or the Police to change the fact that we are losing an ideological battle.

There is only one force in British society that is capable of reversing this process and that is the organised labour movement.

We are of course heartened by the scenes from Wednesday 7th of August when thousands of anti-racist protestors took to cities and towns across the UK in order to defend their communities from the treat of the far-right. PCS members, including members of this NEC, played a significant role in mobilising for those protests.

We should feel proud because they were important mobilisations and indicative of what can happen when the labour movement, wider left and working-class unify around anti-racist and anti-fascist ideas. However, we can not afford to be complacent about the scale of the threat we face. We won one battle; the war is ongoing.  

Therefore, the NEC Instructs the General Secretary:

• To raise a motion at the TUC GC that calls for all affiliate unions to mobilise against all far-right mobilisations; a TUC-led national Saturday demonstration in London, with full mobilisation of all TUC unions; and a national week of action across the UK trade union movement.

• All these actions and mobilisations should all be based on raising positive workers’ demands such as (but not limited to) mass social housing programmes, a functioning and well-funded public healthcare system, fair wages, well-funded community services, an end to child poverty and the lifting of the two-child benefit cap etc. As well as the defence of migrants and other minorities under threat by the far-right.

The NEC further agrees:

• To work with all relevant bodies within the union to ensure PCS plays a leading role in building the broadest possible coalition of groups capable of mobilising against the far right whilst also ensuring our ARAF work is always under the democratic control of the union and not subsumed into any other organisation’s activities.

• To work with the Comms and Campaigns committee to fully implement the aims of the anti-racist and anti-fascist strategy 2022

• That any week of action called involve a series of workplace activities to explain what racism is, how workers can unite against it, and how workers can unite to defeat the underlying drivers of rage in our society – e.g., collapsing community and public services, falling living standards, rising prices especially of housing, loss of quality jobs, domination by hyper-exploitative “gig” work, and so on.

• To use that week of action to reassert our union’s position that attacks on the rights and freedoms of migrants do not protect British workers – they instead undermine all of us by making migrant workers more precarious and so vulnerable to hyper-exploitation, driving down wages and conditions for everyone.

• To use that week of action to reassert our union’s position that dividing the working-class with suspicion and hostility only makes it harder to unionise and push back against exploitation and low-wages – migrant workers have always been central to vibrant and successful trade union campaigns

• To work with all relevant bodies of the union to consider what materials would support such a week of action. It must be one of the union’s top priorities to win the support of workers in the civil service, devolved and not, and in our private sector areas, to an anti-racist, anti-xenophobic, anti-austerity agenda, and to involve the greatest possible number of members in that conversation.

• To work with all relevant bodies to create an educative comms strategy that is capable of dominating more media space and presenting our positive vision for the working class to the wider public beyond our membership

• To work with all relevant bodies of the union to consider how to link our anti-fascism work to the union’s national campaign

• To work with all relevant bodies of the union to consider how to apply pressure to the 

government to urgently meet our needs for housing, healthcare, benefits and fair wages

• To explore the possibility of providing basic self-defence training for members

• To ensure all mobilisation that our members are asked to attend are properly stewarded, providing our own stewards if necessary    

• To empower and work with branches to create their own ARAF strategy capable of creating the ability to mobilise large parts of their membership and communities in support of ARAF demonstrations and community defence